OPENING up NEW WORLDS: SIXTEENTH-CENTURY TRAVEL LITERATURE and COLLECTIONS of VOYAGES 1.1. Europe's Overseas Expansion Althoug

CHAPTER ONE OPENING UP NEW WORLDS: SIXTEENTH-CENTURY TRAVEL LITERATURE AND COLLECTIONS OF VOYAGES 1.1. Europe’s overseas expansion Although the fi rst volume of the De Bry collection appeared nearly one-hundred years after the fi rst discoveries, any discussion of European representations of the overseas world should begin in the late fi fteenth century. Up to that point, classical treatises by the likes of Ptolemy and Pliny the Elder had dominated the geographical genre.1 After the Iberian breakthroughs in both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in the 1490s, the stage was set for a more systematic discovery of the overseas world. Having fi nanced the fi rst expeditions, Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Kings of Spain, and King Joao II of Portugal were understandably averse to sharing the expected riches with their European rivals. In the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) they neatly divided the globe amongst themselves, after an earlier treaty brokered by Pope Alexander VI had favoured his native Spain disproportionately. ‘Tordesillas’ left both countries with plenty of as yet unexplored ter- ritories where various types of profi table commodities might sensibly be expected. The accidental discovery of Brazil by Pedro Cabral and the subsequent recognition that it belonged to the Portuguese sphere of infl uence proved a surprise for both countries. In 1529, nearly ten years after Magellan’s circumnavigation, the Treaty of Zaragoza essentially confi rmed the bilateral partition of the world by drawing another longitudinal line of division. Only the Philippines continued to be claimed by both crowns until well into the 1560s. In the fi rst decades 1 See: Grafton, Shelford, and Siraisi (1992); M. B. Campbell, The witness and the other world. Exotic European travel writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca and London 1988); V. I. J. Flint, The imaginative landscape of Christopher Columbus (Princeton 1992). VAN GROESEN_F3_23-50.indd 23 12/17/2007 7:31:02 PM 24 chapter one of the sixteenth century the Iberian powers were allowed to explore the overseas world, relatively undisturbed by other European nations.2 While the Portuguese steadily developed their network of factories in West Africa and Asia, administrating the trade in spices from their headquarters in Goa, the Spanish conquistadors pushed deep into the American mainland in their eventually successful search for pre- cious metals. In doing so, they encountered a mosaic of sophisticated indigenous societies, most notably the Maya in Yucatán, the Aztecs in the area around their metropolis Tenochtitlán, and the Inca in the Andes. In both Mexico and Peru, respective military commanders such as Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro swiftly resorted to violence to subjugate the local populations, as did Hernando de Soto in the south-eastern provinces of North America. Their collective operations earned the Spanish widely employed epithets like ‘tyrannical’ and ‘cruel’. Protestants across Europe were to use this ‘Black Legend’ as a reliable instrument of propaganda. Portuguese and Spanish embargoes on information regarding overseas expansion, meanwhile, were fastidi- ously upheld to prevent rivalling powers from learning of the avenues to the abundant natural resources the Iberians had found.3 Despite these efforts, news inevitably fi ltered through to other regions of the Old World. Amerigo Vespucci’s Mundus novus and his Lettera for example, although the authenticity of the latter is questioned, were issued in 1504 and 1507 respectively, and both were carefully written to meet European anticipations. The treatises were translated and reprinted several times in the fi rst two decades of the sixteenth century. Inspired by rumours of unparalleled Spanish revenues, and increasingly envious of Portuguese dominance of the traffi c in oriental spices, Italian, French, 2 On early Spanish expansion in the Americas: H. Thomas, Rivers of gold. The rise of the Spanish empire, from Columbus to Magellan (New York 2004). Good general overviews of Europe’s overseas expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries include: J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance. Discovery, exploration and settlement 1450–1650 (reprint; London 2000 [1st ed. 1963]); N. Broc, La géographie de la Renaissance (1420–1620) (Paris 1980); Lach (1965–93). 3 On Portuguese expansion: A. J. R. Russell-Wood, The Portuguese empire, 1415–1808. A world on the move (reprint; Baltimore 1998); S. Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese empire in Asia, 1500–1700: a political and economic history (London 1993); C. R. Boxer, The Portuguese seaborne empire, 1415–1825 (reprint; London 1991 [1st ed. 1969]); On Spain: Thomas (2004) for the fi rst three decades; J. H. Parry, The Spanish seaborne empire (reprint; Berkeley 1990 [1st ed. 1966]). A recently published comparative study is: J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World. Britain and Spain in America 1492–1830 (New Haven and London 2006). VAN GROESEN_F3_23-50.indd 24 12/17/2007 7:31:03 PM.

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