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Count of Aranda, born in 1719, was a Spanish general, diplomat, and minister, one of the most famous reformers in the government of King Charles III.
He was ambassador to France when the Thirteen Colonies proclaimed their independence from Great Britain, thus kindling the American Revolution. He was involved in drafting the peace treaty that finished the conflict. In addition, his profound knowledge of history placed him ahead of his time, and he predicted the rise of the United States as a world power. He precautioned the Spanish monarch of the threat posed by the British-American colonial revolutionaries to the Spanish provinces in America. He suggested the creation of a federal empire to guarantee their loyalty to Spain.
Below is the map of the United States showing the boundaries fixed in 1782, 5 years before the ratification of the Constitution, from a contemporary copy of Benjamin Franklin’s red-line map identified in Spain by the Library of Congress at Washington.
