x
Spanish Empire, space, New World, colonial spaces.
Scattered around the four corners of the world, the Spanish Empire was specialist in the use of space. Being one of the major responsible for the large colonial expansion on Africa, Asia and, mainly, on the New World, the Spain of XVI century needed to develop specific forms to deal with the administrative challenges and control demanded by the new territorial possessions. Therefore, we propose to study a conjunction of power relations that engender this conquer, control and exploration process of the overseas Spanish colonies. Besides that, we highlight the deep challenges of the knowledge field, which were launched to the Europe intellectual classes, concerning the need to explain and understand the New World that was coming around. In this analysis, power and knowledge are correlated. Both were committed at the efetivation of a colonial Project and in a nonunitary way, but imperially directioned, to deal with the space. Studying about the use of the colonial spaces in the New World to the Hispanic Empire in the XVI century, we have sought to name the decisive factors for an instauration of a modis operandi and the ways of thinking and managing these colonial territories.