Spanish Empire: A Visual History

The Spanish Empire began with Columbus's voyage in 1492, the same year the Reconquista ended, and within fifty years Spanish conquistadors had toppled the Aztec and Inca empires. Under Charles V and Philip II, Spain ruled much of Europe as well as the Americas and the Philippines, financed by American silver. Wars against the Dutch, the English and the French, bankruptcies and plague slowly eroded that dominance. Napoleon's occupation triggered independence across mainland Latin America by 1825; Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines were lost to the United States in 1898; and the last colonies in Africa were given up in the 1970s.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Spanish Empire. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Territory claimed by Spain

Approximate area claimed, including thinly settled interior regions of the Americas. Effective control was far smaller in early centuries.

Timeline of the Spanish Empire

1. 1492
   Granada falls; Columbus sailsThe Reconquista ends and the empire begins in the same year.
2. 1494
   Treaty of TordesillasThe world divided with Portugal.
3. 1521
   Fall of TenochtitlanCortes destroys the Aztec Empire.
4. 1533
   Inca Empire conqueredPizarro executes Atahualpa.
5. 1545
   Silver found at PotosiThe richest silver mine in history.
6. 1571
   Manila foundedThe galleon trade links Asia and the Americas; Lepanto won the same year.
7. 1580
   Portugal united with SpainThe Iberian Union until 1640.
8. 1588
   Spanish ArmadaFailed invasion of England.
9. 1648
   Dutch independence recognisedPeace of Westphalia ends the Eighty Years' War.
10. 1700
    Bourbons take the throneWar of the Spanish Succession follows.
11. 1790
    Territorial peakFrom Alaska's coast to Patagonia.
12. 1808
    Napoleon occupies SpainColonial crisis begins.
13. 1825
    Mainland America lostBolivia's independence completes the break.
14. 1898
    The DisasterCuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines lost to the US.
15. 1976
    Withdrawal from Spanish SaharaThe last major colony given up.

1492 and the conquistadors

Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile completed the Reconquista by taking Granada in January 1492 and sponsored Columbus's westward voyage the same year. The Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 split the non-European world with Portugal along a meridian in the Atlantic, giving Spain almost all of the Americas.

The conquest of the mainland was astonishingly fast. Hernan Cortes brought down the Aztec Empire in 1519-1521 with a few hundred Spaniards, tens of thousands of indigenous allies and epidemic smallpox. Francisco Pizarro captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa at Cajamarca in 1532 and seized an empire of millions. Silver from Potosi (in present-day Bolivia) and Zacatecas began flowing across the Atlantic in the 1540s.

The Habsburg superpower

Charles V, King of Spain from 1516 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1519, ruled Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, much of Italy and the New World. His son Philip II (r. 1556-1598) added Portugal and its empire in 1580 and, in 1571, the Philippines, named after him. Manila galleons carried American silver to China and Chinese silks and porcelain back to Acapulco.

Philip's wars against the Ottomans, the rebellious Dutch and Elizabethan England, including the Armada of 1588, cost more than even Potosi could pay; the crown defaulted on its debts four times in his reign. Spain's Golden Age of Cervantes, El Greco and Velazquez coincided with the beginning of military and economic decline.

Decline and Bourbon reform

The seventeenth century brought defeat by France, the loss of Portugal in 1640, plague and depopulation. When the last Habsburg king died childless in 1700, the War of the Spanish Succession installed a French Bourbon, Philip V, at the price of Spain's European possessions. Gibraltar was lost to Britain in 1704 and never recovered.

The Bourbons rebuilt the navy, tightened control of the colonies and expanded them; Spain held Louisiana from 1763 to 1800 and settled California from 1769. Around 1790 the empire was larger than ever. But the reforms alienated the American-born creole elite, and the crisis was coming.

Independence and the end

Napoleon's occupation of Spain in 1808 left the colonies without a legitimate king. Juntas formed, and from 1810 the wars of independence led by Bolivar, San Martin, Hidalgo and others ended Spanish rule on the mainland by 1825. Only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained in the Americas.

The Spanish-American War of 1898 stripped away Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines in a matter of months, a national trauma Spaniards call 'the Disaster'. Spain kept a small African empire (Spanish Morocco, Spanish Guinea, Spanish Sahara) into the twentieth century; the withdrawal from the Sahara in 1976 is usually taken as the end.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Aztec Empire (1428 to 1521)
• Inca Empire (1438 to 1533)
• First Portuguese Empire (1415 to 1663)
• Holy Roman Empire (800 to 1806)
• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• Dutch Empire (1602 to 1975)

Wars of the same era and region

• Reconquista (718 to 1492)
• Spanish conquest of Mexico (1519 to 1521)
• Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire (1532 to 1572)
• Eighty Years' War (Dutch Revolt) (1568 to 1648)
• War of the Spanish Succession (1701 to 1714)
• Mexican War of Independence (1810 to 1821)
• Colombian War of Independence (1810 to 1825)
• Cuban wars of independence and Spanish-American War (1868 to 1898)

10 surprising things about the Spanish Empire

1. The Manila galleons ran the world's first regular trans-Pacific trade route for 250 years, from 1565 to 1815, one or two ships a year each way.
2. The Spanish silver dollar was legal tender in the United States until 1857 and the model for the US dollar; the 'pieces of eight' of pirate lore.
3. So much silver reached China via Manila that Chinese demand effectively set the price of silver in Europe.
4. Potosi was for a time the largest city in the Americas, higher than any city in Europe, at over 4,000 metres.
5. Charles V spoke, by his own account, Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to his horse.
6. The empire had a Council of the Indies that legislated for millions of people none of whose members had ever seen the New World.
7. The Spanish Armada was defeated less by English guns than by the weather; more ships were lost on the rocks of Ireland and Scotland than in battle.
8. Spain lost more territory in a single day in 1898 (the surrender of Manila) than most empires ever held.
9. The 1494 Tordesillas line explains why Brazil speaks Portuguese: its eastern bulge lay on Portugal's side.
10. Spanish is now the world's second most spoken native language, with more speakers in Mexico than in Spain.

Sources

• Spanish Empire Wikipedia
• Spain: The Golden Age Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Treaty of Tordesillas Encyclopaedia Britannica
• The Spanish-American War, 1898 US Department of State, Office of the Historian
• Hugh Thomas, Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire (2003) Weidenfeld and Nicolson
• J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain 1469-1716 (1963) Edward Arnold

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