Pedro Mártir de Anglería, Decades of the New World (1511-1530), read in Richard Eden's English of 1555

An Italian humanist at the Castilian court began writing down what returning captains told him about the western islands, because, as he put it, the Spaniards took care only of the general findings and the particulars would otherwise have drowned in oblivion. The result was the first history of the Americas. Its third decade also carries the earliest printed account of the demographic collapse of Hispaniola, written by a man employed by the crown that caused it.