Silver from Potosí paid for it all — until the bills came due. In a single lifetime, Spain went from a cluster of squabbling kingdoms to the first global empire in history, ruling lands on every continent. It spent the next three centuries spending the proceeds, and the world has been living with the consequences ever since.
Madrid ★ Mexico Peru Potosí Philippines Cuba Greatest extent — stylized map 1492 Columbus 1545 Potosí 1580 Mexico to Macao 1826 America freed 1898 Empire lost Rise · zenith · fall The Spanish empire by the numbers Territory (millions of km²) 13.7 million km² Spanish speakers (millions) 500 million people By the numbers The rise The hinge year was 1492. In January, Ferdinand and Isabella took Granada, ending nearly eight centuries of Muslim rule in Iberia; in October, a Genoese captain in their service named Christopher Columbus stumbled onto the Caribbean. Within a generation, conquistadors — Cortés in Mexico, Pizarro in Peru — had toppled two American empires with a few hundred men, steel, horses, and smallpox.
