At the end of the eighteenth century, the Spanish Monarchy's possessions in America constituted one of the world's most imposing political structures. Its territory, which included most of the Western Hemisphere, stretched along the entire Pacific coast from Cape Horn in the south to Alaska in the north. On the east coast, it shared South America with Brazil and the Guianas, Central America with British Honduras, and North America with the United States and Canada, both of which were limited to strips of land along the Atlantic. In the Caribbean, the Spanish Crown possessed the principal islands. The Spanish Indies – generally called America in the eighteenth century – also included the Philippines and other islands in the Pacific.

Spanish America originally consisted of two viceroyalties, New Spain and Peru; the Crown further subdivided South America when it established the viceroyalties of New Granada and the Río de la Plata in 1739 and 1776. But the most enduring territorial units were those areas administered by the audiencias (high courts), often referred to as reinos (kingdoms). With the exception of the audiencias of New Spain, these were the areas that became the new nations of Spanish America. New Spain possessed two audiencias, Mexico and Guadalajara. The Philippines, a dependency of New Spain, enjoyed its own audiencia, Manila. The other audiencias of Spanish America consisted of Guatemala (Central America), Santa Fé de Bogotá (New Granada), Caracas (Venezuela), Quito, Charcas (Alto Peru), Lima (Peru), Santiago (Chile), Buenos Aires (Río de la Plata), and Santo Domingo (the Caribbean).