Rainer F. Buschmann. Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507–1899

The Pacific was “a Spanish Lake” for two hundred years because no one else wanted it. Only Spaniards had any incentive to maintain regular commerce across an unrewarding ocean. In the late eighteenth century, however, British and French navigators intruded as they adumbrated global strategies, developed scientific interests, and identified Pacific resources. Meanwhile British and Russian expansion in North America and Siberia, respectively, drew rival empires to the ocean’s shores and the growth of Spanish colonies increased the market opportunities. 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 argues that Spaniards never valued the Pacific in its own right, but only as an “extension” (7) of other imperial possessions. They narrated a continuous history of maritime achievement to ward off imprecations of decline. “This continuity,” Buschmann concludes, “hinged upon a conceptual merger of events spanning the Atlantic and Pacific oceans” (201). For Spaniards, the Pacific was part of the Americas, not an arena in itself, and therefore inalienable to other empires. French and English navigators were rediscoverers in already preempted seas.

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