Attempts to show as a whole the Peninsula made up of Spain and Portugal, with the slow unfolding of a pattern of society and an attitude to life still subtly distinct from those north of the Pyrenees. The successive occupations of Roman, Visigoth and Muslim span between them more than a thousand years. The Peninsula's great contribution to the modern age was the opening up of the New World in the west by Spain, and of new routes to the east by Portugal. Over the last century and a half the history of both peoples provides a case-study in the esential relativity of forms of government.

Spanish and Portuguese expansion substantially altered the social, political, and economic contours of the modern world. In his book, Lyle McAlister provides a narrative and interpretive history of the exploration and settlement of the Americas by Spain and Portugal. McAlister divides this period (and the book) into three parts. First, he describes the formation of Old World societies with particular attention to those features that influenced the directions and forms of overseas expansion. Second, he traces the dynamic processes of conquest and colonization that between 1492 and about 1570 firmly established Spanish and Portuguese dominion in the New World. The third part deals with colonial growth and consolidation down to about 1700. McAlister's main themes are: the post-conquest territorial expansion that established the limits of what later came to be called Latin America, the emergence of distinctively Spanish and Portuguese American societies and economies, the formation of systems of imperial control and exploitation, and the ways in which conflicts between imperial and American interests were reconciled. This comprehensive history, with its extensive bibliographic essay and attention to historiographic issues, will be a standard reference for students and scholars of the period.