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1492

The Year the Four Corners of the Earth Collided

by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

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Pub. Ed. $25.99

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Book Excerpt

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Excerpt

So was gunpowder, without which the world could never have experienced the
"military revolution" that based modern warfare on the massed firepower of
huge armies; nor could the traditional balance of power, which kept
sedentary civilizations at the mercy of horse- borne enemies, ever have been
reversed. The "gunpowder empires" that outclassed ill- equipped enemies
around the early modern world, and the modern nation- state, which arose
from the military revolution, would simply never have come about.

Industrialization would have been impossible without the blast furnace and
the exploitation of coal for energy, both of which originated in China.
Modern capitalism would have been impossible without paper money- another
idea Westerners got from China. The conquest of the world's oceans depended
on Western adaptations of Chinese direction-finding and shipbuilding
technologies. Scientific empiricism- the great idea on which Westerners
usually congratulate themselves for its impact on the world- had a much
longer history in China than in the West. So in science, finance, commerce,
communications, and war, the most pervasive of the great revolutions that
made the modern world depended on Chinese technologies and ideas. The rise
of Western powers to global hegemony was a long- delayed effect of the
appropriation of Chinese inventions.

Nevertheless, the effective applications came from Europe, and it was in
Europe that the scientific, commercial, military, and industrial revolutions
began. To recapitulate: this perplexing shift of initiative- the upset in
the normal state of the world- started in 1492, when the resources of the
Americas began to be accessible to Westerners while remaining beyond the
reach of other rival or potentially rival civilizations.

In the same year, events in Europe and Africa drew new frontiers between
Christendom and Islam in ways that favored the former. These events were
surprising, and this book is, in part, an attempt to explain them. For
Europe- formerly and still- was a backwater, despised or ignored in India,
Islam, China, and the rest of East Asia, and outclassed in wealth, artistry,
and inventiveness. The ascent of the West, first to challenge the East and
ultimately to dominate the world, began in earnest only in 1492. People in
every generation have their own modernity, which grows out of the whole of
the past. No single year ever inaugurated anyone's modernity on its own. But
for us, 1492 was special. Key features of the world we inhabit- of the way
power and wealth, cultures and faiths, life- forms and ecosystems are
distributed around the planet- became discernible in the historical record
for the first time.

We are still adjusting to the consequences.

From the book 1492: The Year the World Began by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto.
Copyright (c) 2009 Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. Reprinted by permission of
HarperOne, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

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1492

“In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” goes the schoolhouse rhyme, yet for historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto, that famous year was one of incomparable global significance that extended far beyond Columbus’ famous voyage. In 1492, he takes readers on a grand tour of the year that marks the beginning of our modern world. Of course, Columbus’ explorations do play a big role in the world-changing effects of 1492. Columbus exposed the wind system of the Atlantic, where the northeast trades, which helped Columbus make his legendary crossing, could be used to link to the Brazil Current, sweeping southward into the path of the westerlies of the South Atlantic and on around the globe. Once navigators had detected this pattern, the circumnavigation of the oceans became an irreversible process, and Fernández-Armesto explores the geographic and cultural reasons why it was the Europeans who made this breakthrough, rather than explorers from other cultures, allowing the resources of the Americas to become accessible to Westerners while remaining beyond the reach of rival civilizations. Meanwhile in 1492 the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella not only launched Columbus’ voyage, they also forced Spain's Jews to choose between conversion and expulsion. By effectively compelling conversions, Fernández-Armesto argues that Spain actually profited by forcing former Jews into the mainstream of Spanish life and reaping the benefits of their many talents. “Converted Jews were the alchemical ingredient that made Spain’s golden age,” he writes. And though the Ottoman Empire was surging at the end of the 15th century, the conquest of Granada and the handing over of the Alhambra in 1492 marked the extinction of Islam in Western Europe. Other big transformations were on the horizon. Across Europe, events on the eastern edge of Christendom elevated Russia to the status of a great empire, while in Africa, the Portuguese consolidated their influence, carving the continent between Islam and Christianity. In China, the Ming rulers were ending trade on the Silk Road in favor of isolationism, while in India, the booming spice trade was trembling on the brink of a future of European interlopers. And back in the Americas, the Aztecs and Incas, at the peak of their language and art, were about to face their demise at the hands of the Spanish Conquistadores. Fernández-Armesto shows how, by opening the Americas to Christian evangelization and European migration, the events of 1492 radically redrafted the map of world religions and shifted the distribution and balance of world civilizations. Ultimately 1492 is a comprehensive account of how a single year can be seen to mark the beginning of modernity and the inexorable ascent of the West.

Hardcover: 352 pages

Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers ( November 03, 2009 )

Item #: 96-8052

ISBN: 9780061132278

Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.25 x 0.79 inches

Product Weight: 16.0 ounces