AHC: United Iberia after 1600 that lasts

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1487
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Deleted member 1487

A challenge for you all, how do you get a lasting united Iberian continent with a POD after 1600? Can you get a united Spanish/Portuguese empire?
 
Well, it's both easy and complicated, right?

It's easy because in 1600 it is a united peninsula with a lot of commercial cross over.

However there wasn't much administrative overlap and by that time, the two countries had had time to develop distinct identities which is why that union didn't last and the portuguese went away as soon as possible.

You'd probably need the spanish to impose their full administrative model on Portugal but I'm not sure how successful it would be. Portugal often acted more in line with local authorities, in India Goa worked as a gateway to Virajaya.

The Spanish, for their own reasons, were used to work on a mostly clean slate. I would say because they tended to wipe out any opposition via diseases and then had the numbers to back it up (8M over that time period).

The Portuguese were less populous (1M). They could have a nasty bite but couldn't hold any major territory.

If you have a proper commercial union in that time period, I can see the Indian dominions completely fall away to the dutch, way faster than OTL as the full might would go on protecting Manilla and the Americas.
 
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