Spanish Empire
The Spanish Empire (Spanish: Imperio español) was one of the largest empires in history. It reached the peak of its military, political and economic power under the Spanish Habsburgs, through most of the 16th and 17th centuries, and its greatest territorial extent under the House of Bourbon in the 18th century, when it was the largest empire in the world. The Spanish Empire became the foremost global power of its time and was the first to be called the empire on which the sun never sets.
The Spanish Empire originated during the Age of Discovery after the voyages of Christopher Columbus. It comprised territories and colonies of the Spanish monarch in the Americas, Asia, Oceania and Africa, as the Greater Antilles, most of South America, Central America, and part of North America (including present day Florida, the Southwestern, and Pacific Coastal regions of the United States), as well as a number of Pacific Ocean archipelagos including the Philippines; and it lasted until the early 19th century Spanish American wars of independence, which left only Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines and various territories in Africa still under Spanish rule. Following the Spanish–American War of 1898, Spain ceded its last colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific to the United States. Its last African colonies were granted independence or abandoned during Decolonisation of Africa finishing in 1976.
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