ABSTRACT
Among the most intriguing themes in the history of early modern Iberian expansion is how the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns attempted to impose formalised control over diverse panoplies of territories and subject populations spread across such vast, discontinuous spaces. Within roughly a century Portugal and Spain had transformed from small, isolated polities at the edge of Europe into globe-girdling monarchies with overseas possessions in Africa, Asia, and America. Already by the mid-sixteenth century Portuguese rulers had adopted the imperious title, “Kings of Portugal and the Algarves, and of the Sea near and far, Lord of Guinea and of the Conquest, Navigation and Commerce of Ethiopia [referring to the whole of Africa], Arabia, Persia and India” (Barros 1778, 12). At the same time, they claimed dominion throughout the sprawling territories of Brazil. The enthusiastic fervour for Spanish imperium gained force over the sixteenth century as well, reaching crescendo in the 1580s when Philip II of Spain ascended the Portuguese throne, bringing the two hemispheres of Iberian expansion together under his singular sovereignty. The famous medallion emblazoned with the phrase, “The World is not Enough”, was one of many reflections of Spain’s confidence in its expansionary prowess (Parker 2001). And the following decade the influential Spanish chronicler and jurist, Gregorio López Madera, lauded collective Iberian conquests throughout the Old World and the New, where, he wrote, “Roman power never reached, and which not even Alexander attempted to subject” (López de Madera 1597, 63v).
