An epic history of the Spanish empire in North America from 1493 to 1898
by Robert Goodwin, author of Spain: The Centre of the World.
At the conclusion of the American Revolution, half the modern United
States was part of the vast Spanish Empire. The year after Columbus'
great voyage of discovery, in 1492, he claimed Puerto Rico and the
Virgin Islands for Spain. For the next 300 years, thousands of proud
Spanish conquistadors and their largely forgotten Mexican allies went in
search of glory and riches from Florida to California. Many died; few
triumphed. Some were cruel; some were curious; some were kind.
Missionaries and priests yearned to harvest Indian souls for God through
baptism and Christian teaching.
Theirs was a frontier world which Spain struggled to control in the face
of Indian resistance and competition from France, Britain and finally
the United States. In the 1800s, Spain lost it all.
Goodwin tells this history through the lives of the people who made it
happen and the literature and art with which they celebrated their
successes and mourned their failures. He weaves an epic tapestry from
these intimate biographies of explorers and conquerors, like Columbus
and Coronado, but also lesser known characters, like the powerful Gálvez
family, who gave invaluable and largely forgotten support to the
American patriots during the Revolutionary War; the great Pueblo leader
Popay; and Esteban, the first documented African American. Like
characters in a great play or a novel, Goodwin's protagonists walk the
stage of history with heroism and brio and much tragedy.
