Juego de espejos
The incorporation of Portugal and its overseas colonies by the Spanish Monarchy, which lasted for just over half a century (1581-1640), prompted a number of soldiers and merchants (both Spanish and Portuguese), who had settled between the Congo and Angola, to write detailed reports about the possibi...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | Spanish |
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Casa de Velázquez
2018-11-01
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| Series: | Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez |
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| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/mcv/8885 |
| Summary: | The incorporation of Portugal and its overseas colonies by the Spanish Monarchy, which lasted for just over half a century (1581-1640), prompted a number of soldiers and merchants (both Spanish and Portuguese), who had settled between the Congo and Angola, to write detailed reports about the possibility of conquering and exploiting Angola in view of its abundant natural and human resources. This article analyses some of these expansionist schemes, which in general shared a common ideology in presenting the Iberian expansion in this area of Africa as a new version of El Dorado. The article also deals with spiritual conquest, which almost always served to legitimise its territorial counterpart. It focuses on two Spanish evangelising projects of the second half of the seventeenth century which both failed, just as other plans of territorial expansion had failed before them: as proposed to the King of Spain between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries for the Congo and the imprecisely-defined kingdom of Arda (between the present states of Benin and Sierra Leone). |
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| ISSN: | 0076-230X 2173-1306 |