Spanish Main VS. Caribbean

[Red Dog]

Ahoy folks,

I was doing some research for a book I was hoping to write, and a question about what areas the Spanish Main and Caribbean encompassed has me a bit over a barrel. The reserch I have shows that the Spanish Main (in the late 1500's) was located in the area north of South America and south of North America in the Gulf of Mexico region. All of the eastern parts of Latin America and the Yucatan were in this as well. The Caribbean was the area to the Atlantic side of South America over to the southern tip of Florida south down to the Bahamas and back over to the southern border of Brazil. Later in the 1600's, piracy had become so far reaching that all of it was refered to just as the Spanish Main.

Dose any of my discription make a lick of sense? My question is so that I get the proper name in place for the proper times.

Thanks all, I look forward reading and posting with all you fine folk.

Pirates..... fine folks.....I'll get the hang of this soon!

[Cap'n Pete Straw]

Your timing on this question is lousy.

I have recently acquired most of the Time-Life "The Seafarers" series of books, which I find to be a great read. I just now leafed therough "The Explorers", "The Pirates," and "The Spanish Main" volumes. Along with "The Whalers" and "The Windjammers," these are my favorite books in the series which I am reading and re-reading cover to cover.

Anyway, in one of the aforementioned three volumes there is a terrific short blurb defining the Spanish Main by the year ______ as only the Caribbean islands (& Cuba, Jamaica, et al.) originally, but by the year ____ to also include all of the known South and Central America lands.

Your timing is lousy because I was not looking for this quote before I read it, and now I cannot find the damned thing... Perhaps on my next go-around.

[Red Dog]

Dang, first post and already influencing friends and making enemies!

[Red Dog]

Oh, BTW, thanks.

[Cap'n Pete Straw]

Nope... I had it reversed.

I still cannot find the reference I am thinking of, but here is one that corrects what I remembered:

"The term 'Spanish Main' originally meant the parts of the Central and South American mainlands, from Mexico to Peru, taken by Spain. Later it came to include the islands and waters of the Caribbean."

(Source: Richard Platt: Pirate, Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Books, 2000, page 20)

Sorry, no dates in this reference. Still looking...

[Capn_Enigma]

SPANISH MAIN, THE (1) (pirate victim, Caribbean, about 1520 - 1730)

A geographical term referring to the Spanish possessions in the Americas. For 16th- century-English raiders, "The Spanish Main" meant only the northern coast of South America (and the adjacent waters), from Panama to Trinidad. The term distinguished this region from the islands in the Caribbean - perhaps as a translation of the Spanish name Tierra Firme (The Mainland) for the same area.

The English word main can mean a broad sweep of sea as well as a stretch of land. For some Buccaneers of the late 17th and early 18th century, the "Spanish Main" meant the Caribbean Sea itself. (They thus exactly reversed the original definition.) Authors of pirate fiction employ the phrase to add local color to stories and movies. In this loose usage, "Spanish Main" can refer to any place in the Caribbean or along the coast from Florida to Brazil.

(Source: Pirates! An A - Z Encyclopedia, Jan Rogozinski, Da Capo Press, 1995)

[Red Dog]

Outstanding, thanks for the info. I'm going on the hunt for the book you referred to right now.

Any more info in this vein is much appreciated.

[oderlesseye]

MAps of that period are a great source as well..

[Fox]

This is in no way an argument against Enigma's definition of the Spanish Main, merely a warning for anyone hunting for Rogozinski's A-Z. Useful book though it is, it also contains some fairly serious errors - it's a good starting point for research perhaps, but not to be relied on by any means.

[The Doctor]

SPANISH MAIN, THE (1) (pirate victim, Caribbean, about 1520 - 1730)

A geographical term referring to the Spanish possessions in the Americas. For 16th- century-English raiders, "The Spanish Main" meant only the northern coast of South America (and the adjacent waters), from Panama to Trinidad. The term distinguished this region from the islands in the Caribbean - perhaps as a translation of the Spanish name Tierra Firme (The Mainland) for the same area.

The English word main can mean a broad sweep of sea as well as a stretch of land. For some Buccaneers of the late 17th and early 18th century, the "Spanish Main" meant the Caribbean Sea itself. (They thus exactly  reversed the original definition.) Authors of pirate fiction employ the phrase to add local color to stories and movies. In this loose usage, "Spanish Main" can refer to any place in the Caribbean or along the coast from Florida to Brazil.

(Source: Pirates! An A - Z Encyclopedia, Jan Rogozinski, Da Capo Press, 1995)

Yeah, Rogozinski's work has a great number of holes in it, but on this nearly all historians agree. Had Capt. Enigma not posted it, I would have found a source that says roughly the same thing. :)

Easy for me to say, coming into the discussion this late...

[Cap'n Pete Straw]

Damn! I found the other reference I was looking for (had to re-read the entire book... yet somehow missed it -- found it on the THIRD read!)... but still no dates. Here it is:

From "The Spanish Main" (1979) volume of the Time-Life "The Seafarers" series of books, page 18:

"Spain's New World empire, vast and still growing, soon would encompass not only the Caribbean Sea and the Mexican mainland, but also Central America and South America, with their fabulously wealthy Indian civilizations. This sprawling dominion surrounding the Caribbean basin was known as the Spanish Main. At first the term was used only for the continental mainland, but it soon came to include the ring of islands bordering the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, from Trinidad in the south to Cuba and the Straits of Florida in the north, and eventually it was also applied to the waters that stretched between the colonial lands."

[Silver Steele]

There's only one issue with this that I can think of. In the 1500-1600s the Spanish Main was the round for the treasure fleet. By the late 1600s-early 1700s the Spanish Main, the real Spanish Main (meaning Spain's treasure fleet round) was pretty non-existant.

I think the term "Spanish Main" has been Hollywoodized to mean anything dealing with the Caribbean and pirates no matter what era.