The Spanish Empire

The Spanish Empire was the first truly global empire in world history. At its height in the late 16th and 17th centuries, it stretched from the Philippines to the Americas to much of Europe — a domain so vast that the sun never set on Spanish possessions. The empire was built on three foundations: military conquest, silver mining, and Catholic missionary activity.

The conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires by small bands of conquistadors — Hernán Cortés in Mexico (1519–1521) and Francisco Pizarro in Peru (1532–1533) — were among the most dramatic and devastating events in world history. Spanish success owed less to military brilliance than to epidemic disease (smallpox killed millions of indigenous people who had no immunity), indigenous allies who resented Aztec and Inca domination, and the technological advantages of steel, horses, and firearms.

The silver mines of Potosí and Zacatecas fueled the Spanish economy and, through global trade, transformed the world monetary system. Spanish silver linked the economies of Europe, Asia, and the Americas in a nascent global economy. But the empire's reliance on extraction rather than production, the expulsion of productive minorities (Jews and Moriscos), and the costs of continuous European warfare gradually undermined Spanish power. The Black Legend — propagated by Protestant rivals — portrayed Spanish colonialism as uniquely cruel, though the reality of colonialism was brutal everywhere.