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Spanish Empire
Flag of Spanish Empire
Location of Spanish Empire
The areas of the world that at one time were territories of the Spanish Empire.

     Territories of the Portuguese empire during the Iberian Union (1581–1640).      Territories lost before or due to the Treaties of Utrecht-Baden (1713–1714).      Territories lost before or during the Hispanic American wars of independence (1811–1828).      Territories lost following the Spanish-American War (1898–1899).      Territories granted independence during the Decolonization of Africa (1956–1976).

     Current territories administered by Spain.

The Spanish Empire (Spanish: Imperio Español) was one of the largest empires in world history, and one of the first global empires. It included territories and colonies in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania between the 15th and late 19th centuries. Spain also held colonies in Africa until the mid-to-late 20th century. Spain emerged as a unified monarchy in 1492 following the reconquista of the Iberian peninsula. In the same year, Christopher Columbus commanded the first Spanish exploratory voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, leading to the discovery of America. The New World became the focus of the new Spanish Empire.

During the Age of Discovery, Spain began to settle the Caribbean islands and conquistadors soon toppled native empires such as the Aztecs and Incas on mainland America. Later expeditions established an empire that stretched from present-day Canada in North America to Tierra del Fuego in South America. The Spanish expedition of world circumnavigation started by Ferdinand Magellan in 1519, and completed by Juan Sebastian Elcano in 1522, achieved what Columbus had longed for, a westward route to Asia, and brought the Far East to Spain's attention, where it established colonies in Guam, the Philippines and surrounding islands. During its Siglo de Oro, the Spanish Empire comprised the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Italy, parts of Germany, parts of France, territories in Africa, Asia and Oceania, as well as large areas in the Americas. By the 17th century Spain controlled an empire on a scale and world distribution that had never been approached by its predecessors.[1]

Trade flourished across the Atlantic between Spain and her colonies; all kinds of goods including precious metals from America were brought back to Spain in annual galleon fleets. The Manila Galleon also linked the Philippines to America through regular convoys across the Pacific. Much of the Spanish trade was used to strengthen the Spanish Navy and protect the Spanish realms in Europe and the Mediterranean. Some of Spain's European possessions were given up at the conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713, but it retained its vast overseas empire.

The French occupation of Spain in 1808 under Napoleon cut off its American colonies temporarily, and a number of independence movements between 1810 and 1825 resulted in a chain of newly independent Latin American republics in South and Central America. The remainder of Spain's then–four hundred year empire, namely Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and the Spanish East Indies, continued under Spanish control until the end of the 19th century, when most of these territories were annexed by the United States after the Spanish-American War. The remaining Pacific islands were sold to Germany in 1899.

History[]

Under the Treaties of Utrecht (April 11, 1713), the European powers decided what the fate of Spain would be, in terms of the continental balance of power. The new Bourbon king Philip V retained the Spanish overseas empire, but ceded the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Milan, and Sardinia to Austria; Sicily and parts of Milan to Duchy of Savoy; and Gibraltar and Minorca to the Kingdom of Great Britain. The disastrous showing in the War of the Quadruple Alliance, 1718–20, exposed the level of weakness and dependence it had fallen to. Moreover, Philip V granted the British the exclusive right to slave trading in Spanish America for thirty years, the so-called asiento, as well as licensed voyages to ports in Spanish colonial dominions, openings, as Fernand Braudel remarked, for both licit and illicit smuggling (Brudel 1984 p 418). Spain's economic and demographic recovery had begun slowly in the last decades of the Habsburg reign, as was evident from the growth of its trading convoys and much more rapid growth of illicit trade during the period, though this growth was slower than in her northern rivals who had gained increasing illicit access to her empire's markets. Critically, this recovery was not translated into institutional improvement because of the incompetent leadership of the unfortunate last Habsburg. This legacy of neglect was reflected in the early years of Bourbon rule in which the military was ill-advisedly pitched into battle against the Quadruple alliance. The poor performance of the demoralised Spanish military is well illustrated by the Battle of Cape Passaro, when a Spanish fleet was captured by the British. The British navy found the captured ships in such a rotten state that their best use was to be broken up. Following the war the new Bourbon monarchy would take a much more cautious approach to international relations, built upon a family alliance with Bourbon France, and continuing to follow a program of institutional renewal.

With a Bourbon monarchy came a repertory of Bourbon mercantilist ideas based on a centralized state, put into effect in America slowly at first but with increasing momentum during the century (see Enlightenment Spain). The Spanish Bourbons' broadest intentions were to break the power of the entrenched aristocracy of the Criollos in America (locally born colonials of European descent), and, eventually, loosen the territorial control of the Society of Jesus over the virtually independent theocracies of Guarani Misiones: the Jesuits were expelled from Spanish America in 1767. In addition to the established consulados of Mexico City and Lima, firmly in the control of local landowners, a new rival consulado was set up at Vera Cruz.

Immediately Philip's government set up a ministry of the Navy and the Indies (1714) and created first a Honduras Company (1714), a Caracas company, the Guipuzcoana Company, (1728) and — the most successful one — a Havana Company (1740). In 1717–18 the structures for governing the Indies, the Consejo de Indias and the Casa de Contratación that governed investments in the cumbersome escorted fleets were transferred from Seville to Cádiz, which became the one port for all Indies trading (see flota system). Individual sailings at regular intervals were slow to displace the old habit of armed convoys, but by the 1760s there were regular packet ships plying the Atlantic between Cádiz and Havana and Puerto Rico, and at longer intervals to the Río de la Plata, where an additional viceroyalty was created in 1776. The contraband trade that was the lifeblood of the Habsburg empire declined in proportion to registered shipping (a shipping registry having been established in 1735).

Two upheavals registered unease within Spanish America and at the same time demonstrated the renewed resiliency of the reformed system: the Tupac Amaru uprising in Peru in 1780 and the rebellion of the comuneros of New Granada, both in part reactions to tighter, more efficient control.

18th century prosperity[]

However, its vast empire in the Americas and Asia made it a relevant power on the world stage. The 18th century was a century of prosperity for the overseas Spanish Empire as trade within grew steadily, particularly in the second half of the century, under the Bourbon reforms. Spain's crucial victory in the Battle of Cartagena de Indias against an extraordinary British fleet, in the Caribbean port of Cartagena de Indias, one of a number of successful battles, helped it secure Spain's dominance of the Americas until the 19th century.

Rapid shipping growth from the mid-1740s until the Seven Years' War (1756–63), reflecting in part the success of the Bourbons in bringing illicit trade under control. With the loosening of trade controls after the Seven Years War, shipping trade within the empire once again began to expand, reaching an extraordinary rate of growth in the 1780s.

The ending of Cádiz's trade monopoly with America brought about a rebirth of Spanish manufactures. Most notable was the rapidly growing textile industry of Catalonia which by the mid-1780s saw the first signs of industrialisation. This saw the emergence of a small, politically-active commercial class in Barcelona. Though the scale of such industry was very small compared to the vast industry in Lancashire, it was growing rapidly and was to become a major center of such industry in the Mediterranean in the mid nineteenth century. Though one must not exaggerate such small, scattered examples of local modernity, especially when seen in the light of the vast developments then taking place to the north, especially Britain, they do disprove the notion of economic stasis. Most of the improvement was in and around some major coastal cities and the major islands such as Cuba, with its plantations, and a renewed growth of precious metals mining in America. On the other hand most of rural Spain and its empire, where the great bulk of the population lived, lived in backward conditions, that were reinforced by old customs and served by poor roads. Agricultural productivity remained low despite efforts to introduce new techniques to an uninterested, exploited peasant and landless labouring class. Governments were inconsistent in their policies. Even with the substantial improvements of the 18th century, Spain was still an economic backwater. Under the mercantile trading arrangements it had difficulty in providing the goods being demanded by the strongly growing markets of its empire, and providing adequate outlets for the return trade, leading to rising tensions with its colonial elites.

The Bourbon institutional reforms were to bear some fruit militarily when Spanish forces easily retook Naples and Sicily from the Austrians in 1734 (War of the Polish Succession) and thwarted British campaigns attempting to seize the strategic cities of Cartagena de Indias and Cuba during the War of Jenkins' Ear (1739–42). Moreover, though Spain lost territories to greatly improved and successful amphibious British forces towards the end of the Seven Years' War (1756–63), she was to recover these losses and seize the British naval base in the Bahamas during the American Revolutionary War (1775–83).

The Amazon basin and some large adjoining regions had been considered Spanish territory since the Treaty of Torsedillas and explorations such as that by Francisco de Orellana. The area was occupied by Portuguese colonists in Brazil, as Bandeirantes gradually extended their slaving and prospecting activities throughout much of the basin in the 17th and 18th centuries. Meanwhile the Spanish were barred by their laws from slaving of indigenous people, leaving them without a commercial interest deep in the interior of the basin.[2] These groups had the advantage of remote geography and river access from the mouth of the Amazon River, which was in Portuguese territory, making it impossible for the Spanish authorities to control them. One famous attack upon a Spanish mission in 1628 resulted in the enslavement of 60 000 indigenous people.[3] In fact as time passed they were used as a self funding occupation force by the Portuguese authorities in what was effectively a low level war of territorial conquest. Finally the reality of the situation was recognised with the transfer of sovereignty over the much of the basin and surrounding areas to Portugal in the Treaty of Madrid (1750). This settlement led to the Guarani War of 1756.

The California mission planning was begun in 1769. The Nootka Crisis (1789–1791) involved a dispute between Spain and Great Britain about the British settlement in Oregon to British Columbia. In 1791 the king of Spain gave Alessandro Malaspina an order to search for a Northwest Passage.

The Spanish empire had still not returned to first rate power status, but it had recovered considerably from the dark days at the beginning of the eighteenth century when it was, and particularly in continental matters, at the mercy of other powers' political deals. The relatively more peaceful century under the new monarchy had allowed it to rebuild and start the long process of modernizing its institutions and economy. The demographic decline of the seventeenth century had been reversed. It was a middle ranking power with great power pretensions that could not be ignored. But time was to be against it. The growth of trade and wealth in the colonies caused increasing political tensions as frustration grew with the improving but still restrictive trade with Spain. Malaspina's recommendation to turn the empire into a looser confederation to help improve governance and trade so as to quell the growing political tensions between the élites of the empire's periphery and centre was suppressed by a monarchy afraid of losing control. All was to be swept away by the tumult that was to overtake Europe at the turn of the century with the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

Notes[]

  1. The Mongol Empire had been larger, but was restricted to Eurasia
  2. The Laws of Burgos(1512) and the New Laws (1542) had been intended to protect the interests of indigenous people. While in spirit they were often abused, as through forced exploitative labour of locals, they did prevent widespread formal enslavement of indigenous people in Spanish territories. Renegade slavers, operating illegally in Spanish territory, did so as agents of the Portuguese slave markets in Brazil.
  3. An early bandeira in 1628, led by Antônio Raposo Tavares), composed of 2.000 allied Indians, 900 Mamluks (Mestizos) and 69 white Paulistanos, to find precious metals and stones and/or to capture Indians for slavery. This expedition alone was responsible for the destruction of most of the Jesuit missions of Spanish Guairá and the enslavement of over 60.000 indigenous people. In response the missions that followed were militarised.

Sources[]

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