The Oceanic Challenges of the Spanish World

As the European pioneers in the Atlantic Ocean, Spaniards and their governments faced an array of unprecedented challenges. Overcoming them led to unpredictable and far-reaching results. Spaniards were also pioneers in the Pacific Ocean, which posed even more daunting challenges. This paper explores the challenges and responses that characterized the Spanish world in the early modern centuries, considering the experiences both of individuals and of corporate entities such as government bureaucracies, ecclesiastical establishments, and mercantile organizations. In trying to recapture the diversity and complexity of these experiences, we can gain a better sense of how the oceans changed the early modern world.