Conquering the Pacific
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16. One hypothesis is that a gecko lineage (the ancestor of Tarentola) may have crossed the Atlantic from west to east. Gamble et al., “Coming to America,” 238. It is just one among several possibilities, however.
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17. See Isabel Sanmartín and Fredrik Ronquist, “Southern Hemisphere Biogeography Inferred by Event-Based Models: Plant Versus Animal Patterns,” System Biology 53 (2004): 216–43. These authors present a very complex picture in which the breakup of the continents as well as later dispersals played a role in shaping biogeographic patterns. Still, the dispersal episodes they discuss occurred along the South America–Antarctica–Australia corridor rather than through the open ocean. See also Maria A. Nilsson et al., “Tracking Marsupial Evolution Using Archaic Genomic Retroposon Insertions,” PLoS Biology 8, no. 7 (July 2010): 1–9.
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18. Brice P. Noonan and Jack W. Sites Jr., “Tracing the Origins of Iguanid Lizards and Boine Snakes of the Pacific,” American Naturalist 175 (January 2010): 65; John R. H. Gibbons, “The Biogeography of Brachylophus (Iguanidae) Including the Description of a New Species, B. vitiensis, from Fiji,” Journal of Herpetology 15, no. 3 (July 1981): 255–73.
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19. Gibbons, “The Biogeography of Brachylophus (Iguanidae) Including the Description of a New Species, B. vitiensis, from Fiji,” 270 and 273. Still, there is at least one competing explanation for the presence of Brachylophus in the South Pacific Islands involving an overland dispersal from the New World through either Australia (by way of Antarctica) or Asia (via the Bering Strait), followed by island-hopping along a Melanesian land bridge to Fiji and Tonga. The main problem with this explanation is that Brachylophus, or remains of Brachylophus, have not been found in Australia or Asia. Nevertheless, it is possible that humans hunted them into extinction in these regions, and some paleontological specimens might still turn up. See Noonan and Sites, “Tracing the Origins of Iguanid Lizards and Boine Snakes of the Pacific,” 61–72.
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20. Scholars subscribe to different models for the colonization of Polynesia, and many details about population movements across the Pacific and timing remain uncertain. Parsing the different models is beyond the scope of this contextual introduction. I base this broad outline on Peter Bellwood, First Migrants: Ancient Migration in Global Perspective (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2013), 191–205; Patrick Vinton Kirch, On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands Before European Contact (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), passim; and recent updating of radiocarbon dates. See especially Janet M. Wilmshurst et al., “High-Precision Radiocarbon Dating Shows Recent and Rapid Initial Human Colonization of East Polynesia,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108, no. 5 (February 2011): 1815–20. See also Patrick Kirch, “When Did the Polynesians Settle Hawai‘i? A Review of 150 Years of Scholarly Inquiry and a Tentative Answer,” Hawaiian Archaeology 12 (2011): 3–26. For the case of the Marianas, see Mike T. Carson, First Settlement of Remote Oceania: Earliest Sites in the Mariana Islands (New York: Springer, 2011), 1–7 and 69–76. The earliest settlers of the Marianas took rice but not pigs or any other animals, a curious exception to the more general pattern of relying on tropical plants and pigs.
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21. Bellwood, First Migrants, 191–97; Vicki A. Thomson et al., “Using Ancient DNA to Study the Origins and Dispersal of Ancestral Polynesian Chickens Across the Pacific,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 111, no. 13 (April 1, 2014): 4826–31. Recent genetic work supports Bellwood’s initial model linking Taiwan and the Philippines with the Lapita settlers in places like Vanuatu and Tonga. See Pontus Skoglund et al., “Genomic Insights into the Peopling of the Southwest Pacific,” Nature 538 (October 2016): 510–13.
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22. For exciting recent genetic evidence, see Alexander G. Ioannidis et al., “Native American Gene Flow into Polynesia Predating Easter Island Settlement,” Nature, July 8, 2020. From this study, it is not possible to tell whether Native Americans traveled to these islands or, alternatively, Polynesians reached the coast of South America and then traveled back with Native Americans or Native American DNA. On sweet potatoes, see Jon Hather and P. V. Kirch, “Prehistoric Sweet Potato (Ipomoea batatas) from Mangaia Island, Central Polynesia,” Antiquity 65 (December 1991): 887–93. Scholars have considered the Pacific golden plover a possible carrier. See the discussion in Richard Scaglion and María-Auxiliadora Cordero, “Did Ancient Polynesians Reach the New World? Evaluating the Evidence from the Ecuadorian Gulf of Guayaquil,” in Polynesians in America, ed. Terry L. Jones et al. (Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2011), 174–75. See also D. E. Yen, The Sweet Potato and Oceania: An Essay in Ethnobotany (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1974), 331–40; R. C. Green, “Sweet Potato Transfers in Polynesian Prehistory,” in The Sweet Potato in Oceania: A Reappraisal, ed. Chris Ballard et al. (Rosebery, NSW: Centatime, 2005), 43–62; D. E. Yen, “Subsistence to Commerce in Pacific Agriculture: Some Four Thousand Years of Plant Exchange,” in Plants for Food and Medicine, ed. N. L. Etkin, D. R. Harris, and P. J. Houghton (London: Royal Botanic Gardens Press, 1998), 169–70; Caroline Roullier et al., “Historical Collections Reveal Patterns of Diffusion of Sweet Potato in Oceania Obscured by Modern Plant Movements and Recombination,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 110, no. 6 (February 5, 2013): 2205–10; and Monica Tromp and John V. Dudgeon, “Differentiating Dietary and Non-dietary Microfossils Extracted from Human Dental Calculus: The Importance of Sweet Potato to Ancient Diet on Rapa Nui,” Journal of Archaeological Science 54 (February 2015): 54–63. A more recent study clarifies the origins of the sweet potato and posits a long-distance dispersal in pre-human times; see Pablo Muñoz-Rodríguez et al., “Reconciling Conflicting Phylogenies in the Origin of Sweet Potato and Dispersal to Polynesia,” Current Biology 28, no. 8 (April 2018): 1246–56. This last conclusion, however, is based on only one sample. On coconuts, see H. C. Harries, “Dissemination and Classification of Cocos nucifera,” Botanical Review 44, no. 3 (September 1978): 265–319; and Luc Baudoin, Bee F. Gunn, and Kenneth M. Olsen, “The Presence of Coconut in Southern Panama in Pre-Columbian Times: Clearing Up the Confusion,” Annals of Botany 113, no. 1 (November 2013): 1–5. The case of chickens is more controversial. See Alice A. Storey et al., “Radiocarbon and DNA Evidence for a Pre-Columbian Introduction of Polynesian Chickens to Chile,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 104, no. 25 (June 19, 2007): 10335–39. Although some doubts were raised early on, the authors have addressed them in Alice A. Storey, Daniel Quiróz, and Elizabeth A. Matisoo-Smith, “A Reappraisal of the Evidence for Pre-Columbian Introduction of Chickens to the Americas,” in Jones et al., Polynesians in America, 139–70. But the results are still not without challenges. See Thomson et al., “Using Ancient DNA to Study the Origins and Dispersal of Ancestral Polynesian Chickens Across the Pacific,” 4826–31.
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23. For a good introduction, see Ben Finney, “Nautical Cartography and Traditional Navigation in Oceania,” in The History of Cartography, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 2:443–92; and Ben Finney and Sam Low, “Navigation,” in Vaka Moana, Voyages of the Ancestors: The Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific, ed. K. R. Howe (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), 156–96.
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24. Paul Rainbird, The Archaeology of Micronesia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 52–62. David Abulafia’s expansive treatment of the oceans came too late for the writing of this book. But I wholeheartedly agree with him that it is crucial to document the role of non-Europeans in the early history of the oceans without denying the transformative effect of Europeans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. David Abulafia, The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), passim.
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1. A Global Race
1. On this massive insurrection, see Carlos Se
mpat Assadourian, Zacatecas: Conquista y transformación de la frontera en el siglo XVI; Minas de plata, guerra, y evangelización (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2008); Ida Altman, The War for Mexico’s West: Indians and Spaniards in New Galicia, 1524–1550 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010), chap. 5; and Alberto Carrillo Cázares, ed., El debate sobre la Guerra Chichimeca, 1531–1585, 2 vols. (Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 2000), passim. Navidad had served as the starting port for coastal and transpacific attempts to reach Asia in 1542. Its northerly location made sense for the coastal expedition led by Juan Rodríguez de Cabrillo. See Richard Flint and Shirley Cushing Flint, A Most Splendid Company: The Coronado Expedition in Global Perspective (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2019), 87–89. Starting from Navidad, however, made far less sense for a purely transpacific expedition.
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2. On the long preparations at Navidad, see especially Luis Muro, “La expedición Legazpi-Urdaneta a las Filipinas: Organización, 1557–1564,” in Historia y sociedad en el mundo de habla española, ed. Bernardo García Martínez et al. (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1970), 141–216; and above all the primary sources transcribed in José Ignacio Rubio Mañé, “La expedición de Miguel López de Legazpi a Filipinas,” Boletín del Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico City), 2nd ser., 5, nos. 3–4 (1964): 755–98.
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3. On the tonnage of the ships of discovery, see the discussion in María del Cármen Mena, Sevilla y las flotas de Indias: La Gran Armada de Castilla del Oro (1513–1514) (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 1998), 241–46.
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4. On Lope Martín’s life story, as well as that of Friar Andrés de Urdaneta, see the chapters that follow. For the preparations, see especially Muro, “La expedición Legazpi-Urdaneta a las Filipinas,” 189–96.
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5. The quote is from “Traslado de la Capitulación de Tordesillas,” Arévalo, June 7, 1494, in Colección general de documentos relativos a las Islas Filipinas existentes en el Archivo de Indias de Sevilla, 5 vols. (Barcelona: Compañía General de Tabacos de Filipinas, 1918), vol. 1, document 6, emphasis added. For the negotiations after Columbus’s return, see Antonio Rumeu de Armas, El Tratado de Tordesillas: Rivalidad hispano-lusa por el dominio de océanos y continentes (Madrid: MAPFRE, 1992), 99–150. Columbus himself was probably the first to suggest dividing the Atlantic between the two powers, a conclusion that arises from a letter sent by the Catholic monarchs to Columbus dated September 5, 1493, stating that “la raya que vos dijistes que debía venir en la bula del papa.” See quote and analysis in Rumeu de Armas, El Tratado de Tordesillas, 116. See also Luís Adão da Fonseca and Cristina Cunha, O Tratado de Tordesilhas e a diplomacia Luso-Castelhana no século XV (Lisbon: Inapa, 1991), passim; Alfonso García-Gallo de Diego, “Las bulas de Alejandro VI y el ordenamiento jurídico de la expansión portuguesa y castellana en Africa e Indias,” Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español 27–28 (1957): 461–830; István Szászdi León-Borja, “Las paces de Tordesillas en peligro: Los refugiados portugueses y el dilema de la guerra,” in Las relaciones entre Portugal y Castilla en la época de los descubrimientos y la expansión colonial, ed. Ana María Carabias Torres (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1996), 117–32; and Antonio Sánchez Martínez, “De la ‘cartografía oficial’ a la ‘cartografía jurídica’: La querella de las Molucas reconsiderada, 1479–1529,” Nuevo Mundo online, 2009, https://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/56899, among others.
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6. After the War of the Castilian Succession (1475–1479)—in which Portugal backed a rival of Isabella to the throne of Castile and lost—the two Iberian neighbors were eager to let bygones be bygones, guarantee the security of their unpopulated border region in Iberia, and instead channel their energies into the realm of exploration. For instance, according to the Treaty of Alcáçovas (1479), Spain secured possession of the Canary Islands—an excellent base for further exploration on the coast of Africa—while Portugal retained Madeira, the Azores, and Cape Verde, and cunningly negotiated the exclusive right of exploring and colonizing other lands of the Atlantic Ocean south of the Canary Islands. This set the stage for the ensuing competition not only in the Atlantic but also beyond. For one thing, the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 drew a meridian line down the middle of the Atlantic but did not address the crucial issue that a similar line on the other side of the world would need to be drawn as well. For a broad context, see Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration (New York: Norton, 2006), 196–97.
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7. As Juan Gil has noted about Portugal and Spain: “The history of these two nations, so similar and so distinct, so amicable and so rivalrous at the same time, is the result of their common actions.” Juan Gil, El exilio portugués en Sevilla: De los Braganza a Magallanes (Seville: Fundación Cajasol, 2009), 8. On Portugal’s population, see the discussion in Alain Milhou, “América frente a los sueños orientales (1492–principios del siglo XVV),” in España y América en una perspectiva humanista: Homenaje a Marcel Bataillon, ed. Joseph Pérez (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1998), 146–47; and Charles Ralph Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415–1825 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969), 4–5. For the larger context, see Bailey W. Diffie and George D. Winius, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 1515–1580 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977), 195–219; and Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, A Nation upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492–1640 (London: Oxford University Press, 2007), 17–39. For a slightly higher estimate, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Holding the World in Balance: The Connected Histories of the Iberian Overseas Empire, 1500–1640,” American Historical Review 112, no. 5 (December 2007): 1366. I thank Ryan Crewe for his sound bibliographic suggestions. In emphasizing Portugal’s initial maritime prowess, I do not mean to imply that Spain did not develop it as well in the course of the sixteenth century, as will become obvious later on. For a discussion of this, see Brian Patrick Jones, “Making the Ocean: Global Space, Sailor Practice, and Bureaucratic Archives in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish Maritime Empire” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2014).
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8. Demographic numbers for Spain in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are somewhat speculative. In addition to Subrahmanyam, “Holding the World in Balance,” see Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 1:394–95; and more recently J. H. Elliott West, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 53. The difference in maritime orientation between Portugal and Spain is one of degree, of course. As mentioned, some Spanish kingdoms had explored the Atlantic, particularly Andalusia, the Basque Country, the peoples of Mallorca and Barcelona, and even Castilians. There is no question, however, as reflected in the Treaty of Alcáçovas, that by the late fifteenth century, Portugal’s policies of expansion were far more oriented toward the ocean. See Rumeu de Armas, El Tratado de Tordesillas, 14–85.
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9. The quotes are from Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, 3 vols. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1986), 1:34–35. Columbus’s early years remain murky. For instance, there are discrepancies about the date when he first arrived in Portugal. The documentation places Columbus in Savona and Genoa in the early 1470s. He still appears before a notary with his mother and brother in Savona on August 7, 1473. After that, the paper trail in Italy disappears, so his relocation to Portugal is possible at any date after the summer of 1473. At the other end, his arrival in Portugal must have occurred no later than May 1476. For the documents in Savona and Genoa, see Juan Pérez de Tudela, ed., Colección documental del descubrimiento (1470–1506), 3 vols. (Madrid: Editorial MAPFRE, 1994), 1:1–13. On Columbus’s years in Portugal, see especially Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (Boston: Little, Brow
n and Company, 1942), 35–39; and Diffie and Winius, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 167. See also Francisco de Freitas Branco, “Cristóvão Colombo em Portugal, na Madeira, no Porto Santo,” Ibero-Amerikanisches Archiv 12, no. 1 (1986): 28.
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10. The quote is from Andrés Bernáldez, Historia de los Reyes Católicos Don Fernando y Doña Isabel (Seville: Imprenta de José María Geofrin, 1870), 357. Bernáldez met Columbus in Seville and offered him lodging in his house. On the Italian community in Portugal, see Carmen M. Radulet, “A política de D. João II e a comunidade italiana em Portugal,” in D. João II: O mar e o universalismo lusíada (Lisbon: Instituto Hidrográfico, 2000), 65–69; Diffie and Winius, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 167; and Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, 35–37. On mapmaking and the Columbus brothers, see George E. Nunn, “The Three Maplets Attributed to Bartholomew Columbus,” Imago Mundi 9, no. 1 (1952): 12–14. By “Italian,” I mean a community coming from the Italian peninsula, as there was no Italian nation in the fifteenth century.