The European Discovery of America PDF Download

Author: Samuel Eliot Morison
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195013771
Category : America
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Samuel Eliot Morison
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195018486
Category : America
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Columbus, Magellan, and Drake are focused upon in this account of the early discovery voyages south of the Caribbean. Bibliogs

Author: Samuel Eliot Morison
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 796

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Book Description
The late Samuel Eliot Morison, a former U.S. Navy admiral, was also one of America's premier historians. Combining a first-hand knowledge of the sea and transatlantic travel with a brilliantly readable narrative style, he produced what has become nothing less than the definitive account of the great age of European exploration. In his riveting and richly illustrated saga, Morison offers a comprehensive account of all the known voyages by Europeans to the New World from 500 A.D. to the seventeenth century. Together, the two volumes of The European Discovery of America tell the compelling stories of the many intrepid explorers who made what was then a journey frought with danger--figures as diverse as Leif Ericsson, Columbus, John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Martin Frobisher, Magellan, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Sir Francis Drake to name but a few. They also follow the adventures of lesser-known but no less interesting mariners and offer a detailed look at those who set them forth on their travels. In the first volume, The Northern Voyages--winner of the prestigious Bancroft Prize for History--Morison re-creates the lives and perilous times of those who claimed to have seen the shores of North America in the 600 years after the Norsemen first landed. He brings to his account a rare immediacy, making the drama and unpredictability of their voyages as significant in relation to the people of their era as the astronauts' journeys have been for our own times. Morison also offers a fascinating look at the imaginary lands reported by early travelers (such mythical places as Antilia and the Seven Cities, the glorious Kingdoms of Norumbega and Saguenay, and Hy-Brasil the Isle of the Blest) and examines as well the alleged discoverers of these lands. With warmth and wit he distinguishes fact from fiction, and imaginary explorers and their exploits from actual men and events. In the second volume, Morison turns his attention to the navigators who negotiated the waters of the Caribbean and the treacherous coasts of South America, even following them as they ventured ashore to the dark inland of the southern continent. The Southern Voyages begins with the events leading up to Columbus's arrival in San Salvador in 1492 and concludes with the discovery of the southernmost bit of land, Cape Horn, by Dutch explorers in 1616. In between, Morison retraces the routes of all the great mariners, including a step-by-step account of Magellan's voyage that would take him around the world. Morison has enlivened his narrative with a wide range of source material from Italy, Spain, Portugal, and South America, in the process shedding new light on questions that have divided scholars througout history: Did Sir Francis Drake discover San Francisco Bay? Was Amerigo Vespucci a great explorer or a fraud--or a little of both? What role did the French have in the European discovery of Brazil? Each volume brims with contemporary illustrations, maps (many of them specially drawn for this history) and photographs (often taken by Morison himself as he flew at low altitude along the coastal routes of explorers), which together identify virtually every allusion to land and sea made by the great European navigators in their ship logs and their later accounts. With the 500th anniversary of the European arrival in America came much controversy over Columbus's true legacy. With its lively and engaging style, and with its unsurpassed understanding of the age, The European Discovery of America helps put the era of exploration in much-needed perspective. Anyone interested in the history of America, indeed, in the history of Western Civilization, will find these volumes absolutely essential.

Author: Samuel Eliot Morison
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : America
Languages : en
Pages : 846

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Book Description
Includes discussions of fictional pre-Columbian voyages, Vinland voyages, voyages of Cabot, Cartier, Frobisher, and others. Good bibliographies.

Author: Samuel Eliot Morison
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : America
Languages : en
Pages : 786

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Book Description
Emphasizes the discoveries and explorations of Columbus, Magellan and Drake during the period.

Author: Eviatar Zerubavel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351305980
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Most of us are fascinated by the conventional storybook account of Christopher Columbus' heroic discovery of America in 1492. Yet, should the credit for discovering America go to a man who insisted it was but a few islands off the shores of China?In Terra Cognita, Eviatar Zerubavel argues that physical encounters are only one part of the complex, multifaceted process of discovery. Such encounters must be complemented by an understanding of the true identity of what is being discovered. The small group of islands claimed by Columbus to have been discovered off the shores of Asia was a far cry from what we now call America. The discovery of the New World was not achieved in a single day but was a slow process--mental as well as physical--that lasted almost three hundred years. By celebrating 1492 as a year of discovery, we inevitably distort the reality of history.In vividly documenting how a slowly emerging New World gradually forced itself into Europe's consciousness, Zerubavel shows that Columbus did not discover America on October 12, 1492. Supplemented by fascinating old maps and a new preface written for this paperback edition, Terra Cognita will be of interest to historians, geographers, cognitive scientists, sociologists, and students of culture.

Author: Silvio A. Beding
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349125733
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 799

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Book Description
The European discovery of the Americas in 1492 was one of the most important events of the Renaissance, and with it Christopher Columbus changed the course of world history. Now, five hundred years later, this 2-volume reference work will chart new courses in the study and understanding of Columbus and the Age of Discovery. Much more than an account of the man and his voyages, The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia is a complete A-Z look at the world during this momentous era. In two volumes, The Christopher Columbus Encyclopedia contains more than 350 signed original articles ranging from 250 to more than 10,000 words, written by nearly 150 contributors from around the world. The work includes cross-references, bibliographies for each article, and a comprehensive index. The work is fully illustrated, with hundreds of maps, drawings and photographs.

Author: Bernard Sheehan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521229272
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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When the English settlers arrived in Virginia in 1607 they carried with them a fully developed mythology about native Indian cultures. This mythology was built around the body of English writing about America that began to appear in the 1550s, prior to any significant contact between the English and the native groups, and was founded upon the assumption of the savagism of the Indian and the civility of European culture. Professor Sheehan argues that English commitment to this myth was at the root of the violence that broke out almost immediately between the settlers and the Indians. On the one hand, the Indians were seen as noble savages, free from and innocent of the deficiencies of European society. But as ignoble savages they were seen as immature, even bestial, lacking the civilising and ordering social structure that characterised European culture. Whichever perspective was adopted, this mythology was a product of the white man's world, developed without accurate information about Indian culture. This mythology justified both the exploitation that came to characterise settler-native relations and the inevitability of the violence that culminated in the massacre of 1622.

Author: Surekha Davies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107036674
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Davies examines how Renaissance illustrated maps shaped ideas about peoples of the Americas, revealing relationships between civility, savagery and monstrosity.

Author: Arne Molander
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1105863352
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
The horizons were of fundamental importance to Columbus. The western horizon was the focus of his lifelong quest for undiscovered territory. He used the stars grazing his northern horizon as his guides for sailing constant latitudes, and the lunar-planetary conjunctions (LPCs) at his eastern and western horizons to measure his longitudes. Most 15th Century oceanic sailors knew how to sail constant latitudes guided by the stars, but few, other than Columbus, knew how to use the heavens to measure longitude. His innovative navigation method measured longitudes by comparing measurements of LPCs at his eastern and western horizons using celestial data tabulated in his Ephemerides. Major findings include: Columbus used celestial events, he served on a 1477 voyage to Nova Scotia, comprehensive evidence reveals his 1492 landfall was at Egg Island, Amerigo Vespucci beat Ponce de Leon to Florida by a dozen years, and Columbus may have facilitated a deliberate sinking of the Santa Maria.