The Spanish Empire was one of the first European colonial empires and for a long time Spain dominated the oceans with its expert marine, at the forefront of the exploration and opening of new trade routes on the Oceans.
The conquistadors collapsed the Aztec and Inca civilizations by conquering vast expanses of land in North and South America. The empire included Mexico and Central America (called New Spain) and New Castile, which went from Peru to Argentina.
At the administrative level, the empire was managed by the Council of the Indies, which was based in Madrid, and acted in the colonies through local councils (audiencias). The settlers were in fact feudal lords, masters of the natives who were on the territory assigned to them. In the colonies were introduced productive activities, agricultural and mining, using as slaves the natives and blacks captured in Africa and brought to America.
Trade was organized on monopolistic bases, rigidly monitoring the traffic to and from America.
Gold and silver from the colonies financed the military ambitions of the Habsburgs of Spain in a long series of African and European wars.
The continuous contests with rival powers provoked territorial, commercial and religious conflicts that contributed to the slow decline of Spanish power since the mid-seventeenth century
Spain maintained and expanded its vast overseas empire until the nineteenth century, when the shock of the Peninsular war triggered declarations of independence in Venezuela and Paraguay a
nd successive revolutions that divided its territories into continental America. Spain retained significant fragments of its empire in the Caribbean, Asia and Oceania until the Spanish-American War of 1898. The last estates in Africa gained independence between 1968 and 1975. The Canary Islands, Ceuta, Melilla and the other plazas de soberanía are still part of Spain.
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