West-Indianischer Historienn Ander Theil

Title

West-Indianischer Historienn Ander Theil

View shows the French sacking the town of Chiorera in Cuba in 1556.

ca. 1620

Artist

Bry, de - Merian (1528-1598)

In 1631, Matthäus Merian and Johann Ludwig Gottfried published Historia Antipodum, a heavily abridged, single-volume version of Theodor De Bry’s 14-part America series. After De Bry’s death, his sons continued the project. Merian, a skilled engraver, later married De Bry’s daughter and collaborated with Gottfried. The Historia Antipodum reorganized numerous travel accounts into three chapters covering nature, exploration, and recent colonial developments. Merian and Gottfried significantly reworked the content, merging reports and integrating illustrations into the text. Their depiction of the natural world and Indigenous cultures—drawing in part on José de Acosta’s writings—was particularly influential. The book stands as one of the most ambitious works of early modern travel literature.

Historical Description

The name "Cuba" probably comes from the language of the Caribbean or Taíno. The words coa (= place) and bana (= big) mean something like "big place". Columbus wrote that he had landed in a place that the indigenous people called Cubao, Cuban or Cibao. These designations obviously referred to a mountain region near the place of landing in the east of Cuba. When it was first discovered, Columbus named the island Juana after Prince Don Juan. In 1515, his father Fernando II, King of Spain, ordered the name to be changed to Fernandina, because so far only one island in the Bahamas (today: Long Island) was named after him. Cuba and the Arawak people living there came under Spanish control in the first half of the 16th century. Within a few decades, the indigenous peoples were practically wiped out by violence and disease. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Spanish planters used tens of thousands of slaves to carry out the very labor-intensive cultivation of sugar cane, which were mainly imported from West Africa.