Travel and Nostalgia in the Age of Discovery

In an oft-reprinted early modern text the Spanish humanist Diego Rodríguez de Almela offered the following thoughts on the emotional ties that bind men to their patria, or homeland:

The love that men feel for the land where they were born or raised forms part of their very nature. . . and wise men even say that there are certain ailments that can afflict men far from the land where they were born and raised that can be cured only by returning to that land. . . and this affects even the dead, for they say that cadavers rest more easily in the lands where their forefathers are buried than in any other.

Many writers in the early modern era made similar comments about the deep love that individuals naturally felt for their patria, which rendered travel an emotionally wrenching experience.  Yet this was precisely the era in which Spaniards, Portuguese and other Europeans were embarking on overseas travel on an unprecedented scale, which took them first to Africa and then to the Americas and Asia.  It is a notable feature of Spain’s early colonial expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that it occurred in a moment in which Spanish writers were placing particular emphasis on the deep love that individuals naturally felt for their patria.  The voyages of discovery, and subsequent colonial ventures, in other words, took place at a time when conventional wisdom affirmed that prolonged absence from home was likely to induce almost unbearable homesickness.  This paper explores how Spaniards tried to negotiate these challenges during the age of discovery, looking particularly at their travels in the new world, and secondly considers how these negotiations influenced Spanish responses to illness and mortality among the new peoples whom they encountered in their travels about the globe.