THE LANDS AND PEOPLES OF IBERIA - Spain and Portugal: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 9

reigns of Isabella and Ferdinand's successors as Spain became the leader
of the Counter-Reformation.
Almost incidental at first amidst the excitement of the final act at
Granada was the departure of the Genoese navigator who had been
promoting his concept of a transatlantic route to the trade treasures of
Asia. Whether known as Cristoforo Colombo, Cristóbal Colón, or Chris-
topher Columbus, he appears on the scene in 1492 as a minor player in
the great events that were unfolding in the Spain of Ferdinand and Isa-
bella. And for all his subsequent fame his establishment of the possibil-
ity of crossing the Atlantic to what turned out to be a new pair of
continents rather than Asia remained a subordinate concern at the
court of the Catholic Kings. Subsequent voyages of Columbus and oth-
ers gradually created a sense of a New World that invited exploration
and further discovery. But it remained jealously reserved to the Castil-
ian queen and her subjects, even as the Aragonese response to France's
invasion of Italy in 1494 drew Spain's attention firmly into European
politics. Until there was treasure to be had from this new transatlantic
territory, Ferdinand remained preoccupied with Mediterranean con-
cerns and his subjects in Catalonia and Valencia were not particularly
jealous of Isabella's vassals and their exclusive rights to venture into the
Americas. Ultimately, to be sure, the divisions between the subjects of
the Catholic Kings would be ended, and the Castilians would dominate
both the European and overseas spheres of action. In the meantime, up
to the 1540s the conquest of the New World would be left largely to
adventurers and the private initiative of soldiers and priests. For all the
delay this caused in creating a coherent Spanish colonial policy, it at
least avoided many of the distractions of bureaucratic management.
Long before Columbus had received his belated commission to sail
under the Castilian flag, Portugal had been pursuing its own route to
the wealth of the “Indies.” It had surely been unrealistic for a kingdom
that occupied a mere corner of Iberia and had a population of no more
than a million to aspire to a dominant role in the peninsula. Yet by the
time the marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand brought an end to that
particular dream, the House of Aviz was well advanced on an even
more grandiose plan. Beginning in the late 14th century Portuguese
seamen had ventured out into the near Atlantic to lay claim to Madeira
and the Azores. Under the oversight of Prince Henrique (Henry) the
Navigator—son, brother, and uncle of successive monarchs—voyages
of exploration had been dispatched down the west coast of Africa. By
the time of the prince's death, in 1460, the probing process had taken
his captains far along on the quest for a route to Asia that would turn
the southern tip of Africa and cross the Indian Ocean. On the way the