The Spanish poet and historian Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola recounts how Portugal and Spain fought over the clove and nutmeg islands of the Moluccas and pushed into the Philippines. His history, in John Stevens’s English of 1708, mixes sultans, governors, missionaries and galleys with descriptions of the islands’ peoples, products, customs and religions, and voyages through the Strait of Magellan.
A rich early-modern source for the history of Southeast Asia and European empire in the Pacific. Download the free EPUB.