In some ways, the Kingdom of New Spain, centred in what we now call Mexico, was at its height in the Versailles Century (1682-1789).
It certainly reached its greatest territorial extent in the 1700s, as the map below illustrates.
By Eddo – Own workFile:BlankMap-World-90W.svgFile:New Spain.pngFile:Nueva España 1795.pngFile:Spanish Provinces in the Pacific.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11435488
The light green areas represent the last areas to be claimed by the Spanish before the onset of the Napoleonic Wars and the War of Independence, which resulted in the collapse of Spanish rule and Mexico’s independence in 1821, not to mention that of the other countries of Central and South America.
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