# Map of the Spanish Empire

Source page: https://geographichistory.app/empire/spanish-empire/

On the Geographic History map, the Spanish Empire appears from 1517 to 1968. It reaches its largest mapped extent in 1787: about 12 million km² across 286 provinces.

The Spanish Empire began with Columbus's voyage of 1492 and grew into one of the largest empires in history, covering most of South and Central America, Mexico, large parts of North America, the Philippines and outposts in Africa. Silver from Potosi and Mexico paid for Spain's wars in Europe. Most of its American colonies won independence in the 1810s and 1820s, and Spain lost Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in 1898.

## Mapped area by year (km²)

- 1517: 1,005,000
- 1542: 5,427,000
- 1567: 6,817,000
- 1592: 7,908,000
- 1617: 8,541,000
- 1642: 8,677,000
- 1667: 8,708,000
- 1692: 8,996,000
- 1717: 9,177,000
- 1742: 9,835,000
- 1767: 10,790,000
- 1792: 11,810,000
- 1817: 6,149,000
- 1842: 836,000
- 1867: 868,000
- 1892: 1,229,000
- 1917: 2,000
- 1942: 2,000
- 1967: 2,000

## About this map

Territory comes from the Chronas historical dataset used by the Geographic History app. Areas are approximate, computed from about 2,400 province shapes, and describe this map rather than official historical figures - border data for the ancient and medieval world is necessarily a reconstruction.