Logo Estudios Indianos
Universidad del Pacífico

Libraries

History of the discovery of the South Pole regions made by the general Pedro Fernandez de Quirós

Authors: Pedro Fernandez de Quirós

The occupation of the territory during the construction of the Spanish Empire was not only a movement carried out by European migrants who crossed the Atlantic to settle in the Caribbean and in the Spanish-American territories, there were also men who sailed from the coasts of the Viceroys, expressing the interests of the viceroyalty metropolis to occupy new lands and to benefit from the opportunities that this could represent. The Mexican case regarding the Philippines is one of the best known, but it was not the only one. In the same way, similar scenes were reproduced in Peru that were translated into trips and companies that tried to occupy territories in the Pacific. One of the important ones was directed by Pedro Fernández de Quirós and Luis Vaez de Torres. Thanks to his leadership, the Peruvian crew arrived in Southeast Asia and – quite possibly – touched the Australian coasts in the early seventeenth century, more than a hundred years before the appearance of James Cook, who is attributed by historiography to the discovery of Australia.