Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to MagellanRandom House Publishing Group, 20/11/2013 - 720 من الصفحات 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. |
من داخل الكتاب
الصفحة 5
... thought that there was gold in the River Darro; while the more hardheaded Spanish commanders knew that Granada's principal product was silk, sometimes brought raw from Italy but usually deriving from the mulberries of the valley of the ...
... thought that there was gold in the River Darro; while the more hardheaded Spanish commanders knew that Granada's principal product was silk, sometimes brought raw from Italy but usually deriving from the mulberries of the valley of the ...
الصفحة 16
... thought they could dictate to her. She, on the other hand, seems to have been determined to win the Castilian crown at all costs and would make whatever compromise was necessary to ensure that. The next few years in Isabel's life are ...
... thought they could dictate to her. She, on the other hand, seems to have been determined to win the Castilian crown at all costs and would make whatever compromise was necessary to ensure that. The next few years in Isabel's life are ...
الصفحة 19
... thought him mean. He liked hunting, gambling, and jousting, and above all, women.4" As with Isabel, we can see from portraits what he looked like: in the Real Monasterio de las Huelgas in Burgos, he appears rather dark in complexion. In ...
... thought him mean. He liked hunting, gambling, and jousting, and above all, women.4" As with Isabel, we can see from portraits what he looked like: in the Real Monasterio de las Huelgas in Burgos, he appears rather dark in complexion. In ...
الصفحة 20
... thought of it. His grandfather on his paternal side. King Fernando, called "of Antequera" because of his victory against the Moors there, had predicted and desired it. Fernando gave much thought as to how innovations effective in Aragon ...
... thought of it. His grandfather on his paternal side. King Fernando, called "of Antequera" because of his victory against the Moors there, had predicted and desired it. Fernando gave much thought as to how innovations effective in Aragon ...
الصفحة 33
... thought that the institution should be abolished. Slavery had come to seem uneconomic, it is true, in northern Europe. The English, the northern Franks, and the Flemings already found it better to pay for labor when feudal bonds ...
... thought that the institution should be abolished. Slavery had come to seem uneconomic, it is true, in northern Europe. The English, the northern Franks, and the Flemings already found it better to pay for labor when feudal bonds ...
المحتوى
11 | |
27 | |
Book | 45 |
5 For Gods sake tell me what song you are singing | 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 |
طبعات أخرى - عرض جميع المقتطفات
Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire <span dir=ltr>Hugh Thomas</span> لا تتوفر معاينة - 2013 |
عبارات ومصطلحات مألوفة
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