The Four Stages of the Decline of the Spanish Empire

As some of you know, I've had an interest in the history of the Spanish Empire for years. In studying this history, there is an interesting pattern to the decline of the Spanish Empire that isn't found in the declines of other empires. Some empires, such as Britain and France, still have overseas colonies with their declines mostly being just attributed to the independence of colonies, given one at a time in full (in France's case) or very gradually (in Britain's case, as seen in commonwealth realms). Spain's empire, on the other hand, was different. It seems that Spain lost groups of colonies at a time to different causes. There also appear to be four different stages of these losses, four different blows to the Spanish Empire. I will present each of them in this post.

Map of the Spanish Empire with different colors corresponding mostly to the four stages of Spain's territorial losses. Courtesy of the user "Trasamundo" on Wikimedia Commons.

Stage 1: The War of the Spanish Succession

The year was 1714. While Spain still held a vast empire including much of the Americas from California to Chile, as well as other overseas colonies, the Treaty of Utrecht that ended the War of the Spanish Succession doomed the Spanish Empire's colonies in Europe itself. Previously, Spain had much land in Europe as part of its Habsburg monarchy. This included the Low Countries and about half of Italy, as well as a little bit of France. The War of the Spanish Succession was fought over who should succeed the previous King of Spain, but I think one could also say that this was a war about the Spanish succession, that is, whether Spain would successfully hold its colonies! In the Treaty of Utrecht, Spain failed to even defend its homeland, because two pieces of it were given to Britain. One was Gibraltar, which remains British to this day, and the other was Menorca, which Spain was able to take back by the end of the century. As for Spain's Habsburg lands, these were transferred to the Austrian Empire (though the Netherlands previously gained independence from Spain decades earlier).

Stage 2: The Napoleonic Wars and their aftermath

In 1801, while Spain was just starting to make good use of Louisiana (which was given to Spain by France in the Seven Years' War), the new leader of France had other ideas. In the Treaty of Aranjuez, France offered the Spanish crown some territories in Italy in exchange for Louisiana, which was still more or less culturally French. If France could have Louisiana back, then maybe they could launch invasions of Haiti from there, which France was trying to keep from gaining independence. Spain agreed to the treaty, though ironically, the residents of Louisiana didn't know they were French citizens again until after the United States bought Louisiana as the reconquest of Haiti failed.

Although Spain was a loyal ally of Napoleon at first, Napoleon thought it would be a good idea to make his brother become the King of Spain. The Peninsular War began as the Spanish mainland fought to depose the unwanted French pretender to the throne. As the Spanish mainland was distracted by that war, nearly all the colonies in the Americas decided to declare independence. These efforts were led most famously by Simon Bolivar and Miguel Hidalgo, in Venezuela and Mexico, starting in 1810. Soon enough, nearly all the colonies in the Americas were fighting wars of independence. Although Spain's own war of independence from the Bonapartes succeeded, the wars of independence in the Americas were so far along that Spain could not hope to win in those colonies after spending so much effort on defeating Napoleon. In the middle of these conflicts in 1819, Spain decided to give all its North American colonies east of Texas to the United States and also defined the Spanish-American border that would soon be the Mexican-American border until Texas broke away from Mexico. By 1825, Spain had no land left on the American landmass, though it did have Cuba and Puerto Rico (yet the Dominican Republic, also a Caribbean colony, achieved independence with all the mainland colonies in the Americas). Speaking of Cuba and Puerto Rico...

Stage 3: The Spanish-American War

Although Spain held onto Cuba, the Philippines, and other colonies for decades after losing all its American ones, the colonies I just mentioned had a yearning for independence, too. By the mid-1890s, Cuba and the Philippines were fully rebelling against Spanish rule. The United States decided to get involved. One motive may have been aid to the rebels, but another motive for some Americans was certainly to gain colonies for themselves. In just a few months, the ever-strengthening United States defeated the ever-weakening Spanish Empire and occupied the Philippines, Guam, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Cuba was awarded independence within four years, whereas Philippine independence would have to wait for 48 years. Guam and Puerto Rico, on the other hand, remain U.S. territories to this day. Spain had other archipelagoes in the Spanish East Indies not occupied by the United States, namely today's Palau, Micronesia, and Northern Mariana Islands. Since Spain had little use for these remaining small islands, Spain sold these to Germany, another emerging great power, in 1899. Therefore, by the turn of the 20th century, the only Spanish colonies left were in Africa.

Stage 4: Decolonization under Franco

The semi-fascist regime of Francisco Franco from 1939 to his death in late 1975 was somewhat ironic. Franco and his supporters hoped to restore some colonies Spain lost before or create new ones. On the other hand, Franco himself knew he could not expand the Spanish Empire unless he had lots of help from the Axis Powers during World War II, and even then, he could lose. The only new colony Spain got was Tangier, Morocco, which was only a wartime occupation by a neutral country. Another ironic thing about the Franco regime was that his support for the Spanish monarchy didn't produce a new monarch in Spain until after he died. Anyway, between World War II and the death of Franco, the vast majority of African countries gained independence. Spain didn't give up all its African colonies at once, but rather within a 30-year period, which is still within a single generation. First, Tangier was given its pre-war status as an international zone in 1945. Then, the Spanish and French protectorates were merged to form an independent Morocco in 1956. Spanish Guinea, Spain's only sub-Saharan African colony, was granted independence in 1968. The following year, Spain gave up its colony of Ifni on the Moroccan coast to be annexed to the rest of Morocco. Finally, only days before Franco died, Spain gave up its territory of Spanish Sahara but left that former colony's future uncertain. To this day, "Western Sahara" is a large piece of the desert disputed between Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, a mostly unrecognized country.

Will there be a Stage 5?

When Spain gave up its protectorate in northern Morocco, it kept two cities on the Moroccan coast: Ceuta and Melilla. Despite Moroccan demands, Spain has kept these cities and has no intention of giving them to Morocco. Spain also has a tiny piece of the Moroccan coast in addition to these two cities, as well as a handful of small islands very close to the Moroccan coast. 

A map I found in Wikimedia Commons illustrating the small pieces of the Moroccan coast still under Spanish rule (author unknown).

Most might not even think of these as colonies, since they are also close to the Spanish mainland. Nonetheless, Spain only acquired these after the completion of the Reconquista and Columbus' first voyage in 1492, events which could be considered the birth of Spain and its empire. Even the Canary Islands were already Spanish when the Reconquista ended. Since I consider a colony to be any piece of land a country gained from outside that country's original boundaries, I would say the Spanish Empire is still alive (albeit barely) until Spain no longer has control of any land on the African coast and no longer has control of Navarre, which is a former Basque kingdom conquered by Spain at the same time as the Aztecs were. However, given the ability of Spain to easily resist Moroccan claims over Ceuta and Melilla so far, and its ability to suppress the Basque independence movement, I think it will be decades or even centuries before these very last colonies are taken away.