Quote:
"In just three decades around the start of the 16th century, a few thousand men in the service of Spain discovered the Western Hemisphere and conquered much of Mexico, Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean islands. How did they do it?
...
Inspiration for such daring came largely from the chivalric romances that dominated Europe's bestseller lists in the early 1500s. Our media-saturated age can hardly imagine the effect that these novels must have had on the "first generation of men and women able to read books as a source of entertainment." Conquistadors paid them lasting tribute in the New World's geography: California, Patagonia and the Amazon are all named for places or characters in contemporary novels of the genre."
--Francis X. Rocca, reviewing Rivers of Gold by Sir Hugh Thomas

I hadn't know any of that. Can anybody find other examples, or tell us more about that genre or that media-frenzy?

I can't cite specific examples but I do recall seeing a PBS special that mentioned the "puffery" (to put it mildly) that went on when early speculators wrote back to the Old World attempting to attract newcomers. Several of them blatantly appealled to the Europeans', let's say, baser instincts by proclaiming that the locals were extremely liberated sexually. Made for some quite spicy reading!

Then again, there are the stories behind the naming of "Greenland" and "Iceland" which I assume are well known.