On the occasion of the celebrations of the 500th anniversary of Ferdinando Magellano’s first trip around the world. A new book about the Spice Islands has just been published by the Spanish publishing house Desperta-Ferro, specialized in Spanish military history. It is a large format book (384 pages, 189 x 246 mm), and includes old maps. I had the honor of writing the fourth chapter of this book.
“En el Archipiélago de la Especiería. España y Molucas en los siglos XVI y XVII”
From the introduction of the book:
With “En el Archipiélago de la Especiería. España y Molucas en los siglos XVI y XVII” (In the Spice islands. Spain and Moluccas in the 16th and 17th centuries), to which the main experts on the subject have contributed, and which has been endowed with an overwhelming graphic apparatus, is intended to shed light on one of the most fascinating, but less well known, episodes of the presence Spanish in Southeast Asia, from the first circumnavigation of the planet to the final abandonment of the last forts of the Moluccas in the second half of the seventeenth century. Sailors and cosmographers, pirates and missionaries, sultans and merchants gathered in a book that smells of cloves and nutmeg: let’s sail on this paper boat to the Spice islands.
“En el Archipiélago de la Especiería. España y Molucas en los siglos XVI y XVII” is a collective work edited by Javier Serrano Avilés (Aula Cervantes de Jakarta) and Jorge Mojarro (Universidad de Santo Tomás, Manila), with the historical advice of Antonio C. Campo López (UNED), María Prada González (Embassy of Spain in Jakarta) in coordinating illustrations and Thomas Suárez as responsible for historical cartography. The list of Spanish and Indonesian authors is completed by José Eugenio Borao Mateo (National Taiwan University), Nurachman Iriyanto (Khairun University, Ternate), Bondan Kanumoyoso (University of Indonesia, Jakarta), Marco Ramerini (www.colonialvoyage.com), Jean-Noël Sánchez Pons (University of Strasbourg), Cayetano Sánchez Fuertes and Kukuh Sanyoto. Link to the presentation page of the book: “En el Archipiélago de la Especiería. España y Molucas en los siglos XVI y XVII“
