THE SPANISH PENINSULA AND ITS COLONIES.

The great peninsula of the West has much in common with the great peninsula of the North. ?Slight relations with the Empire.? Save Sweden and Norway, no part of Western Europe has had so little to do with the later Empire as Spain. ?Break between earlier and later history.? And in no land that formed part of the earlier Empire, save our own island, is the later history so completely cut off from the earlier history. The modern kingdoms of Spain have still less claim to represent the West-Gothic kingdom than the modern kingdom of France had to represent the Frankish kingdom. ?Modern Spanish history begins with the Saracen conquest.? The history of Spain, as an element in the European system, begins with the Saracen invasion. For a hundred years before that time all trace of dependence on the elder Empire had passed away. With the later Western Empire Spain had nothing to do after the days of Charles the Great and his immediate successors. Their claims over a small part of the country passed away from the Empire to the kings of Karolingia.

With the Eastern Empire and the states which grew out of it Spain has the closest connexion in the way of analogy. ?Comparison of the effects of conquest and deliverance in each.? Each was a Christian land conquered from the Mussulman. Each has been wholly or partially won back from him. But the deliverance of south-western Europe was mainly the work of its own people, and its deliverance was nearly ended when the bondage of south-eastern Europe was only beginning. Again, in south-eastern Europe the nations were fully formed before the Mussulman conquest, and they have lived through it. ?The Spanish nation formed by the war with the Mussulmans.? In Spain the Mussulman conquest cut short the West-Gothic power just as it was growing into a new Romance nation; the actual Romance nation of Spain was formed by the work of withstanding the invaders. ?Analogy between Spain and Russia.? The closest analogy of all is between Spain and Russia. Each was delivered by its own people. In each case, long after the main deliverance had been wrought, long after the liberated nation had begun again to take its place in Europe, the ransomed land was still cut off, by a fragment of its old enemies, from the coasts of its own southern sea.

The Saracen dominion in the West, as established by the first conquerors, answered very nearly to the West-Gothic kingdom, as it then stood: but it did not exactly answer to Spain, either in the geographical or in the later Roman sense.[79] When the Saracen came, the Empire, not the Goth, still held the Balearic Isles, and the fortresses of Tangier and Ceuta on the Mauretanian side of the strait. On the other hand, the Goth did not hold quite the whole of the peninsula, while his dominion took in the Gaulish land of Septimania. Strictly speaking, the conquest was one, not of Spain geographically, but of the West-Gothic dominions in and out of Spain, and of the outlying Imperial possessions in their neighbourhood. ?Two centres of deliverance.? It was from the lands which hindered both the West-Gothic and the Saracen dominion from exactly answering to geographical Spain that deliverance came, and it came in two forms. ?The independent lands.? From the land to the north-west, which held out against both Goth and Saracen, came that form of deliverance which was strictly native. ?The Frankish dominion. 752-759.? At the other end, the Frank first won back for Christendom the Saracen province in Gaul, and then carried his arms into the neighbouring corner of Spain. ?778.? Thus we get two centres of deliverance, two groups of states which did the work. There are the north-western lands, whose history is purely Spanish, which simply withstood the Saracen, and the north-eastern lands, which were first won from the Saracen by the Frank, and which gradually freed themselves from their deliverer. ?Represented severally by Castile and Portugal, and by Aragon.? The former class are represented in later Spanish history by the kingdoms of Castile and Portugal, the latter by the kingdom of Aragon. Navarre lies between the two, and shares in the history of both. The former start geographically from the mountain region washed by the Ocean. The latter start geographically from the mountains which divide Gaul and Spain, and which stretch westward to the Mediterranean. The geographical position of the regions foreshadows their later history.[80] ?Later history of Aragon.? It was Aragon, looking to the East, which first played a great part in European affairs, and which carried Spanish influence and dominion into Gaul, Sicily, Italy, and Greece. ?Of Castile and Portugal.? It was Portugal and Castile, looking to the West, which established an Iberian dominion beyond the bounds of Europe. The fact that a Queen of Castile in the fifteenth century married a King of Aragon and not a King of Portugal has led us to speak of the peninsular kingdoms as ‘Spain and Portugal.’[81] For some ages ‘Spain and Aragon’ would have been a more natural division. But the very difference in the fields of action of Castile and Aragon hindered any such strong opposition. Between Castile and Portugal, on the other hand, a marked rivalry arose in the field which was common to both.

Of these two centres, one purely Spanish, the other brought for a long time under a greater or less degree of foreign influence, the more strictly native region was foremost in the work of national deliverance. How far western Spain stood in advance of eastern Spain is shown by the speaking fact that Toledo, so much further to the south, was won by Castile a generation before Zaragoza was won by Aragon. ?Relations of Castile and Aragon towards Navarre.? But both Castile and Aragon, as powers, grew out of the break-up of a momentary dominion in the land which lay between them, and whose later history is much less illustrious than theirs. In the second quarter of the eleventh century the kingdom of Pampeluna or Navarre had, by the energy of a single man, the Sviatopluk or Stephen Dushan of his little realm, risen to the first place among the Christian powers of Spain. Castile and Aragon do not appear with kingly rank till both had passed under the momentary rule of a neighbour which in after times seemed so small beside either of them. And the name of Castile, whether as county, kingdom, or empire, marks a comparatively late stage of Christian advance. We must here go back for a moment to those early days of the long crusade of eight hundred years at which we have already slightly glanced.[82]

§ 1. The Foundation of the Spanish Kingdoms.

We have seen how the union of the small independent lands of the north, Asturia and Cantabria, grew into the kingdom, first of Oviedo and then of Leon. Gallicia, on the one side, representing in some sort the old Suevian kingdom, Bardulia or the oldest Castile, the land of Burgos, on the other side, were lands which were early inclined to fall away. ?Christian advance.? The growth of the Christian powers on this side was favoured by internal events among the Mussulmans, by famines and revolts which left a desert border between the hostile powers. ?The Ommiad emirate. 755.? The Ommiad emirate, afterwards caliphate, was established almost at the moment of the Saracen loss of Septimania. ?The Spanish March. 778-801.? Then came the Spanish March of Charles the Great, which brought part of northern Spain once more within the bounds of the new Western Empire, as the conquests of Justinian had brought back part of southern Spain within the bounds of the undivided Empire. ?Its extent.? This march, at its greatest extent, took in Pampeluna at one end and Barcelona at the other, with the intermediate lands of Aragon, Ripacurcia, and Sobrarbe. But the Frankish dominion soon passed away from Aragon, and still sooner from Pampeluna. ?Its division.? The western part of the march, which still acknowledged the superiority of the Kings of Karolingia, split up into a number of practically independent counties, which made hardly any advance against the common enemy.

Meanwhile the land of Pampeluna became, at the beginning of the eleventh century, an independent and powerful kingdom. ?Navarre under Sancho the Great. 1000-1035.? The Navarre of Sancho the Great stretched some way beyond the Ebro; to the west it took in the ocean lands of Biscay and Guipuzcoa, with the original Castile; to the east it took in Aragon, Ripacurcia, and Sobrarbe. The two Christian kingdoms of Navarre and Leon took in all north-eastern Spain. The Douro was reached and crossed; the Tagus itself was not far from the Christian boundary; but the states which owned the superiority of the power which we may now call France were still far from the lower Ebro.

At the death of Sancho the Great his momentary dominion broke up. Seven years earlier the dominion of the Ommiad caliphs had broken up also. These two events, so near together, form the turning-point in the history of the peninsula. Instead of the one Ommiad caliphate, there arose a crowd of separate Mussulman kingdoms, which had to call for help to their Mussulman brethren in Africa. ?Invasion of the Almoravides. 1086-1110.? This led to what was really a new African conquest of Mussulman Spain. The new deliverers or conquerors spread their dominion over all the Mussulman powers, save only Zaragoza. ?Use of the name Moors.? This settlement, with other later ones of the same kind, gives a specially African look to the later history of Mahometan Spain, and has doubtless helped to give the Spanish Mussulmans the common name of Moors. But their language and culture remained Arabic, and the revolution caused by the African settlers among the ruins of the Western caliphate was far from being so great as the revolution caused by the Turkish settlers among the ruins of the Eastern caliphate.

Out of the break-up of the dominion of Sancho came out the separate kingdom of Navarre, and the new kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Sobrarbe. ?Union of Aragon and Sobrarbe. 1040.? Of these the two last were presently united, thus beginning the advance of Aragon. Thus we come to four of the five historic kingdoms of Spain—Navarre, Castile, Aragon, and Leon, whose unions and divisions are endless. ?Shiftings of Castile and Leon. 1037.
1065-1073.? The first king Ferdinand of Castile united Castile and Leon; Castile, Leon, and Gallicia were again for a moment separated under his son. ?1076-1134.? Aragon and Navarre were united for nearly sixty years. ?The Emperor Alfonso 1135.? Presently Spain has an Emperor in Alfonso of Castile, Leon, and Gallicia. ?1157.? But Empire and kingdom were split asunder. Leon and Castile became separate kingdoms under the sons of Alfonso, and they remained separate for more than sixty years. ?Final union of Castile and Leon. 1230.? Their final union created the great Christian power of Spain.

Navarre meanwhile, cut short by the advance of Castile, shorn of its lands on the Ocean and beyond the Ebro, lost all hope of any commanding position in the peninsula. ?1234.? It passed to a succession of French kings, and for a long time it had no share in the geographical history of Spain. ?Growth of Aragon.? But the power of Aragon grew, partly by conquests from the Mussulmans, partly by union with the French fiefs to the east. ?Union with Barcelona. 1131.? The first union between the crown of Aragon and the county of Barcelona led to the great growth of the power of Aragon on both sides of the Pyrenees and even beyond the Rhone.[83] ?1213.? This power was broken by the overthrow of King Pedro at Muret. ?Settlement with France. 1258.? But by the final arrangement which freed Barcelona, Roussillon, and Cerdagne, from all homage to France, all trace of foreign superiority passed away from Christian Spain. The independent kingdom of Aragon stretched on both sides of the Pyrenees, a faint reminder of the days of the West-Gothic kings.

On the other side of the peninsula the lands between Douro and Minho began to form a separate state. ?County of Portugal. 1094.? The county of Portugal was held by princes of the royal house of France, as a fief of the crown of Castile and Leon. ?Kingdom, 1139.? The county became a kingdom, and its growth cut off Leon, as distinguished from Castile, from any advance against the Mussulmans. Navarre was cut off already. But the three kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal were all ready for the work. A restored Western Christendom was growing up to balance the falling away in the East. ?Beginning of the great Christian advance.? The first great advance of the Christians in Spain began about the time of the Seljuk conquests from the Eastern Empire. The work of deliverance was not ended till the Ottoman had been for forty years established in the New Rome.

The Christian powers however were disunited, while the Mussulmans had again gained, though at a heavy price, the advantage of union. ?Conquest of Toledo. 1085.? Alfonso the Sixth, commanding the powers of Castile and Leon, pressed far to the south, and won the old Gothic capital of Toledo. ?Battle of Zalacca. 1086.? But his further advance was checked by the African invaders at the battle of Zalacca. ?Advance of the Almoravides.
Advance of Aragon.? The Almoravide power was too strong for any present hope of conquests on the part of Castile; but the one independent Mussulman state at Zaragoza lay open to the Christians of the north-east. ?Conquest of Zaragoza. 1118.
Of Tarragona.? Zaragoza itself was taken by the king of Aragon, and Tarragona by the Count of Barcelona. ?Of Tortosa. 1148.? Both these powers advanced, and the conquest of Tortosa made the Ebro the Christian boundary. ?Advance of Portugal.? As the power of the Almoravides weakened, Castile and Portugal again advanced on their side. ?Conquest of Lisbon. 1147.
Of Silvas. 1191.? The latter kingdom made the great acquisition of its future capital Lisbon, and a generation later, it reached the southern coast by the conquest of Silvas in Algarve. ?Advance of Castile. 1147-1166.? Castile meanwhile pressed to the Guadiana and beyond, counting Calatrava and Badajoz among its cities. The line of struggle had advanced in about a century from the land between Douro and Tagus to the land between Guadiana and Guadalquivir.

This second great Christian advance in the twelfth, century was again checked in the same way in which the advance in the eleventh century had been. ?Invasion of the Almohades. 1146.? A new settlement of African conquerors, the Almohades, won back a large territory from both Castile and Portugal. ?Battle of Alarcos. 1196.? The battle of Alarcos broke for a while the power of Castile, and the Almohade dominion stretched beyond the lower Tagus. To the east, the lands south of Ebro remained an independent Mussulman state. ?Decline of the Almohades.? But, as the Almohades were of doubtful Mahometan orthodoxy, their hold on Spain was weaker than that of any other Mahometan conquerors. ?Battle of Navas de Tolosa. 1211.? Their power broke up, and the battle of Navas de Tolosa ruled that Spain should be a Christian land. All three kingdoms advanced, and within forty years the Mussulman power in the peninsula was cut down to a mere survival. ?Conquest of the Balearic Isles. 1228-1236.
Of Valencia. 1237-1305.? Aragon won the Balearic Isles and formed her kingdom of Valencia. ?Of Murcia. 1243-1253.? But as Castile, by the incorporation of Murcia, reached to the Mediterranean, any further advance in the peninsula was forbidden to Aragon. ?Advance of Portugal. 1217-1256.? On the eastern side Portugal won back her lost lands, reached her southern coast, kept all the land west of the lower Guadiana and some points to the east of it. ?Kingdom of Algarve.? To the kingdom of Portugal was added the kingdom of Algarve.

But the central power of Castile pressed on faster still. ?Conquest of Castile under Saint Ferdinand.? Under Saint Ferdinand began the recovery of the great cities along the Guadalquivir. ?Conquest of Cordova. 1236.
Of Jaen. 1246.
Of Seville. 1248.? Cordova, the city of the caliphs, was won; Jaen followed; then more famous Seville; and Cadiz, eldest of Western cities, passed again, as when she first entered the Roman world, from Semitic into Aryan hands. ?Of Nibla. 1257.
Of Tarifa. 1285.? The conquest of Nibla and Tarifa at last made the completion of the work only a question of time.

No one in the middle of the twelfth century could have dreamed that a Mussulman power would live on in Spain till the last years of the fifteenth. ?Kingdom of Granada. 1238.? This was the kingdom of Granada, which began, amid the conquests of Saint Ferdinand, as a vassal state of Castile. ?Reconquered from Castile. 1298.? Yet, sixty years later, it was able to win back a considerable territory from its overlord. ?Recovery by Castile. 1316.
1430.? Part of the land now gained was soon lost again; but part, with the city of Huascar, was kept by the Mussulmans far into the fifteenth century. ?Gibraltar lost and won. 1309. 1333. 1344.? Meanwhile, on the strait between the ocean and the Mediterranean, Gibraltar was won by Castile, lost, and won again.

Thus, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, the peninsula of Spain was very unequally divided between one Mussulman and four Christian states. Aragon on the one side, Portugal on the other, were kingdoms with a coast line out of all proportion to their extent inwards. Aragon had become a triangle, Portugal a long parallelogram, cut off on each side from the great trapezium formed by the whole peninsula. Between these two lay the central power of Castile, with Christian Navarre still separate at one corner and Mussulman Granada still separate at another. Of these five kingdoms, Navarre and Aragon alone marched to any considerable extent on any state beyond the peninsula. Castile barely touched the Aquitanian dominions of England, while Navarre and Aragon, both stretching north of the Pyrenees, had together a considerable frontier towards Aquitaine and France. Navarre and Aragon again marched on one another, while Portugal and Granada marched only on Castile, the common neighbour of all. The destiny of all was written on the map. Navarre at one end, Granada at the other, were to be swallowed up by the great central power. Aragon, after gaining a high European position, was to be united with Castile under a single sovereign. Portugal alone was to become distinctly a rival of Castile, but wholly in lands beyond the bounds of Europe.

Of the five Spanish powers Castile so far outtopped the rest that its sovereign was often spoken of in other lands as King of Spain. But Spain contained more kingdoms than it contained kings. ?The lesser kingdoms.? Castile, Aragon, and Portugal were all formed by a succession of unions and conquests, each of which commonly gave their kings a new title. The central power was still the power of Castile and Leon, not of Castile only. Leon was made up of the kingdoms of Leon and Gallicia. Castile took in Castile proper or Old Castile, with the principality of the Asturias, and the free lands of Biscay, Guipuzcoa, and Alava. To the south it took in the kingdoms—each marking a stage of advance—of Toledo or New Castile, of Cordova, Jaen, Seville, and Murcia. The sovereign of Portugal held his two kingdoms of Portugal and Algarve. ?1262.? The sovereign of Aragon, besides his enlarged kingdom of Aragon and his counties of Catalonia, Roussillon, and Cerdagne, held his kingdom of Valencia on the mainland, while the Balearic Isles formed the kingdom of Majorca. ?1349.? This last, first granted as a vassal kingdom to a branch of the royal house, was afterwards incorporated with the Aragonese state.

§ 2. Growth and Partition of the Great Spanish Monarchy.

After the thirteenth century the strictly geographical changes within the Spanish peninsula were but few. The boundaries of the kingdoms changed but little towards one another, and not much towards France, their only neighbour from the fifteenth century onwards. But the five kingdoms were gradually grouped under two kings, for a while under one only. ?Territories beyond the peninsula.? The external geography, so to speak, forms a longer story. We have to trace out the acquisition of territory within Europe, first by Aragon and then by Castile, and the acquisition of territory out of Europe, first by Portugal and then by Castile. ?The great Spanish Monarchy.? The permanent union of the dominions of Castile and Aragon, the temporary union of the dominions of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal, formed that great Spanish Monarchy which in the sixteenth century was the wonder and terror of Europe, which lost important possessions in the sixteenth and in the seventeenth century, and which was finally partitioned in the beginning of the eighteenth.

Within the peninsula we have seen Castile, in the first half of the fifteenth century, win back the lands which had been lost to Granada at the end of the fourteenth. ?Conquest of Granada. 1492.? The last decade of the fifteenth saw the ending of the struggle. Men fondly deemed that the recovery of Granada balanced the loss of Constantinople. ?End of Mussulman rule in Spain.? But the last Moorish prince still kept for a moment a small tributary dominion in the Alpujarras, and it was the purchase of this last remnant which finally put an end to the long rule of the Mussulman in Spain.

The conquest of Granada was the joint work of a queen of Castile and a king of Aragon. ?1469.? But the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabel did not at once unite their crowns. ?Union of Castile and Aragon. 1506.? That union may be dated from the beginning of Ferdinand’s second reign in Castile. ?Loss and recovery of Roussillon. 1462-1493.? Meanwhile Roussillon and Cerdagne had been, after thirty years’ French occupation, won back by Aragon. ?Conquest of Navarre. 1513.? Then came the conquest of Navarre south of the Pyrenees, which left only the small part on the Gaulish side to pass to the French kings of the House of Bourbon. Portugal was now the only separate kingdom in the peninsula, and the tendency to look on the peninsula as made up of Spain and Portugal was of course strengthened. ?Annexation and separation of Portugal. 1581-1640.? But later in the century Portugal itself was for sixty years united with Castile and Aragon. ?Final loss of Roussillon. 1659.? Portugal won back its independence; and the Spanish dominion was further cut short by the final loss of Roussillon. The Pyrenees were now the boundary of France and Spain, except so far as the line may be held to be broken by the French right of patronage over Andorra.[84] Since the Peace of the Pyrenees, the peninsula itself has seen hardly any strictly geographical change. ?Gibraltar lost to England, 1704-1713.? Gibraltar has been for nearly a hundred and eighty years occupied by England. ?Oliverca. 1801.? The fortress of Oliverca has been yielded by Portugal to Spain. ?Minorca.? And during the last century Minorca passed to and fro between Spain and England more times than it is easy to remember.[85]

The acquisition of territory beyond the peninsula naturally began with Aragon. The acquisition of the Balearic isles may pass as the enlargement of a peninsular kingdom; but before that happened, Aragon had won and lost what was practically a great dominion north of the Pyrenees. But this dominion was continuous with its Spanish territory. ?Union of Aragon and Sicily. 1282-1285.? The real beginning of Aragonese dominion beyond the sea was when the war of the Vespers for a moment united the crowns of Aragon and the insular Sicily. ?Second union of Aragon and Sicily. 1409.? Then the island crown was held by independent Aragonese princes, and lastly was again united to the Aragonese crown. ?Union of Aragon and continental Sicily. 1442-1458.? The continental Sicily had, during the reign of Alfonso the Magnanimous, a common king with Aragon and the island. ?Continental Sicily under Aragonese princes.
Final union of Aragon and the Sicilies. 1503.? Then the continental kingdom was—save during the momentary French occupations—held by Aragonese princes till the final union of the crowns of Aragon and the Two Sicilies. ?War of Sardinia. 1309-1428.? Meanwhile a war of more than a hundred years gave to Aragon the island of Sardinia as a new kingdom. Thus, at the final union of Castile and Aragon, Aragon brought with it the outlying crowns of the Two Sicilies and of Sardinia. ?1530.? The insular Sicilian kingdom was slightly lessened by the grant of Malta and Gozo to the Knights of Saint John. ?1557.? The continental kingdom was increased by the addition of a small Tuscan territory.

The outlying possessions of Aragon were thus strictly acquisitions made by the Kings of Aragon on behalf of the crown of Aragon. ?The Burgundian inheritance. 1504.? But the extension of Castilian dominion over distant parts of Europe was due only to the fact that the crown of Castile passed to an Austrian prince who had inherited the greater part of the dominions of the Dukes of Burgundy. But thereby the Netherlands and the counties of Burgundy and Charolois became appendages to Castile, and went to swell the great Spanish Monarchy. ?Duchy of Milan. 1535.
1555.? The duchy of Milan too, in whatever character the Emperor Charles held it, became a Spanish dependency when it passed to his son Philip.

The European possessions of the Spanish Monarchy thus took in, at the time of their greatest extent, the whole peninsula, the Netherlands and the other Burgundian lands of the Austrian house, Roussillon, the Sicilies, Sardinia, and Milan. ?Loss of the United Netherlands. 1578-1609.? But this whole dominion was never held at once, unless for form’s sake we count the United Netherlands as Spanish territory till the Twelve Years’ Truce. Holland and its fellows had become practically independent before Portugal was won. ?Lands lost to France. 1659-1677.? But it was not till after the loss of Portugal that Spain suffered her great losses on the side of France, when the conquests of Lewis the Fourteenth cost her Roussillon, Cerdagne, Charolois, the County of Burgundy, Artois, and other parts of the Netherlands. The remainder of the Netherlands, with Milan and the three outlying Aragonese kingdoms, were kept till the partitions in the beginning of the eighteenth century. ?Partition of the Spanish Monarchy. 1713.? The final results of so much fighting and treaty-making was to take away all the outlying possessions of both Aragon and Castile, and to confine the Spanish kingdom to the peninsula and the Balearic isles, less Portugal and Gibraltar for ever, and less Minorca for a season. ?Recovery of Sicily. 1718, 1735.? Since then Spain has never won back any part of the lost possessions of Castile; but she has more than once won back the lost possessions of Aragon, insular Sicily twice, continental Sicily once. ?Spanish kings of the Two Sicilies. 1735-1860.
Duchy of Parma, 1731-1860.? And if the Sicilies were not kept as part of the Spanish dominions, they passed to a branch of the Spanish royal house, as the duchies of Parma and Piacenza passed to another.

§ 3. The Colonial Dominion of Spain and Portugal.

The distinction between Spain and Portugal is most strikingly marked in the dominion of the two powers beyond the bounds of Europe. ?Character of the Portuguese dominion out of Europe.? Portugal led the way among European states to conquest and colonization out of Europe. She had a geographical and historical call so to do. Her dominion out of Europe was not indeed a matter of necessity like that of Russia, but it stood on a different ground from that of England, France, or Holland. It was not actually continuous with her own European territory, but it began near to it, and it was a natural consequence and extension of her European advance. The Asiatic and American dominion of Portugal grew out of her African dominion, and her African dominion was the continuation of her growth in her own peninsula.

When the Moor was driven out of Spain, it was natural to follow him across the narrow seas into a land which lay so near to Spain, and which in earlier geography had passed as a Spanish land. ?Portugal fully formed in the thirteenth century.? But as far as Castile was concerned, the Moor was not driven out till late in the fifteenth century; as far as Portugal was concerned, he was driven out in the thirteenth. Portugal had then reached her full extent in the peninsula, and she could no longer advance against the misbelievers by land. One is tempted to wonder that her advance beyond sea did not begin sooner. ?Her African conquests, 1415-1471.? It came in the fifteenth century, when fifty years of conquest gave to Portugal her kingdom of Algarve beyond the Sea, an African dominion older than the Castilian conquest of Granada. ?The Algarves.? The king of Portugal and the Algarves thus held the southern pillar of Hercules, while Castile held the northern. ?Loss of African dominion, 1578.? The greater part of this African kingdom was lost after the fall of Sebastian. ?Ceuta Spanish.? Ceuta remained a Spanish possession after the dominion of Portugal, so that Spain now holds the southern pillar and England the northern. ?Tangier English, 1662-1683.? Tangier too once passed from Portugal to England as a marriage gift, and was presently forsaken as useless.

But before the kingdom of Algarve beyond the sea had passed away, its establishment had led to the discovery of the whole coast of the African continent, and to the growth of a vast Portuguese dominion in various parts of the world. ?Madeira, 1419.
Azores and Cape Verde Islands. 1448-1454.? Madeira was the first insular possession, followed by the Azores and Cape Verde Islands. Gradually, under the care of Don Henry, the Portuguese power spread along the north-west coast of Africa. ?Cape of Good Hope, 1497.
Dominion of Arabia and India.? The work went on: Vasco de Gama made his great discovery of the Cape of Good Hope; the road to India was opened; dominion on the coasts of Arabia and India, and even in the islands of the Indian Archipelago, was added to dominion on the coast of Africa. This dominion perished through the annexation of Portugal by Spain. Since the restoration of Portuguese independence, only fragments of this great African and Indian dominion have been kept. ?Modern extent of Portuguese dominion abroad.? But Portugal still holds the Atlantic islands, various points and coasts in Africa, and a small territory in India and the Eastern islands.

But Portuguese enterprise led also to a more lasting work, to the creation of a new European nation beyond the Ocean, the single European monarchy which has taken root in the New World. ?Discovery of Brazil, 1500.
1531.? Brazil was discovered by Portuguese sailors at the end of the fifteenth century; it was settled as a Portuguese possession early in the sixteenth. ?1624-1654.? During the union of Portugal with Spain the Dutch won for a while a large part of the country, but the whole was won back by independent Portugal. The peculiar position of Portugal, ever threatened by a more powerful neighbour, gave her great Transatlantic dominion a special importance. ?1807.? It was looked to as possible place for shelter, which it actually became during the French invasion of Portugal. ?Kingdom of Portugal and Brazil, 1813.? The Portuguese dominions took the style of ‘the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and Algarve.’ Nine years later these kingdoms were separated, and Brazil became an independent state. ?Empire of Brazil, 1822.? But it remains a monarchy with the title of Empire, and it is still ruled by the direct representative of the Portuguese royal house, while Portugal itself has passed away from the native line by the accidents of female succession.

In the sixteenth century Brazil held a wholly exceptional position. It was the only settlement of Portugal, it was the only considerable settlement of any European power, in a region which Spain claimed as her exclusive dominion. ?Division of the Indies between Spain and Portugal. 1494.? By Papal authority Spain was to have all the newly found lands that lay to the west, and Portugal all that lay to the east, of a line on the map, drawn at 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. Spain thus held the whole South American continent, with the exception of Brazil, together with that part of the North American continent which is most closely connected with the southern. While the non-European dominion of Portugal was primarily African and Indian, the non-European dominion of Spain was primarily American. It did not in the same way spring out of the European history of the country; it was rather suggested by rivalry of Portugal. ?Oran, 1516-1708. 1732-1791.? In Africa the Spanish dominion hardly went beyond the possession of Oran and the more lasting possession of Ceuta. ?Tunis, 1531.? The conquest of Tunis by Charles the Fifth[86] was made rather in his Sicilian than in his Castilian character. Within the range of Portuguese dominion the settlements of Spain were exceptional. But they took in the Canaries off the Atlantic coast of Africa, and the Philippine Islands in the extreme eastern Archipelago. ?Insular possessions of Spain.? These insular possessions Spain still keeps.

Meanwhile the great Spanish dominion in the New World, in both Americas and in the adjoining islands of the West Indies, has risen and fallen. ?Hispaniola, 1492.? It began with the first conquest of Columbus, Hispaniola or Saint Domingo. Thus the dominion of Castile beyond the Ocean began at the very moment when she reached the full extent of her own Mediterranean coast. ?1519.
1532.? Then followed the great continental dominion in Mexico, Peru, and the other lands on or south of the isthmus which joins the two western continents. But into the body of the North American continent, the land which was to be disputed between France and England, Spain never spread. New Mexico, California, Florida, barely stretched along its western and southern coasts. ?Revolutions of the Spanish colonies.? The whole of this continental dominion passed away in a series of revolutions within our own century. While Portugal and England have really founded new European nations beyond the Ocean, the result of Spanish rule in America has been to create a number of states of ever shifting extent and constitution, keeping the Spanish language, but some of which are as much native American as Spanish. ?Mexico.? Of these Mexico is the one which has had most to do with the general history of Europe and European America. ?Two Mexican Empires, 1822-1823.
1866-1867.? It has twice taken the name of Empire, once under a native, once under a foreign, adventurer. And vast provinces, once under its nominal rule, have passed to the United States. ?Cessions to the United States.? The loss of Texas, New Mexico, and Upper California, has cut down the present Mexico nearly to the extent of the first Spanish conquests.

Of the Spanish West India islands, some, like Jamaica and Trinidad, have passed to other European powers. ?Saint Domingo, 1864.? The oldest possession of all, the Spanish part of Hispaniola, has become a state distinct from that of Hayti in the same island. ?Puerto Rico.? Puerto Rico remains a real Spanish possession. ?Cuba.? The allegiance of Cuba is always doubtful. In short, the dominion of Spain out of Europe has followed its European dominion out of Spain. The eighteenth century destroyed the one; the nineteenth century has cut down the other to mere fragments.