Historia de las Indias (1552)

Herrera y Tordesillas and Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola. The Spanish imperial space is revealed as a continuous body of water between the Strait of Magellan and the Strait of Mozambique, and Padrón insists on the anxiety caused to the Spaniards by having to further this process of expansion without adequate preparation, and above all, to face such powerful enemies as China during the Ming dynasty. The book is a valuable contribution not only because of its rigorous and intelligent interpretations, but also because it invites us to think about two major issues. First, it shows that territories such as the Americas were not “invented” once and for all but were revised and reinvented over time and from different places and communities. Second, the book reminds us that we must decenter our gaze from the battles of conquest and pay attention instead to the voyages and ways of understanding vast spaces such as the oceans that were key in politically configuring our modern experience of the globe.