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Title: Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229-1492 (New Studies in Medieval History) by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto ISBN: 0-8122-1412-9 Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press Pub. Date: September, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)
Rating: 4
Summary: Columbus as a logical outcome
Comment: It is hard to use, in the same sentence, logic and a man who believed both in the basic sphericity of the earth and the existence of the Earthly Paradise. But, all hero-villain dichotomies aside, we shall always be confronted with the fact that it was Columbus who started the inexorable process that produced America as we know it, to the exclusion of all who may have preceded him to these shores.
I doubt seriously that, even today, you can find any book in English containing as much of the process (speaking historically) that produced Columbus. The patchwork of overlapping interests that constituted the Medieval and Renaissance Mediterranean has to be one of the truly difficult places to begin on the globe. Just when you think Venice has emerged safely ahead of Genoa, and the Portuguese have shut the gate on Spain, then everything changes. Too bad the expression "sea change" wasn't yet invented when this book was written.
The African leg of the process has had some coverage, but not any more competently than here. I have some reservations about the claim that gold was the Italian merchants' only motive for trading in North Africa. And this claim is somewhat mitigated by the author's own observation that the attraction of the Canaries was a certain dyestuff easily obtained there. His explanation of
the crucial role of the Canaries, while Morisonesque, certainly explains much.
A chronological list of major steps would have been helpful. This book is, however, a "keeper," and will be for some time to come.
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Title: Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History by Peregrin Horden, Nicholas Purcell, Peregrine Horden ISBN: 0631218904 Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $36.95 |
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Title: Communities of Violence by David Nirenberg ISBN: 069105889X Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 26 January, 1998 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Under Crescent and Cross by Mark R. Cohen ISBN: 069101082X Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 02 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Italian Renaissance by Peter Burke ISBN: 0691006784 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 26 April, 1999 List Price(USD): $21.30 |
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Title: Empire : How Spain Became a World Power, 1492-1763 by Henry Kamen ISBN: 0060194766 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 04 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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