I'd say the 1500s belonged to the Spanish, who lost it big, very big, and the French came soon afterward to fill the gap, until Berezina and Waterloo. I was very surprised when I first found that around 1800 France had a population of ~29 million while England only had ~8 million.
You're absolutely right about the Spanish, but it would be more appropriate to say the Hapsburgs, because what we're really talking about here is Spain, Austria-Hungry, the Balkans, The Holy Roman Empire... a huge portion of Europe all controlled centrally.
The French followed them, and for a period, the state of power was essentially France vs everyone else. England took off later, and that's the history most of us (Americans) are more familiar with.
BUT... this is a very Eurocentric view of history. There was a tremendous amount of other stuff going on leading up to and during this period in China, India, and what was once the Ottoman empire. In hindsight there are many reasons why our planet eventually became Eurocentric, but in 1500 that was not at all apparent - if things in China had gone differently; if they had not closed out new, outside, innovative ideas, we could very well have a very Chinese world today.
Another good book along this line is Jared Diamond's 'Guns, Germs, and Steel'. One of the theories he puts forward for China's failure to keep up with Europe is its homogeneity. The fact that there were so many different european countries competing against each other meant that none could afford to ignore new innovative ideas.
