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37 TWO Defending the Lake Eighteenth-Century Exploration I n the fall of the year 1766, the Prince of Masserano painfully inched himself through the Court of St. James to voice his grave concern with the British government. Bothered by one of his frequent bouts of gout, the Spanish ambassador was in a foul mood. From his perspective it had not been a good year: British officials still demanded ransom for their occupation of Manila four years earlier, had most likely established residence in the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands, and were now officially announcing that Commodore John Byron had traversed the Pacific Ocean on his recent circumnavigation. In Masserano’s mind, this ocean had been perceived as a Spanish territory beyond dispute. Armed with a copy of the Treaty of Utrecht that concluded the War of Spanish Succession (1713), Massarano aimed at proving once and for all that the Spanish Crown was master of all the oceans surrounding its most sacred American possessions. Verily, the treaty stipulated neither the range nor the degree of Spanish control over these seas, nor did it acknowledge Iberian right of first discovery to their many islands. Therefore, when Masserano maintained, not without reason, that Spanish mariners had sailed Pacific waters for generations, he found himself rebuffed by English diplomats who sternly refused to accept the Pacific as a Spanish mare clausum. Above all the British ministers cited scientific reasons behind their expeditions: Patagonian giants, astronomical observations, and the rediscovery of the long lost lands sighted by Spanish mariners more than two hundred years earlier. Ultimately, the idea of closing an entire ocean to British scientific curiosity was absurd, and the British ministers reveled in teasing the poor Spanish ambassador: “Could he perhaps be so kind as to produce a map depicting the exact location of the mythical Solomon Islands?” “Where were all the other islands and continents witnessed by Spanish navigators in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?” “Why was Frenchman Louis de Bougainville allowed to pass into this closed sea?”1 Masserano took most offense to Lord Shelburne, secretary of state of 38 Chapter 2 the Southern Department, who had questioned whether the ambassador might be employing his suffering from gout as a political weapon in order to reschedule and cancel appointments at will.2 In the end, Masserano’s mission failed to safeguard the Pacific from British incursions. As it has been extensively chronicled elsewhere, British mariners frequently traversed the Pacific Basin between 1764 and 1780. To make matters worse, they rushed diaries, illustrations, and maps to the press, something that their Spanish counterparts failed to do. Following the publication of Cook’s second circumnavigation , the Pacific ceased to be the “Spanish Lake” and experienced a period of rapid exploration and expansion.3 Prince Masserano represents a tragic figure in this chapter, well suited to evoke a view held by many Pacific historians. Through their renditions Spain emerges as an ailing, almost declining maritime power that was quickly surpassed by the British navy in the second half of the eighteenth century. Historian Christon Archer perhaps put it best when he wrote: “Few Spaniards recognized the importance of published accounts. Spain was slow to grasp the full impact of the Enlightenment, and there were numerous traditions and old ideas to overcome. Secrecy rather than publication had served in the past.”4 Spanish historians have resisted such unflattering views for the better part of a century. They maintain that Spain’s accomplishments in the Pacific rival those of their British and French counterparts. While agreeing that official secrecy was counterproductive to the Iberian endeavors, they ultimately blame James Cook and others for consciously omitting Iberian contributions. They consequently have clamored to insert their national accounts into the gallery of illustrious eighteenth-century explorers.5 Despite their obvious differences, both historical camps agree that, for British and Spaniards alike, Oceania emerged as a separate world in the eighteenth century. In this chapter we will argue for a view that runs counter to this wellestablished tradition. Our contention is that, owing to a confluence of political and intellectual factors, Spanish officials and intellectuals came to reject the novelty of the Pacific. Instead, they argued that the “new world” of Oceania was just a continuation of the colonial realm of the Americas. Recent historical writings illustrating a rich eighteenth-century Spanish scientific engagement have restored much attention to this formerly neglected topic. Most important, Daniela Bleichmar and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, among others, have illustrated how Spanish intellectuals were...

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