discovery of the americas

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

by Peter Frankopan  · 26 Aug 2015  · 1,042pp  · 273,092 words

great treasure of gold and silver had been concealed’; future generations, opined Pedro Mexía, would not believe the quantities that had been found.65 The discovery of the Americas was soon followed by the import of slaves, bought in the markets of Portugal. As the Portuguese knew from their experiences in the Atlantic island

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Naissance – a birth. For the first time in history, Europe lay at the heart of the world. 12 The Road of Silver Even before the discovery of the Americas, trading patterns had begun to pick up after the economic shocks of the fifteenth century. Some scholars argue that this was caused by improved access

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supply of goods and materials.122 The supply of credit resulted in a redistribution of wealth every bit as dramatic as that which followed the discovery of the Americas four centuries earlier: money flowed out of Europe to the United States in a flood of bullion and promissory notes. The war bankrupted the Old

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jewel’ of national oil resources and take them from ‘the hands of the childish politicians of Persia’.39 The story had familiar echoes of the discovery of the Americas 400 years earlier. While local populations had not been decimated in the same way as those encountered by the Spanish, the process was effectively the

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currency as being as momentous as the transfer of power from London for India and Pakistan.57 But its impact was most similar to the discovery of the Americas and the redistribution of global wealth that followed. Western corporations that controlled concessions and whose distribution was largely concentrated on Europe and the United States

Why the West Rules--For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future

by Ian Morris  · 11 Oct 2010  · 1,152pp  · 266,246 words

Great Divergence, is that western Europe, and above all Britain, just got lucky. Like Frank, Pomeranz sees the West’s luck beginning with the accidental discovery of the Americas, creating a trading system that provided incentives to industrialize production; but unlike Frank, he suggests that as late as 1800 Europe’s luck could still

The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans

by David Abulafia  · 2 Oct 2019  · 1,993pp  · 478,072 words

a quick glance at the Portuguese, Dutch or Danish maritime networks quickly shows. This interconnection of the oceans was the great revolution that followed the discovery of the Americas and of the route from Europe to Asia by way of the southern tip of Africa, and it has received too little attention. One important

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and Spain. Aden was therefore a nodal point not just in the Indian Ocean maritime networks, but in what can reasonably be called (before the discovery of the Americas) a global network that stretched from Atlantic Seville to the Spice Islands of the Indian Ocean. Broadly speaking the port was very lively from the

The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible

by Simon Winchester  · 14 Oct 2013  · 501pp  · 145,097 words

: Harper & Brothers, 1855. ———. Travels in North America in the Years 1841–1842. New York: Charles E. Merrill, 1909. Mann, Charles C. 1493: How Europe’s Discovery of the Americas Revolutionized Trade, Ecology and Life on Earth. London: Granta, 2011. Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New

Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History

by Lewis Dartnell  · 13 May 2019  · 424pp  · 108,768 words

species were unknown to the rest of the world until the great fifteenth-century transfer of domesticated plants and animals that occurred after the European discovery of the Americas, known as the Columbian Exchange. ‡ So much so that in the late seventeenth century, after the Second Anglo-Dutch War, it was agreed that the

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down the coast of Africa before they finally found its southern tip and the gateway into the Indian Ocean. Now, within a generation of the discovery of the Americas in 1492, European sailors ventured across all the world’s oceans and completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth. This was a revolution that heralded

A Short History of Humanity: How Migration Made Us Who We Are

by Johannes Krause and Thomas Trappe  · 8 Apr 2021  · 218pp  · 62,621 words

, for instance—show clear signs of syphilis. Until now, these finds have usually been taken as evidence that the disease existed in Europe before the discovery of the Americas, but I am almost certain that the dead people in question suffered from yaws. AN UNDERESTIMATED THREAT * * * FOR MOST PEOPLE IN THE MODERN WEST, PLAGUE

The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World

by Simon Winchester  · 7 May 2018  · 449pp  · 129,511 words

was one other profession that above all others truly needed the most precise timekeeping. It was that which had been developing fast since the European discovery of the Americas in the fifteenth century and the subsequent consolidation of trade routes to the Orient: the shipping industry. Navigation across vast and trackless expanses of ocean

Caribbean Islands

by Lonely Planet

he had prolonged the Trujillo-style dictatorship for decades. His most lasting legacy may be the Faro a Colón, an enormously expensive monument to the discovery of the Americas that drained Santo Domingo of electricity whenever the lighthouse was turned on. Breaking with the Past The Dominican people signaled their desire for change in

Africa: A Biography of the Continent

by John Reader  · 5 Nov 1998  · 1,072pp  · 297,437 words

after abolition) it was still running at an average of 33,300 slaves per year.10 The surge in numbers can be attributed to the discovery of the Americas and the European taste for sugar. Columbus discovered the Caribbean islands and North America for Spain in 1492; Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil for Portugal

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vessels of other nations persistently defied the Portuguese monopoly. After 1492 the attention of an avaricious neighbour, Spain, was diverted from West Africa by the discovery of the Americas, but the French and the English, the Dutch and the Danish, would not be kept out. Often they not only traded in the territories that

Guns, germs, and steel: the fates of human societies

by Jared M. Diamond  · 15 Jul 2005

tensions have roots going back thousands of years. When we think of major overseas population movements, we tend to focus on those since Columbus's discovery of the Americas, and on the resulting replacements of non-Europeans by Europeans within historic times. But there were also big overseas movements long before Columbus, and prehistoric

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vice versa? Our starting point will be a comparison of Eurasian and Native American societies as of A.D. 1492, the year of Columbus's “discovery” of the Americas. OUR COMP ARISON BEGINS with food production, a major determi- nant of local population size and societal complexityhence an ultimate factor behind the conquest. The

Fall of Civilizations: Stories of Greatness and Decline

by Paul Cooper  · 31 Mar 2024  · 583pp  · 174,033 words

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson  · 20 Mar 2012  · 547pp  · 172,226 words

How to Change the World: Reflections on Marx and Marxism

by Eric Hobsbawm  · 5 Sep 2011  · 621pp  · 157,263 words

Spain

by Lonely Planet Publications and Damien Simonis  · 14 May 1997

War and Gold: A Five-Hundred-Year History of Empires, Adventures, and Debt

by Kwasi Kwarteng  · 12 May 2014  · 632pp  · 159,454 words

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy

by Philip Coggan  · 6 Feb 2020  · 524pp  · 155,947 words

The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind

by Jan Lucassen  · 26 Jul 2021  · 869pp  · 239,167 words

The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street

by Justin Fox  · 29 May 2009  · 461pp  · 128,421 words

Civilization: The West and the Rest

by Niall Ferguson  · 28 Feb 2011  · 790pp  · 150,875 words

When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Rise of the Middle Kingdom

by Martin Jacques  · 12 Nov 2009  · 859pp  · 204,092 words

Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future

by Paul Mason  · 29 Jul 2015  · 378pp  · 110,518 words

The Rough Guide to South America on a Budget (Travel Guide eBook)

by Rough Guides  · 1 Jan 2019  · 1,909pp  · 531,728 words

The Rough Guide to Mexico

by Rough Guides  · 15 Jan 2022

Italy

by Damien Simonis  · 31 Jul 2010

Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart

by Tim Butcher  · 2 Jul 2007  · 341pp  · 111,525 words

Lonely Planet Andalucia: Chapter From Spain Travel Guide

by Lonely Planet  · 31 May 2012

The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty

by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson  · 23 Sep 2019  · 809pp  · 237,921 words

Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson  · 15 May 2023  · 619pp  · 177,548 words

The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

by Joseph Henrich  · 7 Sep 2020  · 796pp  · 223,275 words

The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism

by Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias  · 19 Aug 2019  · 458pp  · 116,832 words

The Taste of Empire: How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World

by Lizzie Collingham  · 2 Oct 2017  · 452pp  · 130,041 words

Ambition, a History

by William Casey King  · 14 Sep 2013  · 317pp  · 84,674 words

Lonely Planet London

by Lonely Planet  · 22 Apr 2012

Capitalism: Money, Morals and Markets

by John Plender  · 27 Jul 2015  · 355pp  · 92,571 words

The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor

by William Easterly  · 4 Mar 2014  · 483pp  · 134,377 words

Lonely Planet London City Guide

by Tom Masters, Steve Fallon and Vesna Maric  · 31 Jan 2010

Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

by James Suzman  · 10 Jul 2017

Them And Us: Politics, Greed And Inequality - Why We Need A Fair Society

by Will Hutton  · 30 Sep 2010  · 543pp  · 147,357 words

Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension

by Samuel Arbesman  · 18 Jul 2016  · 222pp  · 53,317 words

The Rough Guide to Bolivia: Travel Guide eBook

by Rough Guides  · 31 Mar 2025  · 598pp  · 166,116 words

Migrant City: A New History of London

by Panikos Panayi  · 4 Feb 2020

Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization

by Branko Milanovic  · 10 Apr 2016  · 312pp  · 91,835 words

Your Own Allotment : How to Find It, Cultivate It, and Enjoy Growing Your Own Food

by Russell-Jones, Neil.  · 21 Mar 2008

Lonely Planet Best of Spain

by Lonely Planet  · 1 Nov 2016

Does Capitalism Have a Future?

by Immanuel Wallerstein, Randall Collins, Michael Mann, Georgi Derluguian, Craig Calhoun, Stephen Hoye and Audible Studios  · 15 Nov 2013  · 238pp  · 73,121 words

A Pelican Introduction Economics: A User's Guide

by Ha-Joon Chang  · 26 May 2014  · 385pp  · 111,807 words

Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence

by Calum Chace  · 28 Jul 2015  · 144pp  · 43,356 words

Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World

by Branko Milanovic  · 23 Sep 2019