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Spain, Charles V, and the Creation of America
Random House
September 2011
On Sale: August 23, 2011
672 pages
ISBN: 1400061253
EAN: 9781400061259
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
From a master chronicler of Spanish history comes a
magnificent work about the pivotal years from 1522 to 1566,
when Spain was the greatest European power. Hugh Thomas has
written a rich and riveting narrative of exploration,
progress, and plunder. At its center is the unforgettable
ruler who fought the French and expanded the Spanish empire,
and the bold conquistadors who were his agents. Thomas
brings to life King Charles V—first as a gangly and
easygoing youth, then as a liberal statesman who exceeded
all his predecessors in his ambitions for conquest (while
making sure to maintain the humanity of his new subjects in
the Americas), and finally as a besieged Catholic leader
obsessed with Protestant heresy and interested only in
profiting from those he presided over. The Golden Empire also presents the legendary men whom King
Charles V sent on perilous and unprecedented expeditions:
Hernán Cortés, who ruled the “New Spain” of Mexico as an
absolute monarch—and whose rebuilding of its capital,
Tenochtitlan, was Spain’s greatest achievement in the
sixteenth century; Francisco Pizarro, who set out with fewer
than two hundred men for Peru, infamously executed the last
independent Inca ruler, Atahualpa, and was finally murdered
amid intrigue; and Hernando de Soto, whose glittering
journey to settle land between Rio de la Palmas in Mexico
and the southernmost keys of Florida ended in disappointment
and death. Hugh Thomas reveals as never before their
torturous journeys through jungles, their brutal sea voyages
amid appalling storms and pirate attacks, and how a
cash-hungry Charles backed them with loans—and
bribes—obtained from his German banking friends. A sweeping, compulsively readable saga of kings and
conquests, armies and armadas, dominance and power, The
Golden Empire is a crowning achievement of the Spanish
world’s foremost historian.
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