When mapping the British Empire it was sort of easy to just map the empire, and the British Isles didn’t change much during that time. However with Spain it’s totally different. There was Spain itself and the Spanish Netherlands and the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, and a few duchies in the Aegean that sometimes belonged to the Spanish kingdom of Naples and other times directly to the Crown of Aragon.
My question is… Do I map the Spanish Empire around those regions as well? And/or should the Spain relation be mapped around those as well?
If someone wanted to make animations they could download those relations separately and merge them maybe… But for someone searching “Spanish Empire” or “Spain” on the map would expect to see everything controlled by them.
I’m not 100% sure I understand mapping “around,” but if you mean including those areas in a Spanish Empire relation, I think the answer is yes, please include them.
For the second question, I do think if a country belonged directly to the Crown of Aragon, it should be included in in both the Crown of Aragon relation and the Spanish Empire relations.
This creates some weird (and tedious?) arrangements where you have a polity belonging to the Crown of Aragon post 1492. In this case, that polity might need to belong to:
Its own relation / chronology
The Crown of Aragon relation / chronology
The Kingdom of Spain (Spain) relation / chronology
The Spanish Empire relation / chronology
As I’m writing this out, this does seem a bit cumbersome, but I think it’s probably the best answer that will enable data consumers to fel they can extract a comprehensive history of these entities. @Minh_Nguyen - any thoughts here?
And, in general, I feel like Wikipedia is a reasonable (but not always definitive) authority on what belonged to what and when. Ideally, we would also be linking to primary documents, like treaties or royal proclamations as references for these territorial changes.
Trying to draw a Venn diagram here seems very tricky. For example, according to Perplexity, The Spanish Netherlands were not part of the Kingdom of Spain, even though the King of Spain was the head of state for the Spanish Netherlands in a personal manner.
Q: Was the Spanish Netherlands part of the Kingdom of Spain, or an external polity within the Spanish empire?
A: The Spanish Netherlands were not an integral part of the Kingdom of Spain, but rather a collection of states in the Low Countries held in personal union by the Spanish Crown. This means they were a distinct external polity within the broader Spanish Habsburg Empire, rather than being incorporated as a province or region of Spain itself[1][2].
The Spanish Netherlands consisted of imperial fiefs—principalities and counties within the Holy Roman Empire—that came under the rule of the Spanish Habsburgs after Charles V abdicated in 1556 and passed his Burgundian inheritance to his son, Philip II of Spain[1][3].
These territories were governed as a composite monarchy: the King of Spain was also the sovereign of the various provinces of the Netherlands, but each retained its own laws, privileges, and institutions. The relationship was one of personal union, not administrative absorption[1][2].
The distinction is evident during the period of the Archdukes Albert and Isabella (1598–1621), when the Spanish Netherlands enjoyed a period of limited independence, though they remained within the Spanish sphere of influence and eventually were reintegrated into the Spanish monarchy[1][4].
The Dutch declaration of independence (the Act of Abjuration, 1581) was not a secession from the Kingdom of Spain per se, but a rejection of Philip II’s right to rule the provinces as their sovereign, reflecting the legal and constitutional separation between the Spanish Netherlands and the core Spanish kingdoms[2].
In summary, the Spanish Netherlands were an external polity within the Spanish Habsburg Empire, ruled by the Spanish king in his capacity as sovereign of those territories, but not incorporated into the Kingdom of Spain itself[1][2][4].
Don’t forget the County of Burgundy and the Duchy of Milan. The relationship of these (and the Netherlands) to the HRE may further complicate things (although no more so than a state like Prussia).
Under Charles V Spain etc was also in a PU with the Austrian Erblande and the HRE (see Empire of Charles V) but these were not considered part of the Spanish Empire AFAIK. I don’t think Portugal would have been either when they were in a union.
It’s definitely valid to put something in multiple chronology relations representing different viewpoints or methodologies regarding the progression of some feature. This is one of the reasons why we’re using relations instead of the previous practice of followed_by=* tags.
That said, I’ve been under the impression that boundaries aren’t a good way to model personal unions. There’s just too much nuance and degrees of union, and besides this information is sociopolitical rather than spatial or chronological. Better to make sure the relations have wikidata=* tags and the linked Wikidata items indirectly express this relationship via items about the rulers themselves.
