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An enthralling account of the greatest adventure in European history - the discovery of the rest of the world The Age of Reconnaissance, as J. H. Parry so aptly named it, was the period in which Europe discovered the rest of the world. It began with Henry the Navigator and the Portuguese voyages in the mid-fifteenth century and ended 250 years later when the 'reconnaissance' was all but complete. This book is less concerned with the voyages of discovery themselves than with an analysis of the factors that made the voyages possible in the first place. Dr Parry examines the inducements - political, economic, religious - to overseas enterprises at the time, and analyses the nature and problems ...
The Spanish empire in America was the first of the great seaborne empires of western Europe; it was for long the richest and the most formidable, the focus of envy, fear, and hatred. Its haphazard beginning dates from 1492; it was to last more than three hundred years before breaking up in the early nineteenth century in civil wars between rival generals and "liberators." Available now for the first time in paperback is J. H. Parry's classic assessment of the impact of Spain on the Americas. Parry presents a broad picture of the conquests of Cortès and Pizarro and of the economic and social consequences in Spain of the effort to maintain control of vast holdings. He probes the complex administration of the empire, its economy, social structure, the influence of the Church, the destruction of the Indian cultures and the effect of their decline on Spanish policy. As we approach the quincentenary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas, Parry provides the historical basis for a new consideration of the former Spanish colonies of Latin America and the transformation of pre-Columbian cultures to colonial states.
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"Britain's seaborne tradition is used to throw light on the British themselves, the people with whom they came into contact and the British perception of empire. The oceans and their shores, rather than the mysterious interiors of continents, certainly dominated the English perception of the transoceanic world in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, climaxing in the fascination with the Pacific in the age of Captain Cook, and continuing into the nineteenth century, with Franklin in the Arctic and Ross in the Antarctic. The oceans offered much more than fascination. In England, from the late sixteenth century, maritime conflict and imperial strength were seen as important to national morale and reputation and without it there would have been no empire, or at least not in the form it actually took."--BOOK JACKET.
Guns, Sails and Empires is that rarity among works of history: a short book with a simple, powerful thesis that the entire book is devoted to proving. Carlo Cipolla begins with the question, "Why, after the end of the fifteenth century were the Europeans able not only to force their way through to the distant Spice Islands but also to gain control of all the major sea-routes and to establish overseas empires?" (19) He quickly dismisses motive as a causal factor: motive to circumvent the "Moslem blockade" had existed in earlier centuries as well, but motive without means is empty. Cipolla identifies two developments that provided the means for Europeans to finally succeed beyond their wildest dreams: ships seaworthy enough to reach distant seas; and powerful cannon that could be carried by these ships.
Covers the period during which Europe discovered the rest of the world, beginning with the mid-fifteenth century and ending 250 years later when the "Reconnaissance" was all but complete. The author examines the inducements--political, economic, religious--to overseas enterprise at the time, and analyzes the nature and problems of the various European settlements in the new lands.
This is a new release of the original 1961 edition.