Medium, Genre, Indigenous Presence: Spanish Expeditionary Encounters in the Mar del Sur, 1606

Abstract

The chapter combines narrative and historiographic enwuiries into the Spanish voyages of Pedro Fernandez de Quiros and Luis Vaez de Torres across the Mar del Sur (South Sea) in 1606. I aim to elucidate the 'anthropological' significance of maritime expeditions in the first, Iberian phase of the 'expansion of Europe' between 1400 and 1900 - the process often conceived teleologically as the wellspring of modernity.