1) In the mid-16th century, the decline of Spain's overseas empire had begun due to financial and moral bankruptcy from its war with the Dutch and failure to develop its overseas possessions for trade. 2) By the late 16th century, the Dutch had begun attacking Portugal's Asian territories, and Spain started losing its grip on its global empire. 3) The War of the Spanish Succession in 1700 following the death of the last Habsburg king of Spain further weakened the Spanish and Portuguese empires.

1. Peoples and EmpiresAnthony pagden Chapters 6, 7, and 8 Michael Warnick- History 140

2. The Decline of The Iberian World In 1555 through 1556 Charles V, heir to Augustus of Spain, abdicated in favor of his son Philip and retired to the remote Spanish monastery of Juste. At this time his son lost the Australian homelands, Germany and Bohemia, together with the imperial title, to his uncle Ferdinnd. 1580 Philip acquired a claim to the kingdom of Portugal and with it the now sprawling Portuguese overseas empire. By the mid-sixteenth century, what contemporaries called “the decline of Spain” had already begun. Spain became financially and morally bankrupt because of what the Dutch call the Eighty years War. Spain had also failed to develop the potential of its overseas possession for trade and agriculture. Late sixteenth century- Dutch had begun an onslaught upon the Portuguese possessions in Asia, which were far more vulnerable than the Spanish in America. Spain began to loose its grip on its overseas empire The War of the Spanish Succession followed the death in 1700 of the last of the Habsburg kings, Charles II.

3. Empires of Liberty, Empires of Trade Europeans had taken possession of much of America and had established enduring footholds in Asia and Africa. Their quarrel with the emperor broadened into a prolonged confessional conflict. Treaty of Westphalia was the first truly modern treaty. Created what has come to be called the Europe of Nations. By the time the treaty was signed, the map of Europe was changed (a confessional curtain had been raised that seperated a largely Protestant north from a largely Catholic south. Diderot, “a war among commercial nations is a fire that destroys them all.” 87 The earliest European overseas empire to be almost wholly concerned with trade rather than conquest had been the Portuguese. Trade, as both peoples understood it, was not merely a different means of pursuing the same universal objectives, as the older imperial orders had done, or similar ones. In 1775, the British government prepared a fight a long bitter war of attrition in its American colonies.

4. Slavery All empires in history up to the beginning of the nineteenth enturt were slave-owning societies. “The people” meant only the citizenry, and that excluded all slaves , as well as all women and all children. Slaves came from all over the Greek and Roman worlds. Syria, Egypt, and Judaea. Occupies positions of considerable responsibility and relatively high social standing, which is probably why Odysseus believed that it was generally better in the world he knew to be a slave than a free laborer. Modern slavery was in many ways a new beginning and quite unlike its ancient and medieval predecessors. Also required a new conception of the relationship between slave and master.