Twee onderscheydene reys-togten d'eene ter zee en d'andere te land, in de West-Indien, beyde gedaan in het jaar 1524
Author: Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas (1549-1625)
Year: 1706
Publisher: Pieter Vander Aa
Place: Leyden
Description:
[2]+107+[10] pages, with vignette on title, one folding plate and two folding maps, and index. Small octavo (7 1/2" x 5 ") bound modern green gilt lettered cloth. First edition thus. An early Dutch translation of Herrera Y Tordesilla's Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos, first printed Madrid in 1601.
This work was issued by Pieter Vander Aa and formed part of a larger work on early voyages translated to Dutch Naaukeurige versameling der gedenk-waardigste zee en land-reysen na Oost en West-Indien. The present work excerpts from Gil Gonzales Davila's 1524 account of Honduras and St. Dominica, with an interesting plate, and from Cortes' conquest of Mexico, with two maps of the region.
Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas was a Spanish colonial historian and official chronicler of the Indies. Antonio de Herrera had a long and distinguished career in which he wrote one of the most encyclopedic accounts of Spanish activities in the New World. In his early years, he was appointed as secretary to Vespasiano Gonzaga, viceroy of Naples, where he began his history of the reign of Philip II. Herrera's loyalty to the cause of the crown attracted the attention of the court, and in 1596 he was appointed the official historian of the Indies, with the task of providing a favorable account of the Conquest and settlement of the New World to combat the negative versions being written by Black Legend partisans in England and northern Europe.
Herrera's most famous work, the eight-volume Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas y tierra firme del mar océano, was published in Madrid from 1601 to 1615. As official historian, Herrera had access to persons and documents not available to other contemporary writers. He had never set foot in the New World and therefore relied upon information contained in the relaciones geográficas and other state-sponsored informational surveys and reports, the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas, Diego de Landa, Gonzalo Fernández Oviedo, and Francisco López de Gómara. Like others of his time, Herrera was obsessed with chronology and inclusiveness; his synthesis is remarkable, but the wealth of information renders his Historia general difficult for the modern reader.
Condition:
An uncut copy. Small marginal puncture and some edgewear, the first plate with a small loss into the image and a split at the fold, other spotting and short tears. This printing scarce with only one found on OCLC.
