Cartography in European Expansion and Consolidation, 1500?1700

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Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History

Oxford University Press

Lugar: Nueva York; Año: 2017;

Mapping during the European overseas expansion, a period regarded to have begun around 1500, was challenged by the European encounter with the New World, in material and practical ways as well as in intellectual terms. It took some time for Europeans to understand the nature of this event, as mappings, maps, political discussions and scientific debates reveal.Slowly started in the late fifteenth century and accelerated at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Iberian crowns initiated not only the exploration overseas and its registration in maps but also the enterprise of making sense of the new discoveries.The disproportionate scale of the absolutely unexpected Iberian "discovery" of the New World was something difficult to understand for its own protagonists, and the confusion that resulted can be appreciated by noting that the Spanish Crown took more than ten years (counting from the first trip of Christopher Columbus in 1492 and another few transatlantic trips that were made in that decade) to create an institution dedicated to administering those overseas territories - the Casa de Contratación.