| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Hugh Thomas. Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan. New York: Random House. 2003. Pp. xxi, 696. $35.00.

In his typically engaging narrative style, Hugh Thomas recounts the early decades of Spain's colonial project in the New World and conveys well the ambiguity, contradictions, and ad hoc nature of that endeavor. The author relies almost entirely on secondary sources and published documents in telling this rather complex story in which familiar names parade across the pages—Ferdinand and Isabella, Christopher Columbus, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Hernán Cortés, Ferdinand Magellan, and the Emperor Charles V—as well as a multitude of lesser-known figures. The one person who links the multiple story lines is that great champion of the Indians (and important historian of the period) Bartolomé de Las Casas, upon whom Thomas relies heavily as an authoritative source. The careful reader will discern several recurring themes in this lengthy book: the difficulty in establishing royal authority in Spain and in the Spanish Indies, the notorious mistreatment of native peoples at the hands of Spanish settlers and slavers, the uncertain and often contradictory measures undertaken in establishing government policy for Indians under Spanish rule, and the international nature of what is usually regarded as an almost exclusively Castilian undertaking.

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