{ "id": "alcedo-diccionario-geografico-1786", "type": "entity", "name": "Alcedo's Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias Occidentales (Madrid, 1786)", "summary": "A geographical and historical dictionary of the whole of America, compiled over twenty years by a colonel of the Spanish Guards who says he was born there. Its prologue gives the motive: foreigners had made the history of the Indies their own subject, carrying out of Spain the books its own discoverers had written, until those books could barely be found in Spain at any price. In 1812 a London consortium issued the whole of it in English, with additions.", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "americas", "books", "geography", "eighteenth-century", "spanish-empire", "printing", "translation", "historiography" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "related", "target": "mercurio-peruano-1791" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "relaciones-geograficas-de-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "leon-pinelo-epitome-1629" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "spanish-navigation-manuals-in-england" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "acosta-historia-natural-y-moral-1590" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "casa-de-contratacion" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "villasenor-theatro-americano-1748" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "unanue-guia-del-peru-1793" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "derrotero-de-las-islas-antillas-1837" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "palo-de-campeche-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "universidad-de-cordoba-del-tucuman" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "cuy-de-los-andes" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "mani-de-las-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "cosme-bueno-descripcion-de-las-provincias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "real-astillero-de-guayaquil" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "herrera-descripcion-de-las-indias-ocidentales" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "mapa-geografico-de-america-meridional-1775" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "caminos-reales-de-la-nueva-espana" } ], "questions": [ "What is Alcedo's Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias Occidentales?", "Who wrote the first geographical dictionary of the Americas?", "Why was Alcedo's dictionary translated into English?", "What did Alcedo say about foreign writers on Spanish America?", "Is Thompson's Geographical and Historical Dictionary of America an English work?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "The volume used here is the first tome, marked \"TOMO I\" on a title page that reads \"DICCIONARIO GEOGRAFICO-HISTORICO DE LAS INDIAS OCCIDENTALES O AMERICA: ES A SABER: DE LOS REYNOS DEL PERU, Nueva España, Tierra Firme, Chile, y Nuevo Reyno de Granada\", promises the description of their provinces, nations, cities, towns, rivers, mountains, coasts, ports, islands, archbishoprics, bishoprics, audiencias, viceroyalties, governments, corregimientos and fortresses, and gives the author as \"el Coronel D. Antonio de Alcedo, Capitan de Reales Guardias Españolas\". The imprint is \"CON LICENCIA, EN LA IMPRENTA DE BENITO CANO. EN MADRID AÑO DE MDCCLXXXVI.\"", "sources": [ "alcedo-diccionario-indias-1786-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "The prólogo states a motive that is rarely quoted and is the reason this work exists. The history of the Indies, Alcedo writes, has for some time been the object of the study and interest of all the European nations, which look on that part of the world as the source of riches; and so \"se han dedicado los Extrangéros á escribir y publicar quanto averiguan y reconocen, sacando de España para ello, todas las historias y tratados que han escrito sus naturales, primeros Descubridores y Conquistadores de aquellas regiones; de modo, que ya se han hecho tan raros en nuestro Pais, aun los libros que ántes eran comunes, y no tenian estimacion, que apénas se hallan hoy á precio alguno.\"", "sources": [ "alcedo-diccionario-indias-1786-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "The form of the book was a second choice, and he says so. All these reasons demanded in justice a universal history of America gathering everything in it worth notice, civil, natural and ecclesiastical, as well as its geography, productions, commerce, navigation and the interest of the European nations; but seeing how difficult an undertaking that was, \"ménos árduo me parecia reducirla á Diccionario, como método mas propio, mayormente quando está adoptado con tanta generalidad, que ya no hay arte, ni ciencia que no tenga el suyo particular.\"", "sources": [ "alcedo-diccionario-indias-1786-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "The dictionary rests on somebody else's archive, named in the prólogo only by his office. Alcedo says he was encouraged by a person of superior talent and instruction, \"la voz viva de un Ministro, que habiendo servido en aquellas regiones varios empleos de superior clase y diferentes comisiones de la mayor confianza y gravedad, por espacio de mas de 40 años\", who acquired an instruction and knowledge so uncommon that they made him at Court \"el Oráculo de América\" — proved, he adds, by the copious number of consultas that minister kept from the vía reservada and the Consejo Supremo de Indias, and by the many works he left written. It was that man's papers, and \"una numerosa Biblioteca de libros y papeles de Indias\", that supplied the materials. These pages do not name him.", "sources": [ "alcedo-diccionario-indias-1786-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "The labour is stated in the same passage and is unusually specific. Those materials, Alcedo writes, gave him the means \"para trabajar continuamente por espacio de 20 años, sin mas intermision que el tiempo de la guerra, en que las obligaciones de mi empleo y destino á campaña, no me han dado lugar á distraerme de mi principal objeto\". Later in the prólogo he asks the reader's indulgence for the defects of a book made out of \"molesta lectura de mas de 300 libros de Indias, la confusion y poca exâctitud de muchos de ellos, y la dificultad y trabajo que he tenido para conciliar las opiniones de algunos, y sacar en limpio la verdad\".", "sources": [ "alcedo-diccionario-indias-1786-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "He names his competitors and prices his own work against them rather than concealing them. While the book was finished but unpublished there reached his hands a geographical dictionary of South America written in Italian by the ex-Jesuit Juan Domingo Coleti, who had spent some years in the province of Mainas, and another of North America in English \"con el título de Gacetero Americano\", so that his own seemed no longer necessary; on examining both he concluded the opposite, since each was limited to determined provinces and neither \"excede de cien artículos\" under the letter A, \"quando la de mi Diccionario tiene mas de mil\". He also states his own standing to write: he owes those countries the acknowledgment \"de haber nacido en una de sus mejores Poblaciones\", and confesses plainly how much the two cited works served him to add to and correct what he had written.", "sources": [ "alcedo-diccionario-indias-1786-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c7", "text": "He also publishes his own limits, in the prólogo, before a reviewer could. Some will find many articles thin and fleshless, he writes; his first object was only to give the history of the kingdoms, provinces, capitals and rivers of consideration, and the minor towns and rivers were included afterwards as additions, of most of which there is little to say. On the errors he invites correction, asking that whoever finds anything worth amendment or addition tell him, \"y en vez de sentirlo, quedaré sumamente agradecido, advirtiendo al Público, para no defraudar el mérito al que lo hiciere\" — this being the judicious way of contributing to the public good, and not that of hunting faults out of caprice to get a name for learning.", "sources": [ "alcedo-diccionario-indias-1786-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c8", "text": "The article AMERICA shows what the book does with a continent. It opens \"AMERICA, Indias ó Nuevo Mundo, una de las quatro partes de él, la mayor, mas rica y mas poblada en tiempo de los Indios\", records that its limits were unknown to the ancients, and gives Columbus's four voyages in the service of the Catholic monarchs, sailing from Palos de Moguer with three caravels and ninety men in 1491 and having first to overcome the incredible difficulty of convincing the Spaniards who opposed his ideas. It then states that the continent \"llámase impropiamente América, por el célebre Piloto Florentin Américo Vespucio\", notes the claim that Sancho de Huelva reached it first, and disposes of the English claim that a certain Madoc son of the prince of Wales discovered it in 1170 or 1190 with the words \"pero todo esto es una invencion\".", "sources": [ "alcedo-diccionario-indias-1786-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c9", "text": "The same article states the political facts of 1786 without embroidery. The greater part of that immense country, almost depopulated by its own size, \"lo poseen los Españoles, que fuéron sus descubridores y Conquistadores; pero despues, llevados de las riquezas, se establecieron en diferentes partes los Franceses, Ingleses, Portugueses, Holandeses y Dinamarqueses.\" It gives Chimborazo as the highest mountain known in the world, lists the great rivers from the Amazon and Orinoco to the Mississippi, and closes on language: \"El idioma es tan vario como las naciones. Sin embargo, las mas universales son en el Perú, la Quechua y la Aymará, y en Nueva España la Mexicana.\"", "sources": [ "alcedo-diccionario-indias-1786-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c10", "text": "What the same page says about the peoples outside Spanish rule belongs here as its own claim, because it is the cost of using this book as a description. \"Las naciones bárbaras son innumerables en todas partes, y viven como fieras entre los montes, bosques y lagunas, sin cabeza, gobierno, ni leyes, y algunas de ellas son caribes ó antropofagos, esto es, comedores de carne humana, y todas generalmente viven de la pesca y de la caza.\" The sentence that credits the Americas with having been the most populous part of the world before the Spaniards and the sentence that denies its unconquered peoples any government or law are three columns apart in the same article, by the same hand.", "sources": [ "alcedo-diccionario-indias-1786-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c11", "text": "The book's afterlife is the part English readers are least likely to know, and it is printed on a title page in London. \"THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES. CONTAINING AN ENTIRE TRANSLATION OF THE SPANISH WORK OF COLONEL DON ANTONIO DE ALCEDO, CAPTAIN OF THE ROYAL SPANISH GUARDS, AND MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF HISTORY: WITH Large Additions and Compilations FROM MODERN VOYAGES AND TRAVELS, AND FROM ORIGINAL AND AUTHENTIC INFORMATION. BY G. A. THOMPSON, ESQ. IN FIVE VOLUMES.\" The volume opened here is Vol. III, printed for James Carpenter of Old Bond-Street with Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown and other London houses, and Parker of Oxford and Deighton of Cambridge, London, 1812.", "sources": [ "alcedo-thompson-dictionary-1812-t3" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c12", "text": "The English edition marks where Alcedo stops, which is how a reader can tell the two apart. On page 426 of that volume the article NIAGARA describes the French fort of 1687 and its capture by William Johnson in 1759, then closes the translated matter with a bracketed \"[Alcedo.]\" before continuing in English to the delivery of the post to the United States under the treaty of 1794 and the British withdrawal in 1796; the article NICARAGUA keeps Alcedo's conquest narrative and his list of the bishops who had presided there, beginning \"1. Don Diego Alvarez Osorio, native of America, although we know not of what settlement; he was chanter of the church of Panamá when he was elected first bishop of this diocese, in 1531.\"", "sources": [ "alcedo-thompson-dictionary-1812-t3" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c13", "text": "What these two sources are and are not is worth stating. Both are printed books opened here page by page: strong evidence of what Alcedo compiled, why he says he compiled it, and that a London trade consortium thought the whole of it worth translating twenty-six years later. Neither is evidence that any particular article is accurate — Alcedo himself calls three hundred of his authorities confused and inexact — and the English volume, being by its own title an adaptation with large additions, cannot be quoted for Alcedo's wording. No figure is published here for how widely either edition circulated.", "sources": [ "alcedo-diccionario-indias-1786-t1", "alcedo-thompson-dictionary-1812-t3" ], "confidence": 0.9 } ], "takeaways": [], "faqs": [], "evidence_tier": "primary", "evidence": { "level": "industry_observation", "source_types": [ "paper" ] }, "moat_flag": false, "winning_edge": "In English this book is usually met, if at all, as \"Thompson's Geographical and Historical Dictionary of America and the West Indies\", an English reference work with a Spanish source somewhere behind it — and Alcedo, when named, is a line in a catalogue. This object reverses the order from the sheets of both printings: the Madrid 1786 title page and prólogo first, in which a colonel born in America says he spent twenty years and more than three hundred books on it because foreigners were writing the history of the Indies out of Spanish books that had been carried out of Spain; then the London 1812 title page announcing an entire translation in five volumes with large additions, and the page where the bracketed \"[Alcedo.]\" shows exactly where the Spanish text ends. His acknowledgment of the Italian and English dictionaries that preceded him, his own list of his book's defects, and the sentence in which he denies government and law to the peoples Spain had not conquered are all here as claims of their own, on the same footing as the achievement.", "confidence": 0.85, "last_verified": "2026-08-09", "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/alcedo-diccionario-geografico-1786", "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/alcedo-diccionario-geografico-1786.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "Alcedo's Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias Occidentales (Madrid, 1786)", "description": "A geographical and historical dictionary of the whole of America, compiled over twenty years by a colonel of the Spanish Guards who says he was born there. Its prologue gives the motive: foreigners had made the history of the Indies their own subject, carrying out of Spain the books its own discoverers had written, until those books could barely be found in Spain at any price. In 1812 a London consortium issued the whole of it in English, with additions.", "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/alcedo-diccionario-geografico-1786", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-08-09", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias Occidentales ó América: es á saber: de los Reynos del Perú, Nueva España, Tierra Firme, Chile, y Nuevo Reyno de Granada. Tomo I", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=4yevWyjMfbkC&pg=PP7" }, { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "The Geographical and Historical Dictionary of America and the West Indies. Containing an entire translation of the Spanish work of Colonel Don Antonio de Alcedo, Captain of the Royal Spanish Guards, and Member of the Royal Academy of History: with large additions and compilations from modern voyages and travels, and from original and authentic information. Vol. III", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=FuI-AAAAYAAJ&pg=PP7" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "Alcedo's Diccionario geográfico-histórico de las Indias Occidentales (Madrid, 1786)" } }