Spain's Explorers in the Age of Discovery: The Lives and Legacies of Christopher Columbus, Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro and Ferdinand Magellan

*Includes extracts from Columbus's journal of his first voyage. 

*Includes Cortes's letter to King Charles V describing Tenochtitlan and the Aztec Empire.

*Includes passages from Antonio Pigafetta, a member of Magellan's crew.

*Includes descriptions of both the Aztec and Inca Empires.

*Includes pictures of the explorers and important people and places in their lives.

*Includes a Bibliography for further reading.

*Includes a Table of Contents. 


“At two o'clock in the morning the land was discovered…As I saw that they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force, I presented them with some red caps, and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith they were much delighted, and became wonderfully attached to us.” – Christopher Columbus’s diary, October 11-12, 1492


“Friends and comrades! On that side [south] are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and death; on this side ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches; here, Panama and its poverty. Choose, each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the south.” – Francisco Pizarro


“Among these temples there is one which far surpasses all the rest, whose grandeur of architectural details no human tongue is able to describe; for within its precincts, surrounded by a lofty wall, there is room enough for a town of five hundred families.” – Hernán Cortés


“Most versed in nautical charts, he knew better than any other the true art of navigation, of which it is certain proof that he by his genius, and his intrepidity, without anyone having given him the example, how to attempt the circuit of the globe which he had almost completed... The glory of Magellan will survive him.” – Antonio Pigafetta


The most seminal event of the last millennium might also be its most controversial. As schoolchildren have been taught for over 500 years, “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” In October of that year, the Italian Christopher Columbus immortalized himself by landing in the New World and beginning the process of European settlement in the Americas for Spain, bringing the Age of Exploration to a new hemisphere with him. Ironically, the Italian had led a Spanish expedition, in part because the Portugese rejected his offers in the belief that sailing west to Asia would take too long. 


If Columbus and Cortés were the pioneers of Spain’s new global empire, Pizarro consolidated its immense power and riches, and his successes inspired a further generation to expand Spain’s dominions to unheard of dimensions. Furthermore, he participated in the forging of a new culture: like Cortés, he took an indigenous mistress with whom he had two mixed-race children, and yet the woman has none of the lasting fame of Cortés’s Doña Marina. With all of this in mind, it is again remarkable that Pizarro remains one of the less well-known and less written about of the explorers of his age. 


Today Ferdinand Magellan is remembered as the first man to circumnavigate the globe, an ironic legacy given that he died half a world away from completing that journey. But though it ended catastrophically for Magellan and most of his crew, his expedition accomplished its objective, and in economic terms, the opening up of new trade routes with Asia was a more significant development than the conquest of the Americas for the Europeans of the early 16th century.


Spain's Explorers in the Age of Discovery looks at the lives of the explorers, the lands they discovered, the empires they conquered, and the legacies they left. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Columbus, Magellan, Cortes and Pizarro like you never have before.