Spain’s Lessons for American Decline

Spain was the first global superpower. Obviously, there had been other great powers—Rome, the China of the Tang and Ming dynasties, the vast Mongol domains—but none had spanned oceans and continents the way the Spanish Empire did at its height. In the first half of the 16th century, Charles V reigned over vast swathes of Europe; his son Philip II controlled most of the Western Hemisphere as well as a sizable chunk of Asia (the Philippines were named after him). Imperial Spain’s maximum territorial reach would only be surpassed by the British Empire in the 19th century, and in the 20th by the informal American imperium, with its 750 overseas bases and network of global alliances.