Abstract
In the late 1940s, enterprising researcher Emilio Pastor y Santos uncovered a loophole in the diplomatic treaties signed between Spain and the United States in 1898 and between Spain and Germany in 1899. Although these arrangements effectively ended Spanish colonialism in the Pacific, Pastor discovered that his country had, in fact, retained sovereignty over four islands not formally considered in the deliberations. In order to gain a wider audience, he published his findings in a detailed monograph in which he advocated the Spanish pursuit of its diplomatic claims through the establishment of a naval station in the region.1 What must have appeared initially as a cruel April fool’s joke among diplomats soon turned into a serious issue when the Council of Ministers, appointed by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, started to debate the case in earnest. The members of the council decided, while accepting the claim as legitimate, not to press the diplomatic issue in an international arena.
The Earth belongs to those, I repeat, who know her best.
Ricardo Beltrán y Rózpide, 1900
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Notes
Emilio Pastor y Santos, Territorios de soberanía española en Oceanía (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1950). The four islands in alphabetical order are Acea, Kapingamarangi, Mapia, and Oroa.
Victor Prescott and Grant Boyes, “Undelimited Maritime Boundaries in the Pacific Ocean Excluding the Asian Rim,” Maritime Briefing 2 nr. 8 (2000): 33–35.
Report of the Naval Minister January 23, 1865, AMN, ms. 2441 doc. 29. The notion that Spanish navigators first contacted the Hawaiian Islands received ample transational support. Alexander von Humboldt was one of the first to look into the issue, and it received monographic treatment by Swedish scholar E. W. Dahlgren, The Discovery of the Hawaiian Islands (Uppsala: Alinquest & Wiksells, 1917).
Justo Zaragoza, Historia del descubrimiento de las regions australes por el general Pedro Fernandez de Quirós 3 vols. (Madrid: Manuel G. Hernandez, 1876–1882).
Don Pedro de Novo y Colson, Viaje Político-Científico Alrededor del Mundo Por las Corbetas descubierta y Atrevida al Mando del Capitán de Navio D. Alejandro Malaspina y Don José de Bustamante y Guerra desde 1789 á 1794 (Madrid: Imprenta de la Viuda é Hijos de Abienzo, 1885).
Bronwen Douglas, “Foreign Bodies in Oceania,” in Bronwen Douglas and Chris Ballard, eds, Foreign Bodies: Oceania and the Science of Race, 1750–1940 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2008).
Horacio Capel, “The Imperial Dream: Geography and Spanish Empire in the Nineteenth Century,” in Anne Godlewska and Neil Smith, eds, Geography and Empire (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994), 58–73.
Conrad Malte-Brun, Diccionario geográfico universal … vol. 1. (Paris: Liberia de Mame y Delaunay-Vallee, 1828), viii.
Miguel de Rialp ed. Geografía Universal segun los novisimos descubrimientos, tratados, balaces comerciales, census é investigaciones vol. II (Madrid: Librería de San Martin, 1860), 272–314.
A governor of Timor, [Affonso de Castro, As Possessões Portuguezas na Oceânia (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1867)], suggested the establishment of a Portuguese Oceania to strengthen the national interest in what he deemed neglected areas of the Portuguese colonial realm. I am indebted to Ricardo Roque for bringing this important source to my attention.
Ricardo Beltán y Rózpide, La Polinesia: Descubrimiento, reseña, descripcíon geográfica, clima….y consideraciones acerca de la importancia y porvenir commercial y politico de dichas islas (Madrid: Fortanet, 1884).
Ricardo Beltán y Rózpide, La Polinesia; see also his Descubrimiento de la Oceanía por los Españoles (Madrid: Ateneo, 1892), 5.
Javier Morillo-Alicea, “Uncharted Landscapes of ‘Latin America:’ The Philippines in the Spanish Imperial Archipelago,” in Christopher Schmidt-Nowara and John M. Nieto-Phillips, eds, Interpreting Spanish Colonialism: Empires, Nations, and Legends (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), 25–53.
On the relationship between steamships and canals, consult Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).
Javier Morillo-Alicea, “‘Aquel labirinto de oficinas:’ Ways of Knowing in Late Nineteenth-Century Spain,” in Mark Thurner and Andés Guerrero, eds, After Spanish Rule: Postcolonial Predicaments of the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 111–140.
For an overview of foreign contact with the Caroline Islands, consult Francis X. Hezel, S. J., The First Taint of Civilization: A History of the Caroline and Marshall Islands in Pre-Colonial Days, 1521–1885 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1983).
David Hanlon, “Micronesia: Writing and Rewriting the Histories of a Nonentity,” Pacific Studies 12 (1989): 1–21; and his “‘The Sea of Little Islands:’ Examining the Place of Micronesia in ‘Our Sea of Islands,’” The Contemporary Pacific 21 (2009): 91–110.
Francisco Coello, La conferencia de Berlín y la cuestión de las Carolinas (Madrid: Fortanet, 1885).
Manuel Escudé y Bartolí, Las Carolinas: Descripción geográfica y estatistica (Barcelona: Cortes, 1885).
V. Muñoz Barreda, La Micronesia española ó los archipiélagos de Marianas, Palaos, y Carolinas (Manila: Amigos del Pais, 1894).
Juan Gualberto Gómez, Las Islas Carolinas y las Marianas (Madrid: Imprenta San José, 1885).
Rainer F. Buschmann, Edward Slack Jr., and James Tueller in their Navigating the Spanish Lake: The Pacific in the Iberian World, 1521–1898 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014) refer to this incomplete process of cultural and racial miscegenation as “archipelagic Hispanization.”
David Hanlon, Upon a Stone Altar: A History of the Island of Pohnpei to 1890 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1988).
Francis X. Hezel, S. J., Strangers in their Own Land: A Century of Colonial Rule in the Caroline and Marshall Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1995), 3–95.
See, for instance, Alda Blanco, “Memory-Work and Empire: Madrid’s Philippines Exhibition (1887),” Journal of Romance Studies 5 (2005): 53–63.
On the importance of Adolf Bastian for the study of Oceania, consult Rainer F. Buschmann, Anthropology’s Global Histories: The Ethnographic Frontier in German New Guinea, 1870–1935 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009).
Adolf Bastian, Die mikronesischen Colonien aus ethnologischen Gesichtspunkten (Berlin: A. Asher & Co, 1899).
Ricardo Beltrán y Rózpide, La geografía en 1898 y estado geográfico-político del mundo en 1899 (Madrid: Fortanet, 1900). The quote stems from page 18.
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© 2014 Rainer F. Buschmann
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Buschmann, R.F. (2014). Epilogue: Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507–1899. In: Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507–1899. Palgrave Studies in Pacific History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304711_8
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