Includes index.

The World without the Pacific -- Balboa, Magellan, and The Moluccas -- Spain: Entry and Dominion -- Magellan's Successors: Loaysa to Urdaneta -- Eastern Shores and Southern Lands -- Asian Empires, Christian Trades -- The Silver Tide -- Seville and the Pacific -- The First Irruption: Francis Drake -- Riposte and Reprise.

"'Strictly speaking, there was no such thing as "the Pacific" until in 1520-1 Fernao de Magalhãis, better known as Magellan, traversed the huge expanse of waters, which then received its name.' With these opening words, Oskar Spate launches his account of the process by which the greatest blank on the map became a focus of global relations. The Spanish Lake describes the essentially European and American achievement of turning this emptiness into a nexus of economic and military power. This work is a history of the Pacific, the ocean that became a theatre of power and conflict shaped by the politics of Europe and the economic background of Spanish America. There could only be a concept of 'the Pacific' once the limits and lineaments of the ocean were set and this was undeniably the work of Europeans. Fifty years after the Conquista, Nueva España and Peru were the bases from which the ocean was turned into virtually a Spanish lake."--Publisher's description

Print version record.

Includes notes, bibliographical references and index.

English.

Added to collection customer.56279.3