The return of Christopher Columbus from his first voyage to the Americas in 1493 may well have been greeted in Spain as a triumph, but, on consideration, there was little about it to supply more than a hope that something might come of his adventures; he had not actually reached ‘Cathay’ or ‘Zipangu’, and the riches he brought back were still potential rather than actual. In his later voyages the outlines of the coasts of the Caribbean were found and charted, and he discovered most of the islands, but it became increasingly clear that he had not reached his hoped-for destinations, though he continued to believe he had, and East Asia remained, mirage-like, in European exploratory imagina¬tions in the west for much longer.

With colonising efforts in Hispaniola and Porto Rico, and eventually Cuba, Spanish official authority was soon present, above all in the larger islands. These, Hispaniola and Cuba, became hispanicised in the most brutal fashion, and most of the native inhabitants died or were killed in the next decade after Columbus’ discovery. Jamaica was soon found and thinly inhabited. The city of Santo Domingo in Hispaniola was only a small fortified town, though it was the main political centre of Spanish power in the whole region for some time.

There was little enough in the territories which Spain held, or claimed, which would attract any other voyagers, either Spaniards or other Europeans, at least not until reports reached Europe of the exploits of Cortez and his expedition into Mexico in 1519–1522, and from then on most Spanish attention was focused on the mainland. By then it was known that the Caribbean Sea was, like the Mediterranean, a sea closed at one end, with access into it from the Atlantic through a screen of smaller islands, but no egress further west; the Isthmus of Panama, however, was narrow enough to encourage a transport route to be organised across it, once the Pacific countries were known to be the source of goods worth moving. With ships in the Pacific, the link to China and East Asia could at last be made, not to mention transporting a stream of Inca gold and Peruvian silver to join Mexico's in being taken to Spain.