The New World and the problem of Eurocentrism

‘The greatest thing after the creation of the world, except for the incarnation and the death of he who gave birth to it, is the discovery of the Indies’. Francisco López de Gómara wrote those words in the Introduction to his Historia General de las Indias (General History of the Indies), published in 1552. Far from being an extravagant idea at the time, the providential notion that God wanted Spain to conquer the New World for the spread and final triumph of Christianity was widely shared by the chroniclers and cosmographers of the Spanish Crown in the 16th century. As the Spaniards saw it, 1492 was the year that split the history of the world in two; five centuries later, we are still trying to understand what happened and the world has not finished adjusting itself to the changes that began in the Atlantic.

In the abovementioned introduction to his book, López de Gómarawrote that ‘every history, even if is not well written, delights’, this may be a questionable statement but it is a convenient way to raise your spirits when you set out to write an incredible history of the European Renaissance. Here, is yet another attempt. This time, the account will deal with personages and regions which are little seen in the historiography of modern science: the Iberian Catholics in the Atlantic world.

Many have called the 16th century the century of discoveries. Equating European expansion with the ‘age of discoveries’ forms part of a view of history that is centered on Europe and that is only possible when the great explorers who preceded Columbus are forgotten. One might mention, for example, the Polynesians’ maritime explorations of the Pacific, the Nordic navigators in the Atlantic, and, naturally, the Chinese who, led by admiral Zheng, crossed the Indian Ocean.