The Spanish Empire

Origins

The Spanish Empire emerged from the convergence of two events of 1492: the Castilian capture of Granada on 2 January, completing the seven-century Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula from the Muslim states; and the departure of Christopher Columbus for the western Atlantic on 3 August. Within a generation Spain had assembled the institutional, financial, and ideological elements of a sustained overseas empire-building project.

The political base was the dynastic union of the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon under the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile (married 1469). The combination of Castilian agricultural-demographic weight, Aragonese Mediterranean experience, and the recently freed Iberian military aristocracy produced the institutional capacity for sustained overseas conquest. The conquest of the Aztec Empire by Cortés (1519–1521) and the Inca Empire by Pizarro (1532–1572) added the vast and densely populated American territories that would define the empire’s American core.

The Habsburg empire

The Spanish throne passed in 1516 to Charles I (Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor) — grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella through his mother Joanna and grandson of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I through his father. Charles inherited Spain, Spanish America, the Spanish-Italian territories (Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, Milan), the Burgundian inheritance (the Netherlands, Franche-Comté), the Habsburg Austrian territories, and the imperial title. The combined empire was the largest single sovereign domain in European history to that date.

Charles abdicated in 1556. The Habsburg empire was divided between his brother (the Austrian Habsburg territories and the imperial title) and his son Philip II (Spain, the Americas, the Italian territories, the Netherlands). The Spanish Habsburg line ruled the Spanish Empire until 1700; the Bourbon dynasty ruled it afterward.

The 16th- and 17th-century Spanish Empire was the dominant European power. Its silver production at Potosí (from 1545) and Zacatecas funded the empire’s almost continuous European wars: the Italian Wars (concluded 1559), the Dutch Revolt (1568–1648), the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604, including the failed Armada of 1588), the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), the Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659), and various Mediterranean campaigns against the Ottoman Empire. The financial structure required to mobilize the American silver into European campaign budgets produced the early modern banking and credit institutions (the Genoese asientos, the Antwerp and Amsterdam money markets) that would shape the development of European capital markets for the next two centuries.

The empire’s territorial peak — approximately 13.7 million square kilometres around 1640 — was the largest contiguous-and-overseas state that had ever existed.

Decline

The Habsburg Spanish Empire began to decline politically and economically in the 17th century. The Eighty Years’ War with the Dutch Republic (1568–1648) ended in formal Dutch independence. The Portuguese Restoration War (1640–1668) separated Portugal from the Spanish crown (the two kingdoms had been dynastically united since 1580). The Peace of the Pyrenees with France (1659) acknowledged French equality with Spain in European affairs. The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) ended Habsburg rule of Spain and produced the Treaty of Utrecht that transferred substantial territory (most of the Spanish Netherlands, the Italian territories, Gibraltar, Menorca) out of Spanish control.

The 18th-century Bourbon empire was substantially reformed administratively by Charles III (reigned 1759–1788) and saw substantial economic recovery, but the loss of European territories had permanently demoted Spain from first-rank European power status.

The collapse in the Americas

The empire’s American territories — approximately 19.4 million square kilometres at peak — collapsed in a single political generation between 1808 and 1833. The trigger was the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808 and the consequent abdication of the Bourbon monarchs in favour of Napoleon’s brother Joseph. The American territories refused to recognize the new regime. The resulting Latin American Wars of Independence (1808–1833) progressively dissolved the empire into approximately 17 new sovereign states from California to Argentina.

The major independence campaigns were led by Simón Bolívar (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia), José de San Martín (Argentina, Chile, Peru), Bernardo O’Higgins (Chile), Antonio José de Sucre (Bolivia), and Agustín de Iturbide and Vicente Guerrero (Mexico). The wars were militarily concluded by 1825; the formal Spanish recognition of independence followed over several decades. Bolívar’s failed attempt to consolidate a unified Spanish-American state (Gran Colombia, 1819–1831) is one of the great might-have-beens of 19th-century Latin American politics.

The empire retained Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and the smaller Pacific territories until 1898. The Spanish-American War of that year, fought against the United States over Cuban independence, ended in the loss of all four. The Treaty of Paris (December 1898) ended formal Spanish overseas empire after 406 years.

Legacy

The Spanish Empire’s substantive linguistic and cultural legacy is enormous. Spanish is the official language of 21 sovereign states, the second most-spoken native language in the world (approximately 600 million native speakers), and a major secondary language across the rest of the Americas. The Roman Catholic Church in Latin America descends institutionally from the Spanish colonial church and remains the largest religious institution in the region.

The administrative-legal traditions of the empire (the Recopilación de Leyes de Indias of 1680, the viceregal-audiencia system, the encomienda and repartimiento labour systems) shaped the early legal-administrative structures of independent Latin American states. The architectural inheritance (the cathedral-cities of Mexico City, Cuzco, Lima, Quito, Bogotá; the Spanish colonial domestic architecture of dozens of smaller cities) is the visible material monument of the empire across Latin America.