New!
Ocean : a history of the Atlantic before Columbus
Haywood, John, 1956-2024
Books, Manuscripts
Find it!
Ocean is an ambitious history of the pre-Columbian Atlantic Ocean, a story that begins with the formation of the mid-Atlantic ridge some 200 million years ago and ends with the Castilian conquest of the Canary Islands in the fifteenth century, which provided a template for the methods used by the Spanish in their colonisation of the New World. John Haywood argues that the perception that Atlantic history begins with the first voyage of the celebrated Genoese navigator is a mistaken one, and that the seafaring and shipbuilding skills that enabled European global exploration and expansion did not arrive fully formed in the fifteenth century, but were learned over centuries and millennia in the Atlantic and its marginal seas. The pre-Columbian history of the Atlantic is the story of how Europeans learned to master the oceans. It is, therefore, key to understanding why it was Europeans, and not any of the world's other seafaring peoples, who 'discovered' the world. Ocean is informed by the author's extensive travels in and around the Atlantic Ocean, crossing Newfoundland's Grand Banks, the Sea of Darkness and the weed-covered Sargasso Sea to make landfall at locations as diverse as Vinland, Greenland, the Faroes and the Cape Verde Islands. Populated by a heterogeneous and multi-ethnic cast of seafarers, fishermen, monks, merchants and dreamers, this is an in-depth history of a neglected subject, fusing geology, geography, mythology, cosmology, developing maritime technologies and the early history of exploration to narrate an enthralling and intriguing story that lies at the very heart of Europe's modern history and its relationship with the rest of the world.
Main title:
Ocean : a history of the Atlantic before Columbus / by John Haywood.
Author:
Imprint:
London, England : Head of Zeus, 2024.
Collation:
xxviii, 529 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 24 cm
Notes:
Maps on endpapers.Includes bibliographical references (pages 489-506) and index.
Contents:
Introduction: Birthing painsWho ate the first oyster?, c.168,000 BP-5000 BCThe book of invasions, 5000 BC-500 BCMasters of the sea, 1100 BC-400 BCFortunate islands, 800 BC-AD 500Promised lands, AD 400-1500Of mice and northmen, 793-1468Land-takings, 825-1262The walrus and the unicorn, 900-1261The Vinland saga, 1000-1121A change in the weather, 1300-1500Guiding stars, 800-1500Sea of darkness, 700-1492The fish event horizon, 1000-1500Uncontaminated gentiles, 1300-1496Keeping the lights burning, 670-1495Going beyond pain, 1434-88They all laughed, 1474-1508.
ISBN:
9781801109901 (hardback)
Dewey class:
551.4613
Language:
English
Subject:
BRN:
528567
More Information:
| Location | Collection | Call number | Status/Desc |
|---|---|---|---|
| St Marys | Nonfiction | 551.4613 OCE | Onloan - Due: 17 Jun 2025 |