{
  "id": "iberian-crowns-1580-1640",
  "type": "comparison",
  "name": "The Iberian crowns, 1580-1640: juridical claim vs effective control",
  "summary": "A country-by-country estimate of what the Spanish and Portuguese crowns actually administered during the Iberian Union - juridical area versus effective area, and population under each crown, published as intervals with per-row confidence - with the British Empire of 1921 processed under the identical criterion as a control. Spain's effective core around 1600 comes out near 4.6 million km2 and 29 million people; the cartographic 13.7 million km2 belongs to a different question.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "comparison",
    "empires",
    "spanish-empire",
    "portugal",
    "british-empire",
    "demography",
    "cartography",
    "seventeenth-century",
    "global-history"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "compares",
      "target": "empires-compared"
    },
    {
      "rel": "compares",
      "target": "cartographic-extent-vs-effective-control"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "casa-de-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "colonial-models-compared"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "acuna-nuevo-descubrimiento-1641"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "How much territory did Spain actually control around 1600?",
    "How many people lived under the Spanish crown around 1600?",
    "Were the Spanish and Portuguese empires merged during the Iberian Union?",
    "How does Spain's effective control compare with the British Empire's?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The dataset separates, for every modern country touched by the crowns in 1580-1640, a \"juridical area\" (formal sovereignty, claim or jurisdiction) from an \"effective area\" (space with operative administration, garrison, taxation or vassalage), publishes effective area and population under the crown as low/central/high intervals, and grades each row's confidence - with low-confidence rows declared usable for sensitivity only.",
      "sources": [
        "smm-iberian-1580-1640"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "Under that criterion the Spanish crown around 1600 (35 modern countries, base year 1600) has a central effective area of about 4.6 million km2 and a population under the crown of about 29.4 million (interval 24.0-35.0 million) - against juridical areas an order of magnitude larger in the American viceroyalties, where for example New Spain's juridical 1.96 million km2 reduces to a central 0.95 million effective and the Rio de la Plata's 2.78 million to a central 0.28 million.",
      "sources": [
        "smm-iberian-1580-1640"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.55
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The Portuguese crown during the Union (25 modern countries) is estimated at about 0.89 million km2 effective and 3.9 million people (interval 2.2-6.4 million), concentrated in Portugal, coastal Brazil and a chain of African and Asian enclaves - and it is tabulated separately because the Portuguese and Castilian administrations remained formally distinct within the composite monarchy.",
      "sources": [
        "smm-iberian-1580-1640"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.55
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "Processed under the identical criterion, the British Empire around 1921 (70 modern countries) yields a central effective area of about 22.3 million km2 and 457 million people (interval 411-491 million) - against the empire's own recorded 13,419,046 square miles (about 34.76 Mm2) and 441.8 million; the same deflation that reduces Spain's cartographic figure reduces Britain's, and Britain remains far larger on both readings.",
      "sources": [
        "smm-iberian-1580-1640",
        "census-canada-1921-empire"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.6
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The dataset's own methodology declares its limits: the historical figures are comparable estimates, not censuses; modern-country population baselines c. 1600 come from global reconstructions used as reference, not as automatic multipliers; and every area or population figure is a first-order analytical synthesis over historical cartography, territorial histories and demographic reconstructions.",
      "sources": [
        "smm-iberian-1580-1640"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The next cut the series needs is 1780: Taagepera's reconstruction puts the Spanish empire's cartographic peak at 13-14 million km2 around that date, and the benchmark's phase-1 observations record the conventional figure of 13.7 million km2 (measurement confidence C) with the effective-control breakdown explicitly frozen pending territory-year classification T0-T6 and E0-E3 - so this dataset publishes the 1780 peak as a cartographic convention and its effective counterpart as ND, not as a guess.",
      "sources": [
        "taagepera-1997",
        "smm-empire-benchmark-2026"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.75
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [
    "Around 1600 the Spanish crown effectively administered roughly 4.6 million km2 with about 29 million subjects - a vast state by the standards of its age, and much smaller than its maps.",
    "The juridical/effective gap is largest exactly where the mythical figures live - the American interiors, the borderlands of North America and the Rio de la Plata.",
    "The Portuguese empire under the Union stays a separate column: a maritime network of about 0.9 million km2 effective, not an annex of Castile.",
    "Applied evenly, the deflation shrinks everyone - Britain's 1921 empire drops from about 34.8 to about 22.3 million km2 effective - so the method is not an instrument for any nation's apologetics.",
    "Every figure here is an interval with a confidence grade, and low-confidence rows are for sensitivity analysis only."
  ],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "derived",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "benchmark",
    "source_types": [
      "paper",
      "personal_experience"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": true,
  "winning_edge": "No public source estimates effective (rather than cartographic) control for the Iberian crowns country by country with intervals, confidence grades and the same criterion applied to the British control case. Wikipedia offers single maximum-extent figures; polemics offer unsourced deflations of the rival. An agent asked \"how big was the Spanish Empire really?\" finds here the only claim-bound answer that states its method, its uncertainty and its own weaknesses.",
  "confidence": 0.7,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-09",
  "body": "## What is being measured\n\nBetween 1580 and 1640 the crowns of Castile and Portugal shared a\nmonarch - and kept separate administrations. This dataset asks a narrow\nquestion about that world: **for each modern country, how much of its\nterritory and population was under operative administration, garrison,\ntaxation or vassalage of either crown around the base year 1600?**\n\"Juridical area\" (sovereignty on paper) is recorded separately, and the\ndifference between the two columns is the finding.\n\nAll figures below are the dataset's central estimates with low-high\nintervals; confidence grades are the dataset's own. Low-confidence rows\nare published for sensitivity, never as point data.\n\n## The Spanish crown, c. 1600 - selected rows\n\n| Territory (modern country) | Juridical km2 | Effective km2 (low-central-high) | Population under crown (central) | Confidence |\n|---|---|---|---|---|\n| Spain (Castile, Aragon, Navarre, Canaries) | 505,990 | 495,000 - 505,990 - 505,990 | 8,500,000 | High |\n| Italy (Milan, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, Presidi) | 176,000 | 165,000 - 176,000 - 185,000 | 8,000,000 | High |\n| Belgium (core Spanish Netherlands) | 30,689 | 28,000 - 30,689 - 30,689 | 1,600,000 | High |\n| Mexico (New Spain: core, coasts, northern frontier) | 1,964,375 | 650,000 - 950,000 - 1,300,000 | 3,800,000 | Medium |\n| Peru (coast and central Andes) | 1,285,216 | 450,000 - 700,000 - 900,000 | 1,500,000 | Medium |\n| Bolivia (Charcas, Potosi-Chuquisaca axis) | 1,098,581 | 250,000 - 400,000 - 550,000 | 700,000 | Medium |\n| Colombia (New Granada, Caribbean governorships) | 1,141,748 | 180,000 - 320,000 - 500,000 | 520,000 | Medium |\n| Philippines (Captaincy General) | 300,000 | 90,000 - 160,000 - 230,000 | 1,000,000 | Medium |\n| Argentina (Tucuman and Rio de la Plata networks) | 2,780,400 | 120,000 - 280,000 - 500,000 | 150,000 | Low |\n| United States (Florida, New Mexico, Puerto Rico) | 3,500,000 | 30,000 - 85,000 - 180,000 | 80,000 | Low |\n| Algeria (Oran and Mers-el-Kebir presidios) | 150 | 50 - 100 - 150 | 18,000 | Medium |\n\n**Spanish crown totals: 35 modern countries; central effective area\n4,600,926 km2; population under the crown 29,443,000 (24.0-35.0\nmillion).**\n\nThe pattern is the finding: control is near-total in Iberia, Italy and\nthe islands; roughly half of the mapped area in the settled viceregal\ncores (Mexico 48%, Peru 55%); and collapses to single digits exactly\nwhere the largest juridical areas lie - the North American borderlands\n(0.9%), the Rio de la Plata (10%), coastal Africa (presidios measured in\nhundreds of km2, not thousands).\n\n## The Portuguese crown during the Union - shape of the column\n\nPortugal continental, Azores and Madeira (100% effective), the Atlantic\nislands (Cape Verde, Sao Tome), coastal Brazil (juridical 4.3 million\nkm2; effective central 650,000 - 7.6% of modern Brazil), and a chain of\nenclaves from Elmina and Luanda to Hormuz, Goa, Malacca and Macau -\nplazas, factories and vassalage networks whose effective areas are\nmeasured in hundreds or thousands of km2 against subcontinental\njuridical claims. **Totals: 25 modern countries; central effective area\n889,708 km2; population under the crown 3,907,900 (2.2-6.4 million).**\nThe column stays separate: the Union was a composite monarchy, not a\nmerger of colonial administrations.\n\n## The control case: Britain, 1921\n\nApplying the same juridical/effective criterion to the British Empire at\nits territorial peak: **70 modern countries; central effective area\n22,261,776 km2; population under the crown 457,100,000 (411.3-490.7\nmillion)** - against the empire's own recorded 13,419,046 square miles\n(≈34.76 Mm2) and 441.8 million people. Canada's 9.98 million km2 reduce\nto a central 4.8 million effective (Arctic and northern administration\nsparse); Australia's 7.69 to 6.2; the Sudan condominium, the Namibian\nmandate and the tribal frontiers deflate like the Spanish borderlands\ndo. The deflation is symmetric - which is precisely what makes it\ncredible. On either reading, cartographic or effective, the British\nEmpire remains the larger system by a wide margin; what changes is the\nmeaning of the numbers.\n\n## The 1780 cut: published as pending\n\nThe Bourbon peak is the obvious next base year: Taagepera's curve puts\nSpain's cartographic maximum at 13-14 Mm2 around 1780, and the\nbenchmark's phase-1 load records the conventional 13.7 Mm2 at\nmeasurement confidence C. No juridical/effective breakdown exists yet\nfor that date - the benchmark froze all effective-control readings\npending territory-year classification (T0-T6, E0-E3) - so this dataset\ncarries the 1780 peak as a cartographic convention and marks its\neffective counterpart ND. When the 1780 rows are built under the same\ncriterion as the 1600 ones, they will be loaded here.\n\n## Provenance and honesty\n\nThese figures are a first-order synthesis by the benchmark's author over\nhistorical cartography, territorial histories and demographic\nreconstructions (registered here as a `derived` source with its\nreliability stated). They are intervals for sensitivity and comparison,\nnot archival totals. The methodological frame - status T0-T6, reach\nE0-E3, and why no single \"effective km2\" number is ever published - is\ndocumented in [the benchmark hub](empires-compared) and in\n[cartographic extent vs effective control](cartographic-extent-vs-effective-control).",
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    "name": "The Iberian crowns, 1580-1640: juridical claim vs effective control",
    "description": "A country-by-country estimate of what the Spanish and Portuguese crowns actually administered during the Iberian Union - juridical area versus effective area, and population under each crown, published as intervals with per-row confidence - with the British Empire of 1921 processed under the identical criterion as a control. Spain's effective core around 1600 comes out near 4.6 million km2 and 29 million people; the cartographic 13.7 million km2 belongs to a different question.",
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    "dateModified": "2026-08-09",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Expansion and Contraction Patterns of Large Polities: Context for Russia",
        "url": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3cn68807"
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        "name": "Area and Population of the British Empire, by Countries, 1901, 1911 and 1921 (Census of Canada 1921, table 16, p. 117)",
        "url": "https://www66.statcan.gc.ca/eng/1921/192101530117_p.%20117.pdf"
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        "name": "Benchmark comparado de imperios - ejecucion v1.1 (working study)"
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        "name": "Imperios ibericos 1580-1640 - juridical vs effective area and population under the crowns (working dataset)"
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    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "The Iberian crowns, 1580-1640: juridical claim vs effective control"
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}