num_pages: 352
description: Narratives of Europes sixteenth-century westward expansion often tell of how the Americas came to be known as a distinct land mass a continent separate from Asia and uniquely positioned as new ground ripe for transatlantic colonialism. But this geographic vision of the Americas was not shared by all Europeans. While some imperialists imagined North and Central America as a new and undiscovered land the Spanish pushed to define the New World as part of a larger and eminently flexible geography that they called las Indias and that by right belonged to the Crown of Castile and Len. Las Indias included all of the New World as well as East and Southeast Asia although Spains understanding of the relationship between the two areas changed as the realities of the Pacific Rim came into sharper focus. At first the Spanish insisted that North and Central America were an extension of the continent of Asia. Eventually they came to understand East and Southeast Asia as a transpacific extension of their empire in America called las Indias del poniente or the Indies of the Setting Sun.The Indies of the Setting Sun charts the Spanish vision of a transpacific imperial expanse beginning with Balboas discovery of the South Sea and ending almost one hundred years later with Spains final push for control of the Pacific. Padrn traces a series of attemptsboth cartographic and discursiveto map the space from Mexico to Malacca revealing the geopolitical imaginations at play in the quest for control of the New World and Asia. 
language: English
title: The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West
publisher: University of Chicago Press