José de Viera y Clavijo

José de Viera y Clavijo, was a Spanish, of Portuguese descent, Enlightenment ecclesiastic, poet, historian, botanist, ethnographer, and professor. He is best known for his exhaustive History of the Canary Islands, which took 20 years of work. He was assisted by Fernando de Molina Quesada, José Vandewalle, and others. The first volume was published in 1773, the second in 1774, the third in 1775, and the fourth in 1781. He recognized the Canaries as belonging to Africa and was a proponent of atlantonationalism. He recorded various expeditions from the Canaries in search of Saint Brendan's Island that occurred from 1487 to 1759. He investigated the influence of maritime activities in the Atlantic Ocean on the development of the islands. In this pursuit he also covered sailors such as Blas Zabala y Moreno, Francisco Díaz Pimienta, José Fernández Romero, José González Cabrera Bueno, and Tomé Cano. He was an admirer of Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro and Voltaire, having been considered by scholarship after his time the "spiritual son" of the former.