Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to MagellanRandom House Publishing Group, 20þ/11þ/2013 - 720 ãä ÇáÕÝÍÇÊ From one of the greatest historians of the Spanish world, here is a fresh and fascinating account of Spain’s early conquests in the Americas. Hugh Thomas’s magisterial narrative of Spain in the New World has all the characteristics of great historical literature: amazing discoveries, ambition, greed, religious fanaticism, court intrigue, and a battle for the soul of humankind. Hugh Thomas shows Spain at the dawn of the sixteenth century as a world power on the brink of greatness. Her monarchs, Fernando and Isabel, had retaken Granada from Islam, thereby completing restoration of the entire Iberian peninsula to Catholic rule. Flush with success, they agreed to sponsor an obscure Genoese sailor’s plan to sail west to the Indies, where, legend purported, gold and spices flowed as if they were rivers. For Spain and for the world, this decision to send Christopher Columbus west was epochal—the dividing line between the medieval and the modern. Spain’s colonial adventures began inauspiciously: Columbus’s meagerly funded expedition cost less than a Spanish princess’s recent wedding. In spite of its small scale, it was a mission of astounding scope: to claim for Spain all the wealth of the Indies. The gold alone, thought Columbus, would fund a grand Crusade to reunite Christendom with its holy city, Jerusalem. The lofty aspirations of the first explorers died hard, as the pursuit of wealth and glory competed with the pursuit of pious impulses. The adventurers from Spain were also, of course, curious about geographical mysteries, and they had a remarkable loyalty to their country. But rather than bridging earth and heaven, Spain’s many conquests bore a bitter fruit. In their search for gold, Spaniards enslaved “Indians” from the Bahamas and the South American mainland. The eloquent protests of Bartolomé de las Casas, here much discussed, began almost immediately. Columbus and other Spanish explorers—Cortés, Ponce de León, and Magellan among them—created an empire for Spain of unsurpassed size and scope. But the door was soon open for other powers, enemies of Spain, to stake their claims. Great men and women dominate these pages: cardinals and bishops, priors and sailors, landowners and warriors, princes and priests, noblemen and their determined wives. Rivers of Gold is a great story brilliantly told. More significant, it is an engrossing history with many profound—often disturbing—echoes in the present. |
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ÇáäÊÇÆÌ 1-5 ãä 81
ÇáÕÝÍÉ 8
... Alonso de Pa- lencia, who knew Queen Isabel well, believed that she and her husband, King Fernando, had been determined to bring to an end the independence of Granada from the very beginning of their reign. They had made truces with the ...
... Alonso de Pa- lencia, who knew Queen Isabel well, believed that she and her husband, King Fernando, had been determined to bring to an end the independence of Granada from the very beginning of their reign. They had made truces with the ...
ÇáÕÝÍÉ 17
... Alonso de Palencia,24 historian and humanist, an excellent Latinist, already fifty, was Isabel's secretary. His treatise on how to win military victories was much read by would-be soldiers. He had worked for the equally erudite comvrso ...
... Alonso de Palencia,24 historian and humanist, an excellent Latinist, already fifty, was Isabel's secretary. His treatise on how to win military victories was much read by would-be soldiers. He had worked for the equally erudite comvrso ...
ÇáÕÝÍÉ 20
... Alonso de Quintanilla,43 is said to have paid thirty-six visits to the court of King Enrique at Alcala. Others who distinguished themselves by their prudence included Andres de Cabrera,44 the commander of the Alcazar (fortress) in ...
... Alonso de Quintanilla,43 is said to have paid thirty-six visits to the court of King Enrique at Alcala. Others who distinguished themselves by their prudence included Andres de Cabrera,44 the commander of the Alcazar (fortress) in ...
ÇáÕÝÍÉ 21
... Alonso de Palencia) knelt, as did the municipal council of Segovia, which then formed the only guarantee of her grasp on national power. Cardenas rode in front of a procession with a naked sword to recall thai royal authority could ...
... Alonso de Palencia) knelt, as did the municipal council of Segovia, which then formed the only guarantee of her grasp on national power. Cardenas rode in front of a procession with a naked sword to recall thai royal authority could ...
ÇáÕÝÍÉ 31
... Alonso de Palencia, or The Catechism of Knights (Doctrinal de los Caballeros) by the late Bishop of Burgos, Alonso de Cartagena. Historians used once to dwell on the clothes used in this perambulatory, bellicose court — rightly, since ...
... Alonso de Palencia, or The Catechism of Knights (Doctrinal de los Caballeros) by the late Bishop of Burgos, Alonso de Cartagena. Historians used once to dwell on the clothes used in this perambulatory, bellicose court — rightly, since ...
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11 | |
27 | |
45 | |
70 | |
A white stretch of land | 85 |
7 Tears in the royal eyes | 99 |
They love their neighbors as themselves | 108 |
9 We concede the islands and lands discovered by you | 116 |
Book Six CISNEROS | 354 |
King Fernando He is dead | 357 |
Go back and see what is happening | 375 |
Book Seven CHARLES KING AND EMPEROR | 394 |
The best place in the world for blacks | 397 |
It is clear as day | 414 |
I was moved to act by a natural compassion | 424 |
For empire conies from God alone | 435 |
As if in their own country | 126 |
4 To course oer better waters 183 | 182 |
15 The greatest good that we can wish for | 201 |
Teach them and indoctrinate them with good customs | 218 |
17 Children must constantly obey their parents | 239 |
You ought to send one hundred black slaves | 251 |
And they leapt onto the land | 260 |
Call this other place Amerige | 269 |
Book Four DIEGO COLON | 285 |
A voice trying in the wilderness | 287 |
Infidels may justly defend themselves | 296 |
Without partiality love or hatred | 311 |
Book Five BALBOA AND PEDRAR1AS | 324 |
They took possession of all that sea 327 | 325 |
A man very advanced in excess | 341 |
The new golden land | 444 |
Book Eight NEW SPAIN | 458 |
I am to pass away like a faded flower | 461 |
This land is the richest in the world | 474 |
O our lord thou has suffered | 479 |
Go with good fortune | 495 |
The new emperor 513 | 512 |
From the poplars I come mama | 519 |
Family Trees | 539 |
The Costs of Becoming Emperor 1519 | 545 |
Glossary | 551 |
Notes | 575 |
Index | 661 |
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