The Forgotten Fantasy: Spain’s Unrealized Dream of Conquering Ming China

When most people hear the year 1588, one event dominates the memory: the defeat of the “Invincible Armada” by England. But at the same time, half a world away, a handful of Spanish officials in Manila were entertaining a plan even more audacious—one that, on paper at least, aimed to topple Ming China and reshape world geopolitics.

A Wild Proposal from the Edge of Empire

After the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), Spain and Portugal split the globe into spheres of influence. Spain held the Americas and the Philippines; Portugal dominated the Indian Ocean routes. From Manila, established as Spain’s Asian hub in 1571, governors and missionaries began sending reports back to Madrid.

Their proposal? A strike against Ming China. They argued that the Ming armies, though vast, were poorly disciplined and could be broken by European cannon and cavalry. Some reports suggested that as few as 4,000–6,000 Spaniards, supported by thousands of Filipino auxiliaries and Japanese mercenaries, might be enough to carve out a foothold on the Chinese coast—perhaps in Fujian or Guangdong.

From there, these officials dreamed of expanding influence inland, converting millions to Christianity, and turning China into a base for further campaigns. A few even speculated that such a conquest could open the door to advancing westward across Asia, potentially threatening the Ottomans from an unexpected direction.

Why It Was Never Realistic

In reality, this was less a plan than a fantasy. The Ming dynasty, though troubled by corruption and uprisings, still commanded a population of 150 million and could mobilize vast armies and resources. Supplying an invasion force from Manila across the South China Sea would have been a logistical nightmare.

Meanwhile, Spain itself was overextended. By the 1580s it was embroiled in costly wars against England and the Dutch, struggling to hold its American colonies, and facing mounting debts. Madrid never approved the Manila proposals, and no serious preparations were made.

What the Fantasy Reveals

Even if it was unrealistic, the very fact that Spanish officials sketched out such ideas is revealing. It shows that by the late 16th century, Spain was thinking on a truly global scale—imagining connections between Europe, the Americas, and Asia in a single strategic framework.

It also reflects how Spanish experiences in the New World distorted their expectations. The conquests of the Aztec and Inca empires with relatively small forces gave them an exaggerated sense of what a few thousand European troops could achieve. Applying that model to China was a colossal miscalculation.

A Glimpse of Early Global Geopolitics

The invasion of Ming China never moved beyond paper. But the proposals highlight Spain’s position as the world’s first global superpower, with ambitions that stretched across both the Pacific and the Atlantic.

In hindsight, the plan seems delusional. Yet it also foreshadows the modern idea of geopolitics: that events in one part of the world could be linked to strategies on the other side of the globe. Long before Britain or the United States rose to global power, Spain’s officials in Manila were already thinking about how Asia might shape the balance of power in Europe and the Middle East.

An impossible dream—but one that reminds us just how early the world began to be imagined as a single, interconnected battlefiel.