Agustín de Zárate

Agustín de Zárate was a Spanish colonial, Contador general de cuentas, civil servant, chronicler and historian. His work Historia del descubrimiento y conquista del Perú recounts the first years after the arrival of the Spaniards in the Inca Empire including the civil war between the viceroy and the encomenderos and up to the death of Gonzalo Pizarro in 1548. It is considered one of the most notable chronicles of the Spanish colonization of the Americas that have been preserved up to the present. First published in Antwerp in 1555, re-published in Venice in 1563 and then revised and published again in Seville in 1577, it was translated into English, French, Italian and German and can be considered a "best seller of the 16th Century".