Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507-1899

Rainer F. Buschmann is professor and founding faculty member of history at the California State University Channel Islands, USA. He has formerly taught at Hawaii Pacific University and Purdue University, USA. He has written extensively on the European interactions with the Pacific Ocean.

• Introduction 1. On Shrinking Continents and Expanding Oceans 2. On Chronometers, Cartography, and Curiosity 3. On Narrating the Pacific 4. On Useful Information 5. On History and Hydrography 6. On the Rediscovery of the Americas Epilogue: On the Lingering Spanish Lake Bibliography Endnotes

“In Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507–1899, Rainer F. Buschmann provides a valuable, well-informed, and stimulating essay on Spanish responses to these changes from the early sixteenth century onward. … The author masters the literature impressively, reads accurately the sources he uses, and wields their evidence perceptively, informatively, and sometimes vividly.” (Felipe Fernández-Armesto, American Historical Review, Vol. 121 (4), October, 2016)“Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean is a very ambitious project, encompassing nearly half a millennium of Pacific ‘visions’ when the ocean was not even a figment in most people’s imaginations. … Iberian Visions offers an incisive political history that documents closely the debates arising from the growing interest in the area. … especially interesting for political historians and thoseseeking information about the ‘legality’ of conquest and colonialism, extending our knowledge of the political backdrop of European imperial rivalries.” (Mercedes Camino, The Journal of Pacific History, Vol. 50 (2), May, 2015)