Moving frontiers, global interests. The South Atlantic Expedition of the Nodal brothers (1618-1619)

MARTINEZ, CAROLINA

Londres

Conferencia; Dire Straits: Patagonia and the Magellan Circumnavigation at 500; 2021

University College London - Institute of Advanced Studies

In 1618, an expedition to America’s southern seas led by brothers Bartolomé García de Nodal and Gonzalo Nodal was ordered by the Spanish Crown with the purpose of verifying the existence of the interoceanic passage discovered by the Dutch south of the island of Tierra del Fuego in 1616. In 1621, the travel account of the Nodal brothers was published together with a summary of the services they had rendered to the king and a map of the area made by Portuguese cartographer Pedro Teixeira Albernaz. Teixeira’s map, which was based on the manuscript chart made by the expedition’s pilot Diego Ramírez de Arellano, evidences that in the early 17th century the furthermost limits of South America were still being explored and were, in consequence, an area in dispute. If, on the one hand, the encounters with local populations oscillated between exchange and confrontation. On the other hand, the growing presence of European maritime powers interested in the Magellanic-Fuegian area constantly redefined the discourses and representations of that peripheral but strategic zone in global terms. A frontier in the making as well as a passage, this presentation intends to analyze the textual and cartographic images produced on the Strait of Magellan in the context of the expedition organized by the Nodal brothers (1618-1619).