Galli Hispanos fugant, et urbem Hanava magna pecuniae summa mulctant.

Title

Galli Hispanos fugant, et urbem Hanava magna pecuniae summa mulctant.

Description

Representation of spansih cargo ships in front of the city Havana. Theodor De Bry’s Grand Voyages, an illustrated collection of accounts of the Americas, defined the early European picture of the New World.

ca. 1595

Artist

Bry, de (1528-1598)

Theodorus de Bry (1528-1598) Frankfurt a.M. Around 1570, Theodorus de Bry, a Protestant, fled religious persecution south to Strasbourg, along the west bank of the Rhine. In 1577, he moved to Antwerp in the Duchy of Brabant, which was part of the Spanish Netherlands or Southern Netherlands and Low Countries of that time (16th Century), where he further developed and used his skills as a copper engraver. Between 1585 and 1588 he lived in London, where he met the geographer Richard Hakluyt and began to collect stories and illustrations of various European explorations, most notably from Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues. Depiction of Spanish atrocities in the New World, as recounted by Bartolome de las Casas in Narratio Regionum indicarum per Hispanos Quosdam devastatarum verissima. In 1588, Theodorus and his family moved permanently to Frankfurt-am-Main, where he became citizen and began to plan his first publications. The most famous one is known as Les Grands Voyages, i.e., The Great Travels, or The Discovery of America. He also published the largely identical India Orientalis-series, as well as many other illustrated works on a wide range of subjects. His books were published in Latin, and were also translated into German, English and French to reach a wider reading public. The two collections of travelogues published by Theodor de Bry in Frankfurt are among the most important of the early modern period and established his reputation for posterity: He created The Arrival of Columbus in the New World in 1594. The West Indian Voyages (ed. 1590-1618) chronicled the discovery and conquest of the Americas by Europeans, while the East Indian Voyages followed the rise of Holland as a trading power in Asia around 1600. Both series appeared in German and Latin, were intended for a European audience, and were richly illustrated with copper engravings. Theodor de Bry was only able to publish six parts of his complete works. After his death, his sons Johann Theodor and Johann Israel and then Johann Theodor's son-in-law Matthäus Merian continued the work until 1634. In the end, it contained 25 parts and over 1500 copper engravings. The brothers were succeeded as engravers and publishers by Sebastian Furck.

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.