I.

Introduction

Spanish Empire, overseas territories in North and South America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania that were colonized and administered by Spain. The Spanish Empire began in the 15th century as Europe began to expand overseas. Spain lost much of its empire as a result of the Latin American independence movement in the early 19th century. It lost control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam in 1898 as a consequence of the Spanish-American War. Today, only the Canary Islands, off the northwestern coast of Africa, and the North African exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, across the Strait of Gibraltar from the Spanish mainland, remain part of Spain.

At its greatest extent in the Americas, Spanish territory stretched from Alaska through the western United States, Mexico, and Central America to southern Chile and Patagonia, and from the state of Georgia south to the Caribbean islands, Venezuela, Colombia, and Argentina. In Africa, at various times Spain occupied territories in the Western Sahara (present-day Morocco), and along the coast of what is now Equatorial Guinea, including the offshore island of Fernando Póo (now Bioko). In Asia, Spain ruled the Philippine Islands, which the Spanish named after King Philip II in 1542 . In Oceania, Spain held the Mariana Islands and later the Caroline Islands. Gibraltar, a rocky promontory connected to the Spanish mainland by a sandy isthmus, is a British dependency still claimed by Spain.