how much land did the spanish empire cover
Spanish Empire 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, Guam, the Marianas, 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.
British Empire Between 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's "imperial century" by some historians,[98][99] around 10,000,000 square miles (26,000,000Â km2) of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire.[100] Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in Central Asia.[101] Unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the Pax Britannica,[9] and a foreign policy of "splendid isolation".[102] Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many countries, such as China, Argentina and Siam, which has been described by some historians as an "Informal Empire".[103][104]
Bull riding The flank strap
Spanish Empire The Spanish Empire (Spanish: Imperio español) was one of the largest empires in history. At the time, it was not known as that by Spaniards, but rather the Spanish Monarchy (Monarquía española) with the monarch ruling kingdoms in Spain, the possessions of the king in Italy and northern Europe, and in the "Spanish Indies," its New World territories.[1] From the late fifteenth century to the early nineteenth, Spain's kingdom of Castile controlled a huge overseas territory in the New World.[2] The crown's main source of wealth was from gold and silver mined in Mexico and Peru. The empire reached the peak of its military, political and economic power under the Spanish Habsburgs,[3] through most of the 16th and 17th centuries, and its greatest territorial extent under the House of Bourbon in the 18th century. The Spanish Empire became the foremost global power of its time and it was the first to be called 'The empire on which the sun never sets'.