Uncovering an Iberian Pacific through Diplomatic Disputes in the Eighteenth Century

This chapter reads the new diplomatic history against eighteenth-century conceptions of the Pacific Ocean. Situating Portuguese and Spanish ambassadors at the British Court of St. James’s as funnels of information about the “new” ocean and its exploration in the late eighteenth century, the essay develops Iberian conceptions of the Pacific Ocean that greatly clashed with the Franco-British visions of this novel watery surface. Rather than recognizing the Pacific as an unknown entity—the fifth part of the World—Spanish and Portuguese diplomats sought to tie the ocean to their colonial possessions in the Americas and Asia. This sharp perceptional divide presents historiographical tendencies still inherent in contemporary writings.