Rivers of Gold : The Rise of the Spanish Empire

250 years after Columbus launched the most important expedition of conquest in history, Magellan, sailing with a Spanish fleet, followed in his wake. The Spanish adventurers convinced themselves an Earthly Paradise existed in the Caribbean and that the rivers flowed with gold. Hundreds set sail on this precarious journey across the Atlantic. The conquistadors took with them wheat, the horse, the guitar and the wheel, as well as guns, malaria and black slaves. In return the Indies gave Europe the potato, turkey and syphilis. But within thirty years, Spain had created an empire that made her the most envied nation in the world. In this epic history the prize-winning author, Hugh Thomas, brings the early years of Spain's imperial achievement vividly to life.

Hugh Thomas is the author of, among other books, The Spanish Civil War (1962) which won the Somerset Maugham Award, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes and the Fall of Old Mexico (1994), An Unfinished History of the World (1979) and The Slave Trade (1997). From 1966 to 1975 he was Professor of History at the University of Reading. He was Director of the Centre for Policy Studies in London from 1979 to 1991, and he became a life peer as Baron Thomas of Swynnerton in 1981.