Maps and narratives of spanish explorations

Producing the Pacific
Maps and Narratives of
Spanish Exploration (1567-1606)


Portada
Hispánica
18
Consejo de dirección
Patrick Collard (Universidad de Gante)
Hub. Hermans (Universidad de Groninga)
Francisco Lasarte (Universidad de Utrecht)
Maarten Steenmeijer (Universidad de Nimega)
Rina Walthaus (Universidad de Groninga)

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005


Producing the Pacific
Maps and Narratives of
Spanish Exploration (1567-1606)

Mercedes Maroto Camino


Cover illustration: Anon, Fool’s Cap Map (c.1590).
©National Maritime Museum (London).
Cover design: Peggy Vogel
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”.

ISBN: 90-420-1994-8
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2005
Printed in The Netherlands


Contents

Page
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations and Credit Lines
1.

Introduction: Imag(in)ing the Southern Continent,
1567 – 1606

7
11

15

2.

Exploring the South Pacific
29
2.1
Failure and Futility in the Voyages of Mendaña
and Quirós
31
2.2
The (Mis)representation of Isabel Barreto: Woman,

Governor and Admiral of the Isles of Solomon
44

3.

Mapping the Pacific
3.1
Plotting the Southern Continent
3.2
Staging the Southern Continent

4.

Performing the South Pacific

101

5.

Conclusion: Inventing, Performing and Practising:
The Production of the Early Modern Pacific

121

Works Cited
Index

69
72
82

127
135


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Acknowledgements
The support I have received throughout the research and
writing of this book makes it quite a collective endeavour. It is
certainly a pleasure to be able to name some of those people and
institutions without whom this book could never have been completed.
First of all, my own institution, The University of Auckland,
has given me the necessary support in terms of resources and time,
including a sabbatical semester, three Research Grants and a Research
Excellence Award, all of which have been important for the
completion of the project. The climate of collegiality in the Faculty of
Arts and the School of European Languages and Literatures has also
been essential. I am extremely grateful to my colleagues Christine
Arkinstall, Jan Crosthwaite, Kathryn Lehman, Walescka Pino-Ojeda
and Wendy-Llyn Zaza as well as graduate students such as Gwyn Fox
and Lara Anderson who make my work a very rewarding experience
indeed. My dear colleague and mentor, Michael Neill, deserves a very
special mention for his unwavering support throughout the years. I
wish to thank Anne Salmond for giving me the opportunity to extend
the project started with the present book in the years to come.
I am deeply indebted to many institutions for providing the
financial support that has enabled me to complete the necessary
archival research for the book.

In chronological terms, this project first received support from
the Hermon Dunlap Smith Center for the History of Cartography at
the Newberry Library in Chicago. During the cold winter months I
spent there in 1999-2000, Jim Akerman, Robert Karrow, Pat Morris
and Arthur Holzheimer were, as always, extremely generous with their
time and knowledge.
Next, the American Geographical Society gave me a fourweek fellowship to work in its wonderful collection at the Golda Meir
Library of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I wish to
acknowledge especially Chris Baruth and Jovanka Ristic for their
kindness.
In the United Kingdom, the National Maritime Museum
(Greenwich) awarded me a three-month Caird Fellowship during my


8

sabbatical leave in 2001. In this wonderful setting, I was able to
consult their bottomless archives in an atmosphere of scholarly and
community vibrancy. Besides everyone who worked with me there, I
wish to thank especially Nigel Rigby. While in London, I also had the
opportunity to work at the British Library and the Royal Geographical
Society. The knowledge and hospitality of Peter Barber and Francis
Herbert are indeed deeply appreciated.
During 2002 and 2003, the Royal Society of New Zealand
gave me a generous two-year Marsden Grant which relieved me from
some of my teaching and provided funds for travelling. I could then
dedicate some additional time to the book, undertake some further
research in Spain and, more importantly, count on the efficient
Research Assistantship of Gwyn Fox, who now knows more about
sources on Spanish navigation than me. In fact, Gwyn has done the

most thorough editing work one could have wished for and has
completed the Index with the utmost efficiency, for which I am sure
many readers will be thankful, as it is a remarkable piece of work in
its scope and accuracy.
Igor Dreki from the Department of Geography of my
university worked the wonderful maps that illustrate the journeys dealt
with in this paper, and I am very grateful to him for them.
An earlier version of chapter 3.2 Staging the Southern
Continent appeared in the journal of the Australian Map Circle The
Globe 54 (2003): 13-22.
I also have to acknowledge the invaluable help and
encouragement of colleagues who generously read and appraise one’s
work. Among them, I owe the greatest debt to Tom Conley, Jonathan
Lamb, John Brotherton and Jonathan Tittler. And I am very grateful to
Bill Richardson from Adelaide for introducing me to a lot of useful
information about his own work and sources to consult in Australia, to Rina Walthaus, editor of the series for her careful and constructive
editing, and to Marieke Schilling, for her patience and invaluable help
with book’s layout. Above all, Malcolm Read and Christine Arkinstall
deserve a very special mention for having painstakingly read the whole
manuscript and offered many invaluable suggestions. Needless to say,
remaining errors and inconsistencies are certainly the author’s.
I also want to mention that this book would not have been
produced without the groundwork provided by the astonishing
investigations of the late Celsus Kelly, O. F. M. His Franciscan
colleagues and the librarians of the St Paschal Library in Melbourne
are keeping that tradition alive and I have also benefited from their


9

hospitality. Likewise, the investigations of Amancio Landín and of
Francisco Mellen have also been instrumental in the development of
the argument. In addition, Paco has kindly answered many queries and
has provided more than a few interesting insights.
Finally, many people, including friends and family, have also
been helpful in other ways. Special thanks are due to my parents and
siblings, especially to my sister, Carmen, and to Chris, Paula, Pilar,
Malcolm, Matthew, Gwyn, Lara, Antonio, Jayne, Elena, Geoff, Fiona,
Rosita, Ali and, last but not least, Dave. This book is for them.


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List of Illustrations and Credit Lines
Itineraries
1.
2.

3.

Itinerary of the voyage of Álvaro de Mendaña to the
Solomons (1567-68). By Igor Dreki.
Itinerary of the voyage of Álvaro de Mendaña, Isabel Barreto
and Pedro Fernández de Quirós to Santa Cruz (1595). By Igor
Dreki.
Itinerary of the voyage of Pedro Fernández de Quirós and
Luis Váez de Torres to Vanuatu and Torres Strait (1605-6).
By Igor Dreki.

Illustrations
1.
2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Abraham Ortelius, “Typus Orbis Terrarum” (1570). From:
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. ©National Maritime Museum.
Ambrosius Macrobius. [No title]. Brescia (1483). After the
fifth-century Roman philosopher Macrobius. From: “In
Somnium Scipionis expositio ….” BL I. B. 31072. By
Permission of the British Library.
Beatus of Liébana [No title] (11th century). From:
“Commentary on the Apocalypse ….” (C11). Biblioteca
Nacional (Madrid).
Robert Thorne, “Orbis Universalis Descriptio” (1527). From:
Richard Hakluyt’s “Diverse voyages touching the discovery
of America …” (1582). BL C.21.b.35. By Permission of the
British Library.
Hessel Gerritsz. [No title]. From: “Beschryvinghe Vander
Samoyeden Landt ….” BL 1045. e (15) (1). By Permission of
the British Library.
Claudius Ptolemy. [No title], Ulm (1482). From: “Opus Donni
Nicolai Germani …”. BL IC. 9304. By Permission of the

British Library.


12

7.
8.
9.
10.

11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.

17.
18.

19.
20.

21.

22.
23.

Francesco Rosselli. [No title]. c.1508. ©National Maritime
Museum.

Diego Ribeiro, “Carta universal [...]” (1529). ©Biblioteca
Apostólica Vaticana (Vatican).
Battista Agnese. [No title] (c.1536) (1544). Biblioteca
Nacional (Madrid).
Oronce Finé, “Nova Et Integra Universi Orbis Descriptio”
(1531 [1532]). BL 798.cc.2. By Permission of the British
Library.
Giacomo Gastaldi, “Universale (1546). BL Maps K. Top.
IV.6. By Permission of the British Library.
Giovani Camocio, “Cosmographia Universalis [...]” (1567).
©National Maritime Museum.
Sebastian Münster, “Typus Universalis” (1546). BL 566.i.14.
By Permission of the British Library.
Pierre Desceliers, [No title] (1550). BL Add. 24065. By
Permission of the British Library.
Nicholas Desliens, [No title] (1567). ©National Maritime
Museum.
Rumold Mercator, “Orbis Terrae Compendiosa …” (1587).
Based on Gerard Mercator (1569). ©National Maritime
Museum.
López de Velasco, “Demarcacion y Diuision de las Indias”
(1575). John Carter Brown Library.
Abraham Ortelius, “Typus Orbis Terrarum” (1589). From:
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1589). ©National Maritime
Museum.
Abraham Ortelius, “Maris Pacifici” (1589). From: Theatrum
Orbis Terrarum (1589). ©National Maritime Museum.
Diego de Prado, Phelipe y Santiago. Archivo de Simancas
(Valladolid), the Bay of St Philip and St James in Vanuatu’s
Espiritu Santo.

Anon, Demonstracion delas Yslas de Salomon que descubrio
de Adelantado Alvaro de Avendaño (second half of the
seventeenth century). Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid).
Pedro Fernández de Quirós, [No title] (1595). Newberry
Library (Chicago).
Jodocus Hondius, “Typus Orbis Terrarum” (1589). ©National
Maritime Museum (London).


13

24.

25.
26.
27.
28.
29.

30.

31.

Hugh Broughton, “A Map of the Earth With names (the most)
from Scriptures” (c.1590). BL C.70.b.3. From: “A Concent of
Scripture…”. By Permission of the British Library.
Anon, Fool’s Cap Map (c.1590). ©National Maritime
Museum (London).
Jodocus Hondius, “Christian Knight Map” (c.1597). Maps
188.k.1.(5). By Permission of The British Library.

Frontispiece. Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum
(1570). ©National Maritime Museum (London).
Abraham Ortelius, “Parergon” (1598). From: Theatrum Orbis
Terrarum (1598). ©National Maritime Museum.
Abraham Ortelius, “Geographia Sacra” (1598). From:
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1598). ©National Maritime
Museum.
Abraham Ortelius, “Geographia Sacra” (1598) (Detail). From:
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1598). ©National Maritime
Museum.
Abraham Ortelius, “Maris Pacifici” (1589) (Detail). From:
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1598). ©National Maritime
Museum.


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1. Introduction: Imag(in)ing the Southern Continent,
1567 - 1606
“Who controls the past controls the future;
who controls the present controls the past”
(George Orwell)
“(Social) space is a (social) product¨
(Henri Lefebvre 1991: 26)

The exploration of the Pacific in the early modern period was
informed by various beliefs and assumptions. Prominent among these
is the search for the Isles of Gold and Silver, which are referred to as
Chryse and Argyre in classical sources and by the Spanish and

Portuguese as Rica de Oro and Rica de Plata. More important,
especially for the South Pacific, is the debate as to whether a fourth
continent, Terra Australis Incognita, existed and was inhabited. As
will be seen throughout this work, these and other biblical, classical,
cartographic and folkloric beliefs converged with the literature of
exploration to produce the notion of “the South Seas” or, as we know
it today, “the Pacific.”1 It is this interaction or, to borrow a literary
term, this intertextuality, that enabled the invention, construction,
performance and production of the Pacific in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.
The early modern Spanish, English and Dutch forays into the
Pacific followed and created an imaginary design that presented this
ocean as an area of geographical, economic, missionary or colonial
importance. Imagining the Pacific is, in fact, the first part of a
complex process that entails not just image and invention but also
performance and production. In other words, conceptualising the
Pacific is a step of a process that is dependent on facts or fictions as
well as on presentation, representation, performance, practice and
production. The final outcome is the production of the South Pacific


16

1. Introduction: Imag(in)ing the Southern Continent, 1567 - 1606

as a geo-political space that is rendered readable by means of the
mental activities of imagining and inventing as well as the
performative and productive activities that make it “real” for viewers
and audiences.
In order to trace the process of signification in which a space

becomes culturally meaningful I analyse here narratives, maps and
rituals, which are central to the idea of producing the Pacific. This
process, which originates in the representation of exploration in
written narratives, is also embedded in maps and rituals that
effectively stage and perform a spatial environment. As will be seen
below, the study of maps, narratives and rituals as a single object of
study affords an insight into the peculiar ethnography of exploration
that informed the production of the South Pacific.
The movement studied in this book thus goes from the mental
activity of imagining to the ultimate production of the South Pacific.
In other words, I trace the transition from invention to performance to
product. The final outcome is the “Pacific,” as we understand it, that is
to say, a space that has been rendered readable and therefore
accessible by means of a productive process. As Henri Lefebvre
observes: “an already produced space can be decoded, can be read.
Such a space implies a process of signification” (1991: 17). To trace
the process of signification that culminates in the production of the
Pacific as a space that is culturally and geographically relevant means
interpreting these various “representations” as cultural texts. In other
words, my study fits in with the analysis of culture as “thick
description,” as proposed by Clifford Geertz (1973).
The earlier voyage of Ferdinand Magellan (1519-21) and the
important journeys of James Cook in the last third of the eighteenth
century provide the points of departure and closure for the
development of the Pacific. The importance of those voyages for the
history of world exploration has been amply documented. This is not
the case with the three voyages of Spanish exploration of the Pacific
from the west coast of South America that took place between 1567
and 1606, that are the central point of this book. For these voyages, as
will be seen below, the Americas are important because, from the

Spanish point of view, they were meant to extend their discovery of
the new world. Moreover, the expeditions departed from Callao in
Peru and were staffed by many people already living in this colony.


1. Introduction: Imag(in)ing the Southern Continent, 1567 – 1606

17

Consequently, the colonial development of the Americas provides the
departure point, literal as well as discursive, for a “Spanish lake” that
gradually grew to acquire the contemporary dimensions of what today
is known as the South Pacific basin.2
The last ocean to be thoroughly explored and mapped, the
South Sea was imagined during the fifteenth century from resilient
myths that were finally laid to rest by Captain Cook. Before Cook’s
voyages, the South Pacific remained one of the least known parts of
the world. The Solomons, discovered in 1567 by Álvaro de Mendaña,
found their way into maps but remained elusive to later explorers until
well into the eighteenth century. From New Zealand to Tasmania in
the west and to Easter Island in the east there were blank spaces that
still suggested the possibility of a large Southern Continent, normally
referred to as Terra Australis Incognita or Magellanica. For two and a
half centuries after Magellan’s circumnavigation mapmakers laid
down Terra Australis on their maps with little new evidence for its
existence or lack of it, even after Pedro Fernández de Quirós’ second
journey in 1606 and Abel Tasman’s voyage in 1642-43.3 This view is
clearly presented in the most famous map of the time, Abraham
Ortelius’ Typus Orbis Terrarum, which appeared in the first world
published in 1570, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Fig. 1).

The discovery of the Southern Continent or Terra Australis
Incognita was behind the sixteenth-century journeys to the South
Pacific. Enthusiasts such as Quirós and Mendaña buttressed a belief
whose last remarkable upholder was Alexander Dalrymple in the
eighteenth century.4 The elusive geography of this area of the world
informs two and a half centuries of exploration, ranging from the first
round-the-world circumnavigation led by Magellan to the first voyage
of Cook in 1768-71. In fact, Cook arrived in the Bay of St Philip and
St James (“Big Bay”) in Vanuatu’s Santo (named Espiritu Santo by
Quirós) in 1774. The island’s previous European visitor had been its
discoverer, Quirós, who nearly 170 years before, in 1606, believed
this island to be the northern tip of the Southern Continent and named
it Austrialia del Espiritu Santo.
Previous to Cook’s voyages, the prevalent view of the Pacific
was largely the result of various myths that were peppered with
second-hand accounts of the Spanish and Dutch journeys during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Classical and medieval
geographers had, in turn, informed these voyagers’ belief that, if the


18

1. Introduction: Imag(in)ing the Southern Continent, 1567 - 1606

earth were to remain in equilibrium, the landmasses of the Northern
Hemisphere must be balanced.5 The concept of a vast southern
continent was inherited from the cosmography of the Classical era and
the Christian Middle Ages. As imagined, this continent embraced
today’s Antartica, New Zealand and Australia as well as the islands in
the South Pacific, and was thought to extend from the South Pole into

the Tropics, and to be bounded by the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian
Oceans.
Of paramount importance in the construction of the South
Pacific was the account of Marco Polo’s voyages, written c.1298.
Polo’s legacy was enduring indeed, and it was circulated in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by means of maps in which the
names Beach, Locach and Maletur appeared, as will be seen below.6
Polo’s narrative, which was widely used by mapmakers as well as
explorers during the early modern period, deals briefly with this area
of the world that, he said, could be found
[u]pon leaving the island of Java, and steering a course between
south and south-west, seven hundred miles, you fall in with two
islands, the larger of which is named Sondur, and the other Kondur.
Both being uninhabited, it is unnecessary to say more respecting
them. Having run the distance of fifty miles from these islands, in a
south-easterly direction, you reach an extensive and rich province,
that forms a part of the main land, and is named Lochac [sic]. Its
inhabitants are idolaters. They have a language peculiar to
themselves, and are governed by their own king, who pays no tribute
to any other, the situation of the country being such as to protect it
from any hostile attack [...] In this country sappan, or brezil wood, is
produced in large quantities. Gold is abundant to a degree scarcely
credible; elephants are found there; and objects of the chase, either
with dogs or birds, are in plenty [...] Besides these circumstances
there is nothing further that requires mention, unless it be that the
country is wild and mountainous, and is little frequented by
strangers. (1983: 335-36)

Sixteenth-century explorers, including Magellan, were
mesmerised by the idea of Polo’s Southern Continent and the belief

that somewhere in the mythical east there were wealthy islands of gold
and silver that they were destined to encounter. From classical times,
geographers had alluded repeatedly to the existence of these islands,
Chryse and Argyre.7 However consistent their belief in the existence


1. Introduction: Imag(in)ing the Southern Continent, 1567 – 1606

19

of these islands, they were rather vague concerning their location. For
example, Pliny indicated their proximity to the river Indus (Sind),
whereas Pomponius Mela located Argyre by the Ganges and Chryse
by Tamu.8
In the Christian Middle Ages, there was some debate among
scholars about these islands as well as the possible existence of the
fourth continent and whether it could be inhabited. Since it was said in
the Bible that the Gospel had reached all peoples on earth, St
Augustine was adamant that this continent could not be inhabited.9
Similarly, the influential work of the fifth-century Roman philosopher,
Ambrosius Macrobius, presented the fourth area of the world as
uninhabitable on account of the heat of the Torrid Zone, which
separated it from the known universe or oikumene (Fig. 2). Macrobius
was very influential throughout the Middle Ages and his book, In
Somnium Scipionis, included versions of this diagrammatical
representation of the world in which the world was divided into
climatic zones.
Unlike other classical and Christian scholars, Beatus of
Liebana’s conception of the world followed St Isidore of Seville in
considering that this Antipodean stretch of land could be inhabited, as

seen in the maps based on his worldview published throughout the
Middle Ages (Fig. 3).10 Though he was an eighth-century scholar,
Beatus’ view was of lasting importance, and medieval editions of his
book, Commentary on the Apocalypse of Saint John (776-86),
reproduced a mappamundi with this worldview. Beatus’ maps also
locate the isles of Chryse and Argyre in the east; that is, at the top of
the map, just opposite the Terrestrial Paradise.11 Similarly, the
seventh-century Christian scholar, Saint Isidore, also located them in
the east.12 In his study on early mapping of the Pacific, Lawrence
Wroth sums up the geographical notions developed by these medieval
thinkers as follows:
Thus the idea of the Terra Australis came to the Middle Ages with
double authority—the belief in the theory expressed by St. Isidore of
Seville, embodied graphically in the maps that accompanied certain
manuscripts of the Beatus Apocalypse, and the acceptance of it by
Cicero, transmitted by the commentary and map of Macrobius.
(2001: 168)


20

1. Introduction: Imag(in)ing the Southern Continent, 1567 - 1606

The most famous of medieval apocryphal travellers, John of
Mandeville, suggested that the islands of silver and gold could be
found next to Taproban. In fact, two distinct wealthy and mythical
islands are identified in the Bible as Ophir and Tarshish. It is written
there that the servants of King Solomon brought the gold with which
the Temple was built from the islands of Ophir and Tarshish.13 The
relevant passage reads as follows:

And King Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezionber, which is
beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom. And
Hiram sent in the navy his servants, shipmen that had knowledge of
the sea, with the servants of Solomon. And they came to Ophir, and
fetched thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it
to King Solomon.
For the King had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram,
once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and
silver, ivory and apes, and peacocks.14

In relation to the Ophirian conjecture, Columbus set a clear
precedent for the explorers-to-come. The search for the gold of
“Tarsis,” which he believed to be in the Far East, next to Cathay,
could serve, Columbus thought, for the reconstruction of a second
temple like that of Solomon and help deliver Jerusalem (Gil 25).15
These elusive islands were also one of the objectives of the
Magellanic circumnavigation. As Oskar Spate points out: “[T]he
design [of this journey] [...] was not for a circumnavigation but for a
Southwest Passage to the Moluccas; and another possible objective in
Magellan’s mind was the gold of Tarshish and Ophir, identified with
the Lequeos—the Ryukyu islands—already known to the Portuguese”
(1979: 37).
A few years later, Sebastian Cabot’s journey of 1526 was
likewise directed to encounter the islands of Ophir and Tarshish, the
search for which is amalgamated with that of Cathay, Cipango and the
Spice Islands.16 The goal of Cabot’s journey is suggested in Robert
Thorne’s map of 1527, which is reproduced in Richard Hakluyt’s The
principal navigations, voyages, traffics and discoveries of the English
nation made by sea or over land, first published in 1582 (Fig.4).
Thorne’s map shows in the southern hemisphere, close to Moabar and

Gelolo, the islands of Tarshish and Ophir, which leads Juan Gil to
conclude that Cabot was searching not so much for spices as for the
gold, silver and precious stones from these islands:17


1. Introduction: Imag(in)ing the Southern Continent, 1567 – 1606

21

[E]n 1527 envió Thorne al embajador inglés Lee un mapamundi que
indica a las claras la meta a la que se dirigía Caboto: en efecto, en el
hemisferio austral al lado de Moabar y Gelolo, aparecen dibujadas
Insule Tharsis et Offir ditissime [...] la expedición de Caboto no iba
por especiería, sino por oro, plata y piedras preciosas, los productos
que daba la tierra de las islas de Salomón. (31)
In 1527 Thorne sent to the English ambassador, Lee, a mappamundi
that clearly indicates Cabot’s goal: in the southern hemisphere,
alongside Moabar and Gelolo appear drawings marked Insule
Tharsis et Offir ditissime [...] Cabot’s expedition was not looking for
spices but for gold, silver and precious stones, products of the earth
of the Isles of Solomon.

Not surprisingly, many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
people confused these biblical sites, Ophir and Tarshish, with the
classical Chryse and Argyre and their search informs the three
journeys of exploration studied here. These three voyages, which took
place between 1567 and 1606, are the only journeys that up to this
time were directed exclusively to exploring the southern regions of the
Pacific. The first, which was led by Alvaro de Mendaña de Neira in
1567, left the harbour of Callao in Lima with the fleet that would

discover the Solomons (Itinerary 1). Mendaña also commanded the
second journey to the Pacific in 1595-1596, with Pedro Fernández de
Quirós as pilot (Itinerary 2). During this journey the Solomons were
not found again but the Santa Cruz archipelago was discovered before
Mendaña died. The expedition then returned to the Philippines with
Quirós as pilot under the command of Mendaña’s wife, Isabel Barreto,
who was the first-ever woman Admiral. Quirós was to lead the third
expedition, which also left from Callao in December 1605, with Luis
Vaez de Torres as admiral (Itinerary 3). After five months of
navigation they arrived in Vanuatu’s Espiritu Santo, which they
named and took possession of on the 14th of May 1606.18 The fleet
then separated and Torres travelled along the route today known by
his name, the Torres Strait, thus inferring the insularity of New
Guinea.19 His feat, however, like much documentation concerning
these three journeys, remained largely unknown until the relevant
letter left in the Manila archive was bought, translated and published
by Alexander Dalrymple.


22

1. Introduction: Imag(in)ing the Southern Continent, 1567 - 1606

Between the dates of these three journeys, other people
traversed the Pacific, including the English privateers, Sir Francis
Drake (1577) and John Cavendish (1587). The main objective of both
voyages, however, does not seem to have been exploration of the
Pacific per se, but the attack and plunder of the Spanish towns of the
western South American coast and the Manila Galleon.20 Jonathan
Lamb remarks on this point that:

If there was a point of origin to the history of the British in the
Pacific it would not be found in Drake’s circumnavigation (1577) or
in Narborough’s reconnaissance of the western coast of South
America (1669). These were peeps into the storehouse of the
Spanish Empire that had no hope of establishing a foothold
anywhere near it. (2000: 4)

Nevertheless, by crossing the Pacific, Drake contributed to the
cartographic representations of the area and to the invention of the
Pacific. Therefore, his contribution will be assessed below in the
sections devoted to the maps of the Pacific produced and consumed at
this time.
The three Iberian-sponsored explorations taking place
between 1567 and 1606 and their aims, their achievements or lack of
them, are scrutinised in the first chapter of this book, “Exploring the
South Pacific.” Here the journeys are looked at in their socioeconomic context. Also, the way journeys have been classed as
journeys of discovery, exploration, religious conversion, commerce,
acquisition of knowledge, settlement and/or conquest is questioned.
This functional study leads to the negotiation of previous
classifications in the first section of the chapter, “Failure and Futility
in the Voyages of Mendaña and Quirós.” The second section studies
the contribution to the exploration of the Pacific by Mendaña’s wife,
Isabel Barreto, the first female to command a fleet. “The
(Mis)representation of Isabel Barreto” looks into the reasons for her
historical silencing and the inferences that can be drawn about
historical narrative and its role in the production of the Pacific.
The inextricable relationship between exploration and
representation looked at in the first chapter is complemented with an
analysis of maps as ways to acquire knowledge and power in the
second chapter, “Mapping the Pacific.” The first section of this

1. Introduction: Imag(in)ing the Southern Continent, 1567 – 1606

23

chapter, “Plotting the Southern Continent,” exposes various maps
produced and used at this time and presents them as cultural artifacts
where art, fiction and reality merge to create an idea of the world that
is as geographical as it is social, moral or religious. This reading is
furthered in the next section, “Staging the Southern Continent,” which
interprets the topos of the world as a stage in relation to world maps
and the Pacific. In these maps, I show, the universe becomes an
imperial theatre where various notions of hegemony and political
dominance are interwoven with the pervading baroque idea of vanitas.
The way meaning is externalised in these maps is likewise
communicated in the important rituals enacted, especially those
related to the possession in the name of the Spanish Crown. The
histrionic ceremonies of possession performed by the discoverers are
seen to contribute to the creation of a geographical and symbolic
space. These rituals are studied in their multiplicity and complexity in
the chapter on “Performing the South Pacific.” Here I consider how
these rituals “perform” a physical space thus invented and
subsequently produced for the occupiers and their intended audiences
away in Europe.21
I offer some concluding remarks about the process of
producing the Pacific in my last chapter, “Inventing, Performing and
Practising: The Production of the Early Modern Pacific.” This
conclusion departs from the assumption that the concepts of image
and imagining are imbricated in the creation and reproduction of

hegemonic relationships. As W. J. T. Mitchell puts it: “visual and
verbal representations are inseparable from struggles in cultural
politics and political culture” (1994: 3).
My study of narratives alongside maps and rituals does not
seek to privilege one or the other, but presents both as equally
valuable sources of cultural information that are always political
constructs. Consequently, their reading is not unique, uniform or
uncontestable.22 I have looked at cultural products as, to borrow John
Berger’s idiom, ways of seeing and interpreting the world, which give
us a multifaceted view of the relationship between culture and society.
This involves stressing the various conditioning factors that have
inhered in the production of the Pacific. In Michel de Certeau’s words,
to interpret means to take into account that culture only exists “in the
plural.”23 Tensions between homogenization and differentiation are


24

1. Introduction: Imag(in)ing the Southern Continent, 1567 - 1606

central to a study of maps and narratives that foregrounds their
production, usage and transformation. This discussion will bring to the
fore relations of production and consumption in order to show how the
world is not a sort of objective given but it is constantly being
(re)produced by historical relations of power.24
Like other spaces we inhabit, the Pacific, I submit, is not
something that is or has always been there, but a space that is
conceptualized, created, invented and produced by means of what
Certeau calls “the practice of everyday life.” Space, as Certeau puts it,
requires practices to be made into a living environment: “A space

exists when one takes into consideration vectors of direction,
velocities, and time variables. Thus space is composed of intersections
of mobile elements. It is in a sense actuated by the ensemble of
movements deployed within it. Space is a practiced place” (1988b:
117). The early modern practice of the Pacific I trace thus not only
illustrates Henri Lefebvre’s claim that “(Social) space is a (social)
product” but also demonstrates that space is as much a social product
as a social producer.

Notes
1

José de Acosta sums up the classical and biblical arguments related to the existence
and habitability of the Antipodes (1987: 74-93) as well as the location of Ophir and
Tarshis (1987: 93-104) in Historia natural y moral de las Indias.

2

This area, which included Australasia and the Moluccan archipelago, was
interestingly described by Lancelot du Voisin as the “third world” (le troisieme
monde). On du Voisin, see Tom Conley(1996: 8 and 278-85).

3

“In 1643 Tasman’s expedition from Batavia passed south of the known west coast of
Australia, discovering the southern coast of Tasmania and the western coast of New
Zealand […[ All the trans-Pacific voyages kept, or were driven by wind and current,
to tropical latitudes for the ocean crossing, and consequently all after Mendaña passed
through islands now identified as the Tuamotu Archipelago. None found the larger
islands of Tahiti, Fiji or Samoa, but all treated their western Pacific landfall […[ as

part of a mainland” (Cook 20). On Tasman’s voyages of 1642-43 and 1644, see
Günter Schilder 1976: 139-205.
4

“Whatever may have been the expressed motives of the next century and a half, or
more, of exploration of the Pacific—the Dutch in the Indies and on the coast of
Australia, the English and Dutch buccaneers on all the coasts, the French with their