Columbus, an experienced Genoese merchant sailor with a penchant for learned books, had conceived a plan to sail to the East by heading West. This idea was based on an old assumption dating as far back as the Greek geographer Ptolemy, who believed that the world was round and that the distance between Europe’s far west and the Orient’s far east was small.  Columbus’s plan to sail directly westward was offered to the king of Portugal, but neither he nor the French and English monarchs, whom he also approached, were convinced of its feasibility. Only Queen Isabella listened and, after some hesitation, agreed to sponsor Columbus’s enterprise.

The discovery of new lands on October 12th provided the Catholic Kings, Ferdinand and Isabella, with an opportunity for territorial expansion overseas. Furthermore, following a belief well established in the Europe of that time--also shared by the pilgrims of the Mayflower-- Spaniards thought that their enterprise obeyed a providential design, a belief that the Pope sanctioned at the highest level by conferring upon it the character of a Christian crusade.

The earliest historiography of the New World is mostly descriptive and consists largely of reports of sea travels by witnesses. Landscapes are only vaguely described, although with awe, and are often connected by allusion to Paradise or mythical places. As for the islanders, authors can only reflect on their observations of brief encounters with them marred by a frustrating language problem. Still, in just a few years an image of the New World as a distinct geographical entity slowly emerged.

I. 1.  Christopher Columbus. Epistola. [Rome, 1493].

This is the first imprint about the New World. Columbus (1451-1506) presumably wrote this letter to Luis de Santángel aboard the Santa Maria on his return trip to officially proclaim his discovery. In summarizing what he saw, Columbus displayed a characteristic mixture of accurate observation and fantastic hypothesis. Although the original purpose of the trip had not been realized, since neither gold nor spices were found, the founding of Navidad, the first European colony in the New World, is described as a promising start.

Columbus’s letter was published in its original Spanish in Barcelona, in April of 1493. Nine editions of a Latin translation entitled, Epistola, quickly appeared in Rome, Paris, Antwerp, and Basle. Although it was just a brief document, Columbus’s letter had a major influence on the early European concept of the New World.

I.3. Pietro Martire d’Anghiera. De orbe novo decades. Alcalá de Henares, 1516.

Peter Martyr (1457-1526), a learned Humanist, was appointed by emperor Charles V as the first official chronicler of the lndies. Although Martyr never set foot on the New World, he used his privileged position as a courtier to gather a great wealth of information from documents and personal interviews. Following the model of the Latin historian Titus Livius, the Decades are written in Latin and organized into ten books that cover all aspects of the New World. Martyr was the first to establish a connection between the New World and Classical antiquity, comparing the peaceful Caribbean islanders with the happy inhabitants of the Golden Age.

Martyr went on to write five more Decades. The complete set of eight was published posthumously in 1530.  An English translation of the first four, published under the title The decades of the Newe Worlde or West India (London, 1555), was part of the first English book dealing with the New World.

I.5. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés. De la natural hystoria de las Indias. Toledo, 1526.

Oviedo (1478-1557) was descended from a noble family and received a formal education. In 1512 he traveled to the New World, where he spent most of his life serving as a representative of the crown in various cities. Upon Oviedo’s return to Spain, in 1523, Emperor Charles V asked him to write a report on the Indies. Although he had taken extensive notes on all aspects of the European “discoveries,” this work, known as the Sumario, is only a report quickly written from memory. Oviedo provides new botanical, zoological, and ethnographical information, but reference is also made to administrative matters, the Indians, the gold mines, and the recently found route to the Pacific Spice Islands. Oviedo’s down-to-earth and almost journalistic style is in sharp contrast with the enthusiastic tone of astonishment and awe so typical of the early humanists.

The Sumario quickly earned Oviedo a solid reputation as the best informed person on the New World, who had direct knowledge of his subject. He later elaborated most of this material in his voluminous Historia general.

II.1. Hernán Cortés. Carta de relación. Seville, 1522. 

Cortés (1485-1547) sent five long reports (also known as “letters of relation”) to Emperor Charles V detailing his progress in the conquest of Mexico. This is the second one, in which Cortés narrates the wars and alliances that took place on the way to Tenochtitlan, and provides vivid descriptions of the land and the peoples he encounters. Cortés had a good grasp of the political consequences of his enterprise; throughout the letter he vindicated his shaky legal position by skillfully laying out the political and religious benefits that might derive from the enterprise he commanded. Fully aware that the territories he intended to subdue were a radically new geographic entity, he created a distinct administrative province for them, called New Spain. This was the first time the name of a European nation was used with the adjective “new” to name an American territory.

II.2. Francisco López de Gómara. La istoria de las Indias. Y Conquista de México. Saragossa, 1552.

López de Gómara (1511-1564) was a priest with solid Humanistic training. After meeting Hernán Cortés in Spain, he became his chaplain and was commissioned to write a history of the conquest of Mexico. Gómara never went to the New World, but Cortés supplied him with abundant oral and written documentation. Following the Classical tradition he knew well, Gómara conceived of his book as a heroic tale. The structure was provided by the biography of Cortés, who is presented as one of world history’s major figures, worthy of emulation and the equal of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.
Gómara’s book was published as the second part of his Istoria de las Indias. It became extremely popular in Europe, with early editions in Italian and French. An English translation of the second part was published in London under the title The pleasant historie of the conquest of the Weast India now called New Spain.

II.3. Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España. Madrid, [1632].

Díaz del Castillo (1496-1584) participated as a soldier in the conquest of Mexico under Cortés and in other military campaigns, before settling in Guatemala where he lived a long life. His fame rests solely on this book, which intends to portray the conquest of Mexico as a collective rather than as an individual effort. Díaz was fully aware of his technical inability as an historian, since he did not have the training to write in the appropriately high literary style. But he believed his witnessing of the facts more than compensated for his poor rhetorical skills. He provided memorable descriptions of Tenochtitlan, and lively portraits of Cortés, Alvarado, Montezuma, Cuauhtemoc, and many others.

The Historia verdadera was published long after Díaz’s death by Fr. Alonso Remón, a Mercedarian who edited the text to praise his order. It has remained one of the most popular books on colonial Spanish America.

II.4. Antonio de Solís. Historia de la conquista de México. Madrid, 1684.

A historian of the Baroque period, Solís (1610-1686) looked upon historical writing as an artistic labor whose goal was an aesthetically perfect product. Since he found general histories too diverse in their content to achieve that end, he concentrated on the conquest of Mexico, a subject that by the mid-seventeenth century had been almost forgotten.

His originality lies in the literary quality of his discourse. Chapters, written in elegant style, are arranged in the manner of a novel, each containing an equal number of events and holding the reader in suspense to the end. The result is what the famous nineteenth-century American historian William Prescott called one of the “most remarkable texts in the Castilian language.” Between 1684 and 1800 more than eighty editions appeared in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Danish, and English. The first English edition, entitled History of the conquest of Mexico, was published in London in 1724