The book under review is apparently intended for persons who have a general interest in Spain’s American empire. For this purpose the story is well told; it is a lively synthesis of topics such as labor, commerce, and culture, as well as political history. It is a text crowded with facts, yet it is also interpretive. It could be useful reading for an incipient United States Hispanist who needs to cut his teeth on a traditional Spanish presentation of the glory that was Spain in the Indies. For the text, while too intelligently written by Morales Padrón to result in a gilded lily, does lead to one which is white-washed. This is a Spanish history, and the Indians either get civilization or they don’t get in the story.
Pérez Embid receives “top billing” on the title page, but in fact he contributed only the 38-page introduction. He makes a classic revisionist statement; it should be read with care. Words such as “colonization” and “emancipation” change their customary meanings: “descubrimiento” turns out in fact to mean what other people might define as “conquista,” but this leaves no place to put “conquista,” so it turns out to be “penetración.” Furthermore: “solo ha podido hablarse de ‘conquista’ [the quote marks are the authors’s] con el sentido actual de la palabra, en tres o cuatro lugares, y durante períodos fugacísimos” (p. 18).
The lively style occasionally turns florid: Alvarado’s leap becomes “the first pole vault.”
In summary it may be said that this book fills its intended role well, but that it lacks the persuasive sweep of a similar book, Madariaga’s Cuadro histórico.
