286 West-Indianischer Historien AnderTheil

Title

286 West-Indianischer Historien AnderTheil

Description

View shows a battle between Nicaraguan natives against the Spaniards.

ca. 1628

Artist

Bry, de - Merian (1528-1598)

In 1631, Matthäus Merian and Johann Ludwig Gottfried published a one-volume abridged version of the monumental America series by Theodor De Bry and his two sons. The Historia Antipodum can be seen as the apotheosis of the collection of voyages to the New World. After Theodor's death in 1598, Johan Theodor and his brother Johan Israel continued to run the business together in Frankfurt until the latter died in 1609. As he had no natural male successor, in 1616 he sought the help of a highly talented Basel engraver in his early twenties, Matthäus Merian the Elder (1593-1650), who soon married Johan Theodor's eldest daughter Maria Magdalena. When Johan Theodor died, Merian immediately complied with a request from his mother-in-law. After Merian moved to Frankfurt permanently in June 1626, he turned to Johann Ludwig Gottfried (ca. 1584-1633) to help him pursue a successful independent career as a publisher. In the early 1630s, Gottfried contributed to a new Latin edition of Part 3, which contained the reports of Hans Staden and Jean de Léry on Brazil, as well as to German and Latin reprints of Part 9, which was dedicated to the natural history of the West Indies by the Jesuit José de Acosta. He was probably also involved in the production of the last German volume of the America series, part 14, which was published in 1630. The most significant addition to the collection, however, was a German work entitled Historia Antipodum or Newe Welt, published in 1631, a voluminous folio volume of more than six hundred pages which, despite its size, brought together what was probably the most monumental publication of early modern Europe, the fourteen-part America series that formed part of the De Bry travel collection. In many ways, the changes Merian and Gottfried made to the travelogues for Historia Antipodum surpassed even the editorial changes made for the original volumes. The travel accounts were no longer published one after the other, each followed by its own set of relevant illustrations, but all available information was summarized in three long chapters on the history of the New World, with the engravings within the text rather than as separate sections at the end of each narrative. The first chapter of the abridged version deals with the natural world, a decision that must be seen in the light of Gottfried and Merian's personal convictions, which they expressed in their introduction to Archontologia Cos- mica. The second chapter brings together fifty-three travelogues to the New World, all of which were previously included in the collection of voyages. Finally, the third and shortest chapter presents new, recently published accounts of European expansion in the Atlantic. In the introduction to the volume, the editors introduce the reader to their objective. The dedication to Landgrave Philipp von Hessen, signed only by Merian but dated 1630, emphasizes the differences between Europeans and the indigenous population of the New World, as does the "Preface to the Reader", which bears both signatures. Merian and Gottfried adhere to the generally accepted order of information in early modern European humanities and open their Historia Antipodum with a description of the natural world. The first seventy pages are based on the German translation of Acosta's treatise, which was first used in 1601. As the original translation prepared by Johan Homberger for the De Brys comprised 327 folios, the version printed in the abridged edition was heavily edited. Books 1-3 of Acosta's work, which deal with such traditional and far-reaching topics as the Aristotelian world view, the biblical theories on the origin of the Indians, the habitability of the Torrid zone and the currents and winds in the southern hemisphere, are each reduced to a few pages in the Historia Antipodum.

Historical Description

On his fourth voyage, Christopher Columbus landed in July 1502 on the island of Guanaja, which belongs to the Honduran Islas de la Bahía. From the mouth of the Río Coco, the Cabo Gracias a Dios, he followed the coast of Nicaragua and anchored at the mouth of the Río San Juan to withstand heavy storms. From Panama, the conquistador Pedrarias Dávila undertook raids in 1519 to Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Although the immediate booty was relatively high, it became clear in the course of the conquest that in the long run the source of wealth lay in people. In the 1520s the area was colonized by Spain to start the encomienda. The first Spanish colonial cities were founded in Nicaragua near the Pacific coast. In 1539, Diego Machuca discovered the Río San Juan as a waterway between the Caribbean and Lake Nicaragua. In 1551, the Spanish chronicler Francisco López de Gómara said: “You only have to make a firm decision to make the passage and it can be carried out. As soon as there is no lack of will, there will also be no lack of funds ”. But the Spanish King Felipe II saw God's creation in the land bridge between the two seas, which man is not entitled to improve. Therefore the plan for an interoceanic Nicaragua Canal has not been pursued for the time being. For a long time, Spanish colonial rule was limited to the Pacific coast and its hinterland on Lake Nicaragua and the smaller Lake Managua. The Caribbean coast (Miskito coast), which was separated from the rest of the country by mountainous and impassable regions and was inhabited by the Miskito indigenous, came under the influence of Great Britain for a long time from Jamaica with the territory of today's Belize. In 1821, the General Capitanate of Guatemala, to which Nicaragua belonged, proclaimed its independence from the Spanish crown. The Jacobin cap of the French Revolution still adorns his flag over the five volcanoes of the country. Two years later, it became the United Provinces of Central America, from which the Central American Federation emerged, to which Nicaragua also included Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica and El Salvador.