Nature and Empire. The Struggle for South America during the Seventeenth Century

GASCON, MARGARITA

Harvard University

Simposio; Harvard University International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World; 2007

Harvard University

Spain was the most powerful Atlantic empire of the seventeenth century, with her core possessions in the Caribbean basin and the Gulf of Mexico. In South America, only Caracas and Buenos Aires were located on the Atlantic rim. Portugal controlled the longest Atlantic coast in Brazil, Patagonia was terra incognita, and the settlements of the viceroyalty of Peru were Pacific-oriented. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Dutch were a clear danger in the South Atlantic, just when the Great Araucanian Revolt of 1598-99 created the opportunity for an alliance between the insurgents and the intruders to expel the Spaniards from the region. The Araucanía was a central piece in the framework designed by the Habsburgs to protect the main colonies in South America -Lima and Potosi. (The viceroyalty of Peru was worthless without these two colonies.) The paper will analyze the defense of the southernmost area of the Spanish empire in the Americas and the agency of nature in the process