Engaging Pacific Chimeras: Spain and Oceania's Eighteenth-Century Exploration

Rainer F. Buschmann
California State University Channel Islands
Engaging Pacific Chimeras: Spain and Oceania’s Eighteenth-Century Exploration
During the second half of the eighteenth century the Pacific became contested ground, yet it differed significantly from the protracted Atlantic campaigns fought through naval squadrons and privateers.   Much more than cannons, the Pacific became an ocean of letters backed by a learned transnational public that judged accomplishments not according naval strength but according to the accuracy of accounts and illustrations emerging from the exploratory ventures. The British and French expeditions during this time period banked on encountered knowledge that was quickly diffused to a growing readership.  At the same time, Spanish expeditions also roamed Pacific waters, yet their publication efforts aimed at received knowledge in an attempt to revive the memory of past Iberian accomplishment. The upcoming paper explores Spanish reactions to the increasing exploratory activity in the Pacific Ocean.  It engages how Spanish diplomats and intellectuals sought to defend this ocean by arguing that the Pacific was indeed an extension of the Spanish controlled Americas.  As French and British expeditions returned from the Pacific with a vision of a new world that needed exploration and by extension European economic involvement, Spanish scholars maintained that the novelty of this world was just a figment of the northern European imagination. This Spanish vision of Oceania ultimately became transnational through the writings of Alexander von Humboldt.