General History of the acts of the Castilians on the Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea General History of the acts of the Castilians on the Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea

Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas (1549–1625) composed his General History of the Castillian acts on the Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea between 1596 and 1615 when he was senior chronicler of the Indies and at the request of the Council of the Indies. Herrera, who had great knowledge of the existing documentation relating to the affairs of the Indies, brought together an exhaustive volume of information and drafted his work based on primary document sources, on the testimonies made, and on previous chroniclers. His history, with the Castilians as the protagonists, is fundamentally descriptive and gives priority to chronological ordering, hence the nickname Decades.
The publication of this extensive piece of work was completed in 1615. It was edited during the reign of Philip II and his son Philip III. Antonio de Herrera's publication Decades enjoyed a huge amount of success and was succeeded by numerous editions from 1601, the year of its first publication in Madrid by printer Juan de la Cuesta, being subsequently printed in the cities of Madrid, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris, Leyden, London, and Antwerp, in various languages, and well into the 20th century.