The fear that Isabella and Ferdinand had that they were going to be overthrown by the non-Christian population very prevalent in their new state resulted in the infamous Spanish Inquisition. In 1492, shortly after having re-conquered Granada from the Muslims, they monarchs of Spain ordered the expelation or conversion of all of the Jews and Muslims inside the kingdom of Spain. With the fear of a non-Christian citizen uprising avoided, Queen Isabella was approached by an Italian sea voyager who claimed that he could reach Asia going west around the world. Queen Isabella was eager to improve her power inside of the kingdom, she and king Ferdinand decided to fund this expedition west toward Asia so that they would drain the economic life blood out if the Portuguese. The Portuguese controlled Indian Ocean and the Ottoman controlled land routes to Asia created a problem for Spain, it didn't want to support either rival's economy more than it absolutely could not avoid. However both taxed and made money off of ships and caravans traveling goods to and from Asia. In a bold attempt to avoid these two competitors, Spain's Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand funded an expedition by Christopher Columbus to sail west, the opposite direction from the Ottoman and Portuguese towns and harbors in an attempt to reach Asia. This did not work exactly the way Spain had planned it, Columbus didn't land in India as he had expected but stumbled upon this 'new world' which we now know as the Americas. Spain immediately took advantage of this new economic opportunity. After the Spanish had figured out that the trade route Columbus had started was actually a new set of continents and not actually India, the Spanish mobilized a force to go out and colonize this new 'unclaimed' land. The Spanish wanted the rich deposits of gold and silver found in South America, the only problem was, it was already claimed by not one but two different powerful civilizations, the Incas and the Aztecs. Spanish conquistadores quickly subdued these mighty civilizations with their use of superior equipment and despite fewer numbers, enslaved both civilizations so that Spain could have a cheap source of labor to work the new mines it now controlled. Keeping power over a colony months away by boat is no easy feat. The message system was too slow to feasibly have the King and Queen dictate over everything happening in the colonies. Instead they set up a system for controlling the new population in an orderly manner, a viceroyalty. Starting in 1530, this system meant that the local officials acted on behalf of the King and Queen and made it so that the rulers didn't need to be kept in constant contact with the colonial population. Village and City level officials reported to the district officials and the district officials reported to the local governors and in turn the local governors reported to the main Spanish government hub in Mexico City which sent messages back to Spain for the monarchs to review. While this hierarchal system was flawed in the amount of time and accuracy a report took to get to the ruler and the information it contained when it finally reached the top of the pile, this system successfully allowed the Spanish to control this 'New Spain' with relative ease and efficiency for the day.