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    The Spanish Empire

    The Spanish Empire was the first truly global empire. It was built on the back of the discovery of the Americas by Spain in 1492 for European society and the subsequent bestowal of enormous territory on the Spanish crown under the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. During the sixteenth century the Spanish had almost no competition from amongst the other European powers for colonization of the Americas. As a result, they began carving out a colonial empire which included all of Central America, most of the larger islands of the Caribbean and all of South America other than Brazil. This was driven by the discovery of vast gold and silver mines in Mexico, Peru and Bolivia. The Spanish also claimed the Philippines on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. For a time in the sixteenth century the Spanish were the greatest power in the world, but they managed their immense wealth poorly and entered a period of terminal decline in the seventeenth century which eventually saw them lose virtually all of their empire in the early nineteenth century. The last major phase of the Spanish Empire was the Spanish-American War of 1898 in which Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines were lost. It is estimated that roughly two million Spaniards migrated to the Americas during the imperial period, transforming the demography, culture and society of South and Central America in the process.[1]

    Spanish Empire chronology of eventsSpanish Empire chronology of events

    The Spanish and the Portuguese were the two main countries driving European exploration in the fifteenth century, albeit often by hiring Italian pilots and navigators in the case of the Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. In 1492, one of these explorers, Christopher Columbus, discovered the Caribbean while trying to find a western sea-route from Europe to Asia. The Spanish quickly began to exploit their new discovery, sending multiple expeditions back to explore the wider region in the 1490s and 1500s.[2] By the 1510s they had growing colonies on islands like Hispaniola, Cuba and Puerto Rico and had mapped much of the northern coastline of South America and the perimeter of the Gulf of Mexico. Then in the early 1520s Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztec Empire in Mexico. The Pizarro brothers inflicted the same fate on the Inca Empire of Peru and Ecuador in the 1530s and 1540s.[3]

    The mining town of Potosi in Bolivia

    In both of these newly conquered regions gold and silver mines were identified. Most notable was the discovery at Potosi in Bolivia of a veritable mountain of silver. This fuelled Spanish migration to the Americas and over the next century Mexico, Peru and Bolivia became the centers of a thriving colonial empire.[4] A number of other nodes of colonial settlement were developed over time, notably at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata in what is now northern Argentina. The Spanish also executed a claim to the Philippines on the other side of the Pacific Ocean under the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas, through which Pope Alexander VI had somewhat ambitiously divided the entire world outside of Europe between the Portuguese and Spanish crowns in 1494.[5]

    Simón Bolívar

    Despite the immense wealth which its colonial empire generated, Spain was a backwards power. It never managed to invest this wealth into productive economic gains at home. Instead the money was squandered by King Charles V and King Philip II fighting endless wars against the Protestants of Europe. Incredibly, the Spanish state ended up going bankrupt numerous times in the second half of the sixteenth century and early seventeenth century and by the second half of the seventeenth century it was in terminal decline.[6] By the eighteenth century, Spain had been eclipsed by Britain and France as the pre-eminent colonial power of the day. It managed to retain control over its empire for a time, though there were growing divisions between peninsulares (colonials born in Spain) and criollos (colonials born in the colonies).[7]

    These tensions boiled over during the Napoleonic Wars at the start of the nineteenth century. After Napoleon Bonaparte deposed King Ferdinand VII and installed his brother, Joseph, as King of Spain in 1808, numerous wars of independence erupted in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Argentina led by figures like Simón Bolivar and Bernardo O’Higgins.[8] These were long struggles for the most part, as changing circumstances in Europe altered the tactical and ideological circumstances in which they were being fought, but eventually in the 1810s and early 1820s the independence causes won out. New nations like Mexico, Gran Colombia, Peru, Chile and Argentina then came into being. Spain’s empire was much reduced, though it was not until the Spanish-American War of 1898 that it lost Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. Thereafter it clung to a few smaller colonies in Africa, but its days as a major imperial power were long over.[9]

    Extent of migration during the Spanish EmpireExtent of migration during the Spanish Empire

    The Metropolitan Cathedral, Mexico City

    The history of Spanish settlement in the Americas and the Philippines goes back to the sixteenth century and continues through to the nineteenth century when its empire collapsed. During much of this period there were little or no demographic records kept with which to trace migration levels. Therefore, assessing the scale of Spanish migration to its colonies between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries has involved estimating the overall numbers. Historical demographers generally agree that the figure is around two million settlers, though some argue for a figure closely to around 1.75 million and some go as high as 2.5 million.[10]

    As noted, the destinations were not all alike. Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and parts of northern Chile and Argentina experienced the greatest levels of migration and cities like Mexico City, Lima, Havana and Buenos Aires were the capitals of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. In the Philippines the island of Luzon in the north of the archipelago was the center of colonization. Other parts of the empire were barely impacted upon over centuries, notably the desert-like regions of southern Chile and Argentina, while the Spanish made no real effort to colonize the lands they laid claim to in what are now Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California until the 1760s. There was simply abundant enough land and opportunity elsewhere near the main centers of colonization that there was little incentive to head further north to these latter regions until well into the eighteenth century.[11]

    Demographic impact of the Spanish EmpireDemographic impact of the Spanish Empire

    The demographic impact of the Spanish Empire has been enormous. Consider that approximately half a billion people worldwide speak Spanish as their first language today. This is because of how intensively the Caribbean, Central America and South America were colonized by the Spanish between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Not everyone in these countries should be viewed as entirely Spanish. For instance, there are several countries involved, like Guatemala, Ecuador and Bolivia, where natives and mestizo (mixed) groups are dominant. Other countries experienced waves of migration from other European countries that also played a role in their demographic trajectory. More Argentinians have Italian ethnicity than Spanish, a result of the huge wave of Italian emigration from 1860 to 1920 that followed the completion of the Risorgimento. Yet these groups have intermixed as well over time and so there are hundreds of millions of people in the western hemisphere today with a Spanish ancestor, a legacy of the Spanish Empire.[12]

    Italians in Argentina

    There are other demographic influences which are less clear-cut. For instance, a large proportion of the nearly 120 million people who live in the Philippines have a Spanish descendant, though many will not. Similarly, the main language spoken here, Tagalog, is a native tongue, but it was profoundly influenced by Spanish between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries and there are thousands of loan words in Tagalog derived from Spanish. Yet there is a also a regionality to this and the Spanish legacy is greater in the Philippines on the island of Luzon in the north than on Mindanao in the south of the archipelago. Hence, the demographic impact of the Spanish Empire is broader and more complicated than is at first immediately obvious.[13]

    See alsoSee also

    Explore more about the Spanish EmpireExplore more about the Spanish Empire

    References

    1. ↑ https://www.worldhistory.org/Spanish_Main/
    2. ↑ https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/christopher-columbus
    3. ↑ https://www.worldhistory.org/Spanish_Main/
    4. ↑ Peter Bakewell (ed.), Mines of Gold and Silver in the Americas (Abingdon, 1997).
    5. ↑ Nicholas P. Cushner, Spain in the Philippines: From Conquest to Revolution (Quezon City, 1977).
    6. ↑ Dennis O. Flynn, ‘Fiscal Crisis and the Decline of Spain (Castile)’, in The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 42, No. 1, The Tasks of Economic History (March, 1982), pp. 139–147.
    7. ↑ Mark A. Burkholder, ‘From Creole to Peninsular’, in The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 52, No. 3 (August, 1972), pp. 395–415.
    8. ↑ https://www.britannica.com/biography/Simon-Bolivar/Liberation-of-New-Granada
    9. ↑ https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/spanish-american-war
    10. ↑ J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World (Yale, 2006), chapter 2.
    11. ↑ Robert H. Jackson, From Savages to Subjects: Missions in the History of the American Southwest (London, 2019).
    12. ↑ https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3283/
    13. ↑ https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/decolonisesml/2021/05/10/decolonising-the-philippine-language-the-ebb-and-flow-of-spanish-influence-on-filipino-culture/


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