I'm currently looking at the rise and fall of the Spanish empire through an economic lens and I know that often times the Napoleonic wars are cited as one of the final 'nails in the coffin' for Spain as a world power.
I was wondering how disastrous Spain's involvement in the Napoleonic wars were for the economy and empire as a whole.
There are some very interesting answers in this thread particularly regarding the loss of Spain's empire during this period:
But basically, Spain's economy had been on a downward slop for a long time prior to the Napoleonic wars, and the French coup and invasion severed administrative ties to the Empire, almost the only real source of income, whilst at the same time sparking a series of destructive civil wars that ran on into the 1830s and beyond