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1492: The Year the World Began
1492: The Year the World Began is a look at one of the most fascinating years in world history, the year when many believe the modern world was born. Historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, author of Millennium , covers such iconic figures as Christopher Columbus and Alexander Borgia and explores cultures as diverse as that of Spain, China, and Africa to tell the story of 1492, a momentous year whose lessons are still relevant today
346 pages, Hardcover
First published October 14, 2009
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About the author
Felipe Fernández-Armesto
121books172followersFelipe Fernández-Armesto is a British professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and author of several popular works, notably on cultural and environmental history.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 93 reviews
Shelved as 'abandoned'
September 4, 2012I plodded through the first few chapters, then skimmed through a few chapters, finally giving up entirely.
Obviously, there are exceptions to every rule, but I've struggled with multiple books written by academics recently, while thoroughly enjoying well-researched books written by journalists. I'm definitely an English major with an interest in history, with my first priority being readability.
1492 suffered from the same issues as many other professor-written titles: concentration on including every little detail, rather than building a captivating overall narrative. While I was interested in some of the information in this book, I got bogged down with name after name thrown at me, and with the clumsy use of block quotes. It was too reminiscent of research papers I wrote in college, "SAT words" and all.
Obviously, there are exceptions to every rule, but I've struggled with multiple books written by academics recently, while thoroughly enjoying well-researched books written by journalists. I'm definitely an English major with an interest in history, with my first priority being readability.
1492 suffered from the same issues as many other professor-written titles: concentration on including every little detail, rather than building a captivating overall narrative. While I was interested in some of the information in this book, I got bogged down with name after name thrown at me, and with the clumsy use of block quotes. It was too reminiscent of research papers I wrote in college, "SAT words" and all.
November 26, 2009
While relatively short and with some underdeveloped threads especially regarding the Inca and the Aztecs, while the Florence one are somewhat weaker than the rest, the book is a page turner reading almost like a novel; the passages about Spain, the Moors, the Jewish expulsion/forced conversion, Africa, Eastern Europe and China are superb and the book is highly, highly recommended for an introduction to how modernity and the rise of the West started.
While the shadow of Columbus looms large, the Admiral himself appears only briefly in one chapter and the book succeeds well at its object of presenting a panoramic view of the world cca 1460's-1520's...
While the shadow of Columbus looms large, the Admiral himself appears only briefly in one chapter and the book succeeds well at its object of presenting a panoramic view of the world cca 1460's-1520's...
January 15, 2011
It's a Norman Cantor-lite -- it tries too hard, and gets bogged down in the details. It’s a solid work, with an excellent thesis, and it proves an invaluable study of the period. But if it had only been tightened up at the editing stage, it would be even more effective as a tool of scholarship, and as an enjoyable read in its own right. Slow and steady may win the race on many occasions, but sometimes you can be too slow for your own good.
September 20, 2011
The author provides a window into our world in 1492. He gives a fair shake to Columbus, of course, but details what was happening on each continent, with enough detail into specific situations to explain what was happening on the larger scale. His insight into how mysticism helped pave the way for individualism in societies is an example of the many worthwhile nuggets of ideas and information here.
August 15, 2017
I know this wasn't supposed to be academic hardass stuff but when all you've really got to say is "native people in the Americas were far more numerous than previously thought and their culture far more advanced" you sound like you're doing a fucking book report. like. as opposed to actually writing a book.
December 2, 2020
I'm shocked by the negative reviews calling this book slow and boring.
This book provides a fascinating overview of the world around the time of Columbus. It puts western Europe in a world context and demonstrates how later dominance of the West was not the inevitable result of divine decree, the white man's burden, but a combination of social political and cultural conditions which caused a shift in world power. All of this painted against a backdrop of the influence of geography and meteorology on ocean travel.
Most interesting to me is how, unbeknownst to people of the day, the world as it was previously known, ended in 1492. This is particularly relevant In the 2020 world of global pandemic and social upheaval.
Can we say that the world which began in 1492 ended in 2020?
This book provides a fascinating overview of the world around the time of Columbus. It puts western Europe in a world context and demonstrates how later dominance of the West was not the inevitable result of divine decree, the white man's burden, but a combination of social political and cultural conditions which caused a shift in world power. All of this painted against a backdrop of the influence of geography and meteorology on ocean travel.
Most interesting to me is how, unbeknownst to people of the day, the world as it was previously known, ended in 1492. This is particularly relevant In the 2020 world of global pandemic and social upheaval.
Can we say that the world which began in 1492 ended in 2020?
September 26, 2011
I enjoyed the construction of the book. FF-A's knowledge of the Americas sometimes overwhelms the analysis, with too much unexplained detail. He is, therefore, oddly better on the other regions of the world, where he draws in more material. But I am encouraged to read his Civilization at some stage, as it has been sitting on the shelf for many years.
April 10, 2018
Hard to wade through
This book is not for the casual history fan. It is tiring and difficult to wade through. Would recommend something less meaty
This book is not for the casual history fan. It is tiring and difficult to wade through. Would recommend something less meaty
July 25, 2020
In 1492, well, we all know what Columbus did. What this book attempts to do, and largely succeeds, is discuss how Columbus' voyage was just one piece in how, in the late 15th century, the world took the shape that it largely holds today: Where Islam spread, and didn't; the rise of Russia as a separate principality; why China didn't become a seafaring power.
The title is misleading, as a lot off the supposed key events are really just footnotes to larger trends. Which doesn't make the book any less fascinating, of course, and worth reading for history fans.
The title is misleading, as a lot off the supposed key events are really just footnotes to larger trends. Which doesn't make the book any less fascinating, of course, and worth reading for history fans.
May 31, 2021
Excellent history from a world perspective.
November 10, 2024
Fernandez Armesto shows simultaneous major changes around the globe and makes a good argument for the beginning of the modern world as we know it
PH, SN, VS,
PH, SN, VS,
May 6, 2020
Interesting pivot to observe the events leading up to the advent of modernity.
November 7, 2023
Postmodern history
This study, written by Felipe Fernández, makes up a wonderful tour across the events and personalities that contributed to create the world in which we are living. The selection of events and the explanations offered make the reader approach a new history, in which small details make changes possible and that forces a perspective more centered in less traditional and hegemonic interpretations (the interpretation of the winners or the powerful).
At times dense, this is the only characteristic that could make one put away the book and stop reading. However, once one understands how the writer begins to weave his ideas and pose an articulated explanation, the reward will be arresting: a frequently less analysed idea will come to the fore and a wonderful insight will take place.
In the background, modernity, that elusive term that seems to encompass any era, is said to begin, precisely, in 1492. No matter that for "modern" man --that is, contemporary man-- modernity's advent just happened to occur a couple of decades ago (honestly that depends entirely on the perspective you choose to analyse). Why can't we separate technological advance from “advance"?
Highly recommended for those who would like to deconstruct history and begin to interpret it with new radical eyes for the writer's theses effectively debunk myths that surround the figures and forces that are supposed to have effected the shift from the ancient to the modern world.
This study, written by Felipe Fernández, makes up a wonderful tour across the events and personalities that contributed to create the world in which we are living. The selection of events and the explanations offered make the reader approach a new history, in which small details make changes possible and that forces a perspective more centered in less traditional and hegemonic interpretations (the interpretation of the winners or the powerful).
At times dense, this is the only characteristic that could make one put away the book and stop reading. However, once one understands how the writer begins to weave his ideas and pose an articulated explanation, the reward will be arresting: a frequently less analysed idea will come to the fore and a wonderful insight will take place.
In the background, modernity, that elusive term that seems to encompass any era, is said to begin, precisely, in 1492. No matter that for "modern" man --that is, contemporary man-- modernity's advent just happened to occur a couple of decades ago (honestly that depends entirely on the perspective you choose to analyse). Why can't we separate technological advance from “advance"?
Highly recommended for those who would like to deconstruct history and begin to interpret it with new radical eyes for the writer's theses effectively debunk myths that surround the figures and forces that are supposed to have effected the shift from the ancient to the modern world.
March 12, 2016
1492 was 'the year the world began', argues the author, because at that point the human race, which had developed divergently on separate continents, became convergent with the meeting of Europe and the Americas, followed by the establishment of modern globalisation. Columbus set sail with a letter of introduction to the Great Khan of China, the last of whom had actually been unseated over a century earlier, in 1368. That kind of distance would not be possible again. We are encouraged in the West to have a firmly Eurocentric view of 1492 - the year of the conquest of Granada and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, as well as Columbus sailing the ocean blue - but this expanded my horizons usefully. It was also the era of the Aztec, Maya and Inca empires, the Ming Dynasty, the rise of Russia under Ivan the Great, the Ottoman Empire, the Songhay Empire in Africa, and Mamluk Egypt. around the corner are the Mughals and the Saffavid Dynasty in Persia. Clearly too much to cover in one volume, so Fernadez-Armesto provides much local colour. He clearly relishes being contrarian, dismissing the Florentine Renaissance as just one of a series of recoveries of antiquity going back to the fifth century (not a new thesis, though - Panofsky says this in Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art). There's a resistance to Great Men and Big Patterns. History is just stuff happening. I enjoyed this book most for its array of curious detail: in Russia you could be executed on the orders of the Patriarch for not believing the world was about to end; Columbus's great achievement was discovering the winds that could blow you from the Canaries to the Bahamas (to him the Indies) and then back again on the South Atlantic. There's an evocative description of Shen Zhou painting 'The Night Vigil' in war-ravaged Japan. The chapter on Africa is particularly strong, Indochina gets more cursory attention and I don't remember much if anything on Burma. But you can't have everything, and what is here is richly enjoyable. For a book on how the world evolved from this point, replacing the Professor's lack of moral commentary with an impassioned tone, a good follow-up would be Chomsky, Year 501.
August 27, 2016
Picked 1492 up to get a little more background on the world of the fifteenth century. It was a little tough to get through the book. Chapters on China and Sound Indian Trade, not to mention a large focus on Sufi mysticism were overloaded with names and events which seemed largely irrelevant. The main happenings of these areas though were interesting.
Fernandez-Armesto's chapters on Spain during the Reconquista and on Russia during their period of expansion and defeat of the final Mongols were a far more satisfying read.
As a world history teacher I am satisfied that I picked this one up. But it just wasn't enough to capture my attention throughout the whole work. Fernandez-Armesto himself states in the Epilogue that the fifteenth century is only a distant beginning to understanding our modern world. It sets the tone, but by no way defines us. At the end of the day though, it helped expand my textbook knowledge of the period, and for that I am thankful.
Fernandez-Armesto's chapters on Spain during the Reconquista and on Russia during their period of expansion and defeat of the final Mongols were a far more satisfying read.
As a world history teacher I am satisfied that I picked this one up. But it just wasn't enough to capture my attention throughout the whole work. Fernandez-Armesto himself states in the Epilogue that the fifteenth century is only a distant beginning to understanding our modern world. It sets the tone, but by no way defines us. At the end of the day though, it helped expand my textbook knowledge of the period, and for that I am thankful.
August 5, 2016
In this extraordinary, sweeping history, Felipe Fernández-Armesto traces key elements of the modern world back to that single, fateful year. Everything changed in 1492: the way power and wealth were distributed around the globe, the way major religions and civilizations divided the world, and the increasing interconnectedness of separate economies that we now call globalization. Events that began in 1492 transformed the whole ecological system of the planet. Our individualism and the very sense we share of inhabiting one world, as partakers in a common humanity, took shape and became visible in 1492.
I can't do a better review than the publisher did; that's where this review came from. I read this months ago
I can't do a better review than the publisher did; that's where this review came from. I read this months ago
May 8, 2017
Not what I expected based on the title but was fascinating and kept my interest. I thought it would be mostly focused on Columbus and his efforts toward discovering the Americas. But it was really much more. The author explored what was happening with the major cultures around the world leading up to discovering the New World as well as just after. He looked at issues such as why the Chinese, Africans, or the Muslim world were not the ones to do it. I learned a lot about the impact of learning there were unknown continents to be explored and why the year 1492 was such a pivotal period in world history. Recommended for anyone interested in world history.
January 4, 2013
Starts well, becomes confusing, then more confusing, and then you give up.
December 30, 2016
Excellent
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Being able to see the context that lead up to the known historical events added to a better understanding of those events.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Being able to see the context that lead up to the known historical events added to a better understanding of those events.
June 8, 2015
Very informative book about the geopolitical status of the world leading to vast explorations at the turn of the 15th century that is refreshingly non Euro-centric and well detailed in description of Africa, Maghreb, Central Asia, East Asia, and Meso-America. Really amazing to consider how after hundreds of years of isolation, in a span of just a few years so many different populations were ready to embark on geographical expansion. A few quotes and highlights that I took away:
[p18] "The idea that demand for spices was the result of the need to disguise tainted meat and fish is one of the great myths of the history of food. Fresh foods in medieval Europe were fresher than they are today, because they were produced locally […] taste and culture determined the role of spices in cooking. Spice-rich cuisine was desirable because it was expensive, flavoring the status of the rich and the ambitions of the aspirant.� Thus like silk textiles and gold, the drive for mercantilism of history’s largest monopolies (British and Dutch Far East India Co.) were driven by meeting the demands for the 1%.
[p20] “But the ancients had probably got it roughly right. Eratosthenes, the librarian of Alexandria, had calculated the girth of the globe around the turn of the third and second centuries BC. He measured the elevation of the sun at two points on the same meridian and the distance between the same points on the surface of the earth. The angular difference was a little over seven degrees, or about a fiftieth of a circle. So the size of the world would work out, correctly, to about twenty-five thousand miles.� Here, the author also dispels the myth that the world was viewed as flat as it was well known since times of sailors seeing a rounded horizon.
[p55] “By the middle of the fifteenth century, as Mali declined, impressions were generally unfavorable. The empire was in retreat, ground between the Tuareg of the desert and the Mossi of the forest […] When European explorers at last penetrated the empire in the 1450s, they were disillusioned. Where they had expected to find a great, bearded, nugget-wielding monarch, such as the Catalan Atlas depicted, they found only a poor, harassed, timorous ruler […] It was a dramatic moment in the history of racism. Until then, white Westerners saw only positive images of blacks in paintings of the magi who acknowledged the baby Jesus. Or else they knew Africans as expensive domestic slaves who shared intimacies with their owners and displayed estimable talents, especially as musicians. Familiarity had not yet bred contempt. Disdain for blacks as inherently inferior to other people and the pretense that reason and humanity are proportional to the pink pigment in Western flesh were new prejudices. Disgust with Mali fed them.� Here the author dispels the early onset of racism, as documented by the great Arab explorer Ibn Battuta who first reached the kingdom of Mali that was in decline after eyars of war.
[p81] “England expelled its Jews in 1291, France in 1343, and many states in western Germany followed suit in the early fifteenth century. The big problem of the expulsion is not why it happened, but why it happened with it did. Money grubbing was not the motive. By refusing a bribe to abrogate the decree of expulsion, the monarchs of Castile and Aragon surprised Jewish leaders who thought the whole policy was simply a ruse to extort cash. The Jews were reliable fiscal milch-cows. By expelling those who worked as tax gatherers, the monarchs imperiled their own revenues. It took five years for returns to recover their former levels. The Ottoman sultan Suleiman I is said to have marveled at the expulsion because it was tantamount to ‘throwing away wealth.’� Describing here the situation in modern-day Spain of warring kingdoms and the origins of European anti-semitism that led to the well known Muslim protection of Jews at the time.
[p84] “But the widespread conviction that heresy arose mainly from Jewish example, or from the memory of Judaism in the progeny of converts, trumped the truth. The ”justice� the Inquisition delivered was attractive to anyone who wanted to denounce a neighbor, a competitor, or an enemy. It was perilous to anyone who was a victim of envy or revenge. And it was cheap. In no other court could you bring charges without incurring costs or risks.� Similar to ethnic fighting in modern day central African states, pragmatic material gain was more a factor than dogmatic belief.
[p107] Dispelling many myths about the Western European Renaissance: “Nor does the reality of the Renaissance match its reputation. Scanning the past for signs of Europe’s awakening to progress, prosperity, and values that we can recognize as our own, we respond to the excitement with which Western writers around the end of the fifteenth century anticipated the dawn of a new ‘golden age�. As a result, if you are a product of mainstream Western education, almost everything you ever thought about the Renaissance is likely to be false.
‘It was revolutionary.� No: scholarship has detected half a dozen prior renaissances.
‘It was secular� or ‘It was pagan.� Not entirely: the church remained the patron of most art and scholarship.
‘It was art for art’s sake.� No: it was manipulated by plutocrats and politicians.
‘The Renaissance elevated the artist.� No: medieval artists might achieve sainthood; wealth and titles were derogatory by comparison.
‘It was scientific.� No: for every scientist there was a sorcerer.
[p158] moving onto Columbus’s famous exploration, and describing his selling point in gaining support: “he suggested to Ferdinand and Isabella that the profits of his proposed voyage could be diverted to the conquest of Jerusalem, which according to the Franciscans� prophecies, would be the work of the ‘Last World Emperor� and one of the events with which God would prepare the world for apocalypse.� And thus we see the role of apocalyptic world destruction from religious fervor in driving foreign policy for 600 years.
[p194] “But the Chinese naval effort could not last. The scholar-elites hated overseas adventures and the factions that favored them so much that, when they recaptured power, the mandarins destroyed almost all Zheng He’s records in an attempt to obliterate his memory. Moreover, China’s land frontiers became insecure as Mongol power revived. China needed to turn away from the sea and toward the new threat. The state never resumed overseas expansion. The growth of trade and of Chinese colonization in Southeast Asia was left to merchants and migrants. China, the empire best equipped for maritime imperialism, opted out.�
[p212] “The widespread assumption that Vasco da Gama was the first to penetrate deep inside it when he rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 is a vulgar error. Italian merchants often plied their trade there during the late Middle Ages […] two circumstantial accounts survive from the fifteenth century: the first by Niccolo Conti, who had been as far east as Java, and had returned to Italy by 1444; the second by his fellow Florentine Girolamo di Santo Stefano, who made an equally long trading voyage in the 1490s.�
[p214] “Conti was scrupulous in enumerating the harems of great rulers and commending the sangfroid of wives who committed suti, flinging themselves on their dead husbands� funeral pyres. In India, he found brothels so numerous, and so alluring with ‘sweet perfumes, ointments, blandishments, beauty and youth,� that Indians are much addicted to licentiousness,� whereas male homosexuality, ‘being superfluous, is unknown.� In Ava, in Burma, the women mocked Conti for having a small penis and recommended a local custom: inserting up to a dozen gold, silver, or brass pellets, of about the size of small hazelnut, under the skin, ‘and with these insertions ,and the swelling of the member, the women are affected with the most exquisite pleasure.� Conti refused the service, because ‘he did not want his pain to be a source of others� pleasure.�
[p218] “There were, of course, regions intractable to Islam. In some circles, Islam met a skeptical reception. Kabir of Benares was a poet of secularist inclinations. ‘Feeling your power, you circumcise � I can’t go along with that, brother. If your God favoured circumcision why didn’t you come out cut?� Hindus fared little better in the face of Kabir’s skepticism: ‘If putting on the thread makes you a Brahmin, What does the wife put on? � Hindu, Muslim, where did they come from?�
[p230] “In 1493, when Columbus got back from his first voyage, no one � least of all the explorer himself � knew where head had been. In the received picture of the planet, the earth was an island, divided between three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. For most European scholars, it was hard to believe that what they called a ‘fourth part of the world� existed.�
[p260] “The incorporation of the Americas � the resources, the opportunities � would turn Europe from a poor and marginal region into a nursery of potential global hegemonies. It might not have happened that way. If Chinese conquerors had bothered with the Americas, we would now think of those areas as part of ‘the East,� and the international dateline would probably sever the Atlantic.�
[p262] “This world already looks doomed to extinction. Western power is going the way of previous dinosaurs. The United States � the last sentinel of Western supremacy � is in relative decline, challenged from the East and South Asia. Pluralism looks increasingly like a path to showdown instead of a panacea for peace. Population trends on a global level are probably going into reverse. Capitalism seems to have failed and is now stigmatized as greed. A reaction against individual excess is driving the world back to collective values. Fear of terror overrides rights; fear of slumps subverts free markets. Consumption levels and urbanization are simply unsustainable at recent rates in the face of environmental change. The throwaway society is headed for the trash heap. People who sense that ‘modernity� is ending proclaim a ‘postmodern age.�
Yet this doomed world is still young: 1492 seems, on the face of it, too far back to look for the origins of the world we are in. Population really started to grow worldwide with the explosive force only in the eighteenth century. The United States did not even exist until 1776, and only became the unique superpower in the 1990s. The tool kit of ideas we associate with individualism, secularism, and constitutional guarantees of liberty really came together only in the movement we call the Enlightenment in the eighteenth-century western Europe and parts of the Americas, and even then they struggled for survival � bloodied by the French Revolution, betrayed by romanticism.�
[p18] "The idea that demand for spices was the result of the need to disguise tainted meat and fish is one of the great myths of the history of food. Fresh foods in medieval Europe were fresher than they are today, because they were produced locally […] taste and culture determined the role of spices in cooking. Spice-rich cuisine was desirable because it was expensive, flavoring the status of the rich and the ambitions of the aspirant.� Thus like silk textiles and gold, the drive for mercantilism of history’s largest monopolies (British and Dutch Far East India Co.) were driven by meeting the demands for the 1%.
[p20] “But the ancients had probably got it roughly right. Eratosthenes, the librarian of Alexandria, had calculated the girth of the globe around the turn of the third and second centuries BC. He measured the elevation of the sun at two points on the same meridian and the distance between the same points on the surface of the earth. The angular difference was a little over seven degrees, or about a fiftieth of a circle. So the size of the world would work out, correctly, to about twenty-five thousand miles.� Here, the author also dispels the myth that the world was viewed as flat as it was well known since times of sailors seeing a rounded horizon.
[p55] “By the middle of the fifteenth century, as Mali declined, impressions were generally unfavorable. The empire was in retreat, ground between the Tuareg of the desert and the Mossi of the forest […] When European explorers at last penetrated the empire in the 1450s, they were disillusioned. Where they had expected to find a great, bearded, nugget-wielding monarch, such as the Catalan Atlas depicted, they found only a poor, harassed, timorous ruler […] It was a dramatic moment in the history of racism. Until then, white Westerners saw only positive images of blacks in paintings of the magi who acknowledged the baby Jesus. Or else they knew Africans as expensive domestic slaves who shared intimacies with their owners and displayed estimable talents, especially as musicians. Familiarity had not yet bred contempt. Disdain for blacks as inherently inferior to other people and the pretense that reason and humanity are proportional to the pink pigment in Western flesh were new prejudices. Disgust with Mali fed them.� Here the author dispels the early onset of racism, as documented by the great Arab explorer Ibn Battuta who first reached the kingdom of Mali that was in decline after eyars of war.
[p81] “England expelled its Jews in 1291, France in 1343, and many states in western Germany followed suit in the early fifteenth century. The big problem of the expulsion is not why it happened, but why it happened with it did. Money grubbing was not the motive. By refusing a bribe to abrogate the decree of expulsion, the monarchs of Castile and Aragon surprised Jewish leaders who thought the whole policy was simply a ruse to extort cash. The Jews were reliable fiscal milch-cows. By expelling those who worked as tax gatherers, the monarchs imperiled their own revenues. It took five years for returns to recover their former levels. The Ottoman sultan Suleiman I is said to have marveled at the expulsion because it was tantamount to ‘throwing away wealth.’� Describing here the situation in modern-day Spain of warring kingdoms and the origins of European anti-semitism that led to the well known Muslim protection of Jews at the time.
[p84] “But the widespread conviction that heresy arose mainly from Jewish example, or from the memory of Judaism in the progeny of converts, trumped the truth. The ”justice� the Inquisition delivered was attractive to anyone who wanted to denounce a neighbor, a competitor, or an enemy. It was perilous to anyone who was a victim of envy or revenge. And it was cheap. In no other court could you bring charges without incurring costs or risks.� Similar to ethnic fighting in modern day central African states, pragmatic material gain was more a factor than dogmatic belief.
[p107] Dispelling many myths about the Western European Renaissance: “Nor does the reality of the Renaissance match its reputation. Scanning the past for signs of Europe’s awakening to progress, prosperity, and values that we can recognize as our own, we respond to the excitement with which Western writers around the end of the fifteenth century anticipated the dawn of a new ‘golden age�. As a result, if you are a product of mainstream Western education, almost everything you ever thought about the Renaissance is likely to be false.
‘It was revolutionary.� No: scholarship has detected half a dozen prior renaissances.
‘It was secular� or ‘It was pagan.� Not entirely: the church remained the patron of most art and scholarship.
‘It was art for art’s sake.� No: it was manipulated by plutocrats and politicians.
‘The Renaissance elevated the artist.� No: medieval artists might achieve sainthood; wealth and titles were derogatory by comparison.
‘It was scientific.� No: for every scientist there was a sorcerer.
[p158] moving onto Columbus’s famous exploration, and describing his selling point in gaining support: “he suggested to Ferdinand and Isabella that the profits of his proposed voyage could be diverted to the conquest of Jerusalem, which according to the Franciscans� prophecies, would be the work of the ‘Last World Emperor� and one of the events with which God would prepare the world for apocalypse.� And thus we see the role of apocalyptic world destruction from religious fervor in driving foreign policy for 600 years.
[p194] “But the Chinese naval effort could not last. The scholar-elites hated overseas adventures and the factions that favored them so much that, when they recaptured power, the mandarins destroyed almost all Zheng He’s records in an attempt to obliterate his memory. Moreover, China’s land frontiers became insecure as Mongol power revived. China needed to turn away from the sea and toward the new threat. The state never resumed overseas expansion. The growth of trade and of Chinese colonization in Southeast Asia was left to merchants and migrants. China, the empire best equipped for maritime imperialism, opted out.�
[p212] “The widespread assumption that Vasco da Gama was the first to penetrate deep inside it when he rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1498 is a vulgar error. Italian merchants often plied their trade there during the late Middle Ages […] two circumstantial accounts survive from the fifteenth century: the first by Niccolo Conti, who had been as far east as Java, and had returned to Italy by 1444; the second by his fellow Florentine Girolamo di Santo Stefano, who made an equally long trading voyage in the 1490s.�
[p214] “Conti was scrupulous in enumerating the harems of great rulers and commending the sangfroid of wives who committed suti, flinging themselves on their dead husbands� funeral pyres. In India, he found brothels so numerous, and so alluring with ‘sweet perfumes, ointments, blandishments, beauty and youth,� that Indians are much addicted to licentiousness,� whereas male homosexuality, ‘being superfluous, is unknown.� In Ava, in Burma, the women mocked Conti for having a small penis and recommended a local custom: inserting up to a dozen gold, silver, or brass pellets, of about the size of small hazelnut, under the skin, ‘and with these insertions ,and the swelling of the member, the women are affected with the most exquisite pleasure.� Conti refused the service, because ‘he did not want his pain to be a source of others� pleasure.�
[p218] “There were, of course, regions intractable to Islam. In some circles, Islam met a skeptical reception. Kabir of Benares was a poet of secularist inclinations. ‘Feeling your power, you circumcise � I can’t go along with that, brother. If your God favoured circumcision why didn’t you come out cut?� Hindus fared little better in the face of Kabir’s skepticism: ‘If putting on the thread makes you a Brahmin, What does the wife put on? � Hindu, Muslim, where did they come from?�
[p230] “In 1493, when Columbus got back from his first voyage, no one � least of all the explorer himself � knew where head had been. In the received picture of the planet, the earth was an island, divided between three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. For most European scholars, it was hard to believe that what they called a ‘fourth part of the world� existed.�
[p260] “The incorporation of the Americas � the resources, the opportunities � would turn Europe from a poor and marginal region into a nursery of potential global hegemonies. It might not have happened that way. If Chinese conquerors had bothered with the Americas, we would now think of those areas as part of ‘the East,� and the international dateline would probably sever the Atlantic.�
[p262] “This world already looks doomed to extinction. Western power is going the way of previous dinosaurs. The United States � the last sentinel of Western supremacy � is in relative decline, challenged from the East and South Asia. Pluralism looks increasingly like a path to showdown instead of a panacea for peace. Population trends on a global level are probably going into reverse. Capitalism seems to have failed and is now stigmatized as greed. A reaction against individual excess is driving the world back to collective values. Fear of terror overrides rights; fear of slumps subverts free markets. Consumption levels and urbanization are simply unsustainable at recent rates in the face of environmental change. The throwaway society is headed for the trash heap. People who sense that ‘modernity� is ending proclaim a ‘postmodern age.�
Yet this doomed world is still young: 1492 seems, on the face of it, too far back to look for the origins of the world we are in. Population really started to grow worldwide with the explosive force only in the eighteenth century. The United States did not even exist until 1776, and only became the unique superpower in the 1990s. The tool kit of ideas we associate with individualism, secularism, and constitutional guarantees of liberty really came together only in the movement we call the Enlightenment in the eighteenth-century western Europe and parts of the Americas, and even then they struggled for survival � bloodied by the French Revolution, betrayed by romanticism.�
June 22, 2022
The learning process is not an all-at-once thing. When we first learn something new, we tend to get a picture painted in broad strokes; then, as we become more and more familiar with a subject, we fill in finer and finer details. 1492: The Year the World Began is a filling-in of fine details. This may seem surprising to some people when thinking about the title of this book, because one of the biggest, broadest strokes of our cultural literacy is that Columbus “discovered� America in 1492, and that started the ball rolling towards the domination of Western civilization from the 1500’s on up through the 20th century. I mean, if an American remembers any dates at all from grade school history, there’s a good chance 1492 will be one of them.
But Felipe Fernández-Armesto is not painting in broad strokes—this is a book about fine details, about subtle historic influences and oblique cause-and-effect. That is, the author—a history professor at Notre Dame University—posits that the modern world did indeed begin (inasmuch as a definite year can be pinpointed, which is an iffy proposition in and of itself) in the year 1492 C.E., but Columbus� first voyage to the Western Hemisphere was just one reason why that year was so pivotal. Besides what was going on in Spain and in the rest of Western Europe, he also relates what was happening in the rest of the world as well: the Mediterranean rim and the Byzantine Empire; Africa; the rise of Islam; the Ottoman Turks; Italy in the Middle Ages; Russian and eastern Europe; China, Japan, and Korea, the Indian Ocean rim, and the Aztec and Inca “empires.� In doing so, he addresses the question of why Western Europe, and not an African, Asian, or Meso-American culture, became the formidable engine of exploration and expansion. The answers are not the broad-stroke third grade ones of the “supremacy� of European culture, but are much more nuanced. I am reminded of Guns, Germs, and Steel, which shares some of the same themes and some of the same answers as 1492.
I’m not sure I agree with all of Professor Fernández-Armesto’s conclusions, but after reading 1492: The Year the World Began, I feel smarter and possessed with more insight into the vast, varied, and random mechanisms that create a human history that is anything but inevitable.
But Felipe Fernández-Armesto is not painting in broad strokes—this is a book about fine details, about subtle historic influences and oblique cause-and-effect. That is, the author—a history professor at Notre Dame University—posits that the modern world did indeed begin (inasmuch as a definite year can be pinpointed, which is an iffy proposition in and of itself) in the year 1492 C.E., but Columbus� first voyage to the Western Hemisphere was just one reason why that year was so pivotal. Besides what was going on in Spain and in the rest of Western Europe, he also relates what was happening in the rest of the world as well: the Mediterranean rim and the Byzantine Empire; Africa; the rise of Islam; the Ottoman Turks; Italy in the Middle Ages; Russian and eastern Europe; China, Japan, and Korea, the Indian Ocean rim, and the Aztec and Inca “empires.� In doing so, he addresses the question of why Western Europe, and not an African, Asian, or Meso-American culture, became the formidable engine of exploration and expansion. The answers are not the broad-stroke third grade ones of the “supremacy� of European culture, but are much more nuanced. I am reminded of Guns, Germs, and Steel, which shares some of the same themes and some of the same answers as 1492.
I’m not sure I agree with all of Professor Fernández-Armesto’s conclusions, but after reading 1492: The Year the World Began, I feel smarter and possessed with more insight into the vast, varied, and random mechanisms that create a human history that is anything but inevitable.
January 4, 2025
Professor Filipe Fernandez-Armesto gives his readers a lot to think about in his 2009 book, 1492 The Year the World Began. Some people believed that the world would end in 1492, instead a whole new world began. Not the New World of the Western Hemisphere but the world we live in today. On the book's final page the author wrote "The world the prophets knew vanished, and a new world, the world we are in , began to take shape."
1492 takes us through the whole of the world in and around that year. Not just the world of Western Europe and the Americas but Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Some is this history is probably new to most readers. The section that addressed Spain's discovery and conquest of the Canary Islands was completly new to me. The Spanish Conquistadors learned their craft in the Canaries. It took nearly a century to conquer and subdue the indiginous populations of the islands. When Colombus began to colonize the West Indies the same techniques of ruthless domination took much less time. This was a part of history I knew nothing about. This book is unsettling, a bit disturbing and very important.
1492 takes us through the whole of the world in and around that year. Not just the world of Western Europe and the Americas but Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Some is this history is probably new to most readers. The section that addressed Spain's discovery and conquest of the Canary Islands was completly new to me. The Spanish Conquistadors learned their craft in the Canaries. It took nearly a century to conquer and subdue the indiginous populations of the islands. When Colombus began to colonize the West Indies the same techniques of ruthless domination took much less time. This was a part of history I knew nothing about. This book is unsettling, a bit disturbing and very important.
September 14, 2018
Buy, Borrow or Burn: Burn. The epilogue begins with "History has no course." but indeed it is the book itself that has no course.
One Word: Misguided.
Style/Structure: Adequate writing but the book suffers from a lack of each chapter trying to hit similar topics in order to reach some ultimate goal.
Review: This book takes the reader on a journey of the world in the the late 15th century. This is a difficult task and one the author does not succeed at. The chapters jump around the world and really never give us an idea of what the author's objective is. One chapter we hear of the reconquest of Spain and the next is a whole chapter centered on a misplaced analysis of Chinese art.
The author also makes claims such as the Renaissance was not necessarily real but instead just a continuation of existing trends. This in itself is fine but the next chapter the author is backing the idea of the Renaissance in its profound impact on Russia and other eastern cultures. The author never figures out his own position and that negatively impacts the experience.
One Word: Misguided.
Style/Structure: Adequate writing but the book suffers from a lack of each chapter trying to hit similar topics in order to reach some ultimate goal.
Review: This book takes the reader on a journey of the world in the the late 15th century. This is a difficult task and one the author does not succeed at. The chapters jump around the world and really never give us an idea of what the author's objective is. One chapter we hear of the reconquest of Spain and the next is a whole chapter centered on a misplaced analysis of Chinese art.
The author also makes claims such as the Renaissance was not necessarily real but instead just a continuation of existing trends. This in itself is fine but the next chapter the author is backing the idea of the Renaissance in its profound impact on Russia and other eastern cultures. The author never figures out his own position and that negatively impacts the experience.
August 6, 2020
Review #12 of my 52 week book challenge: 1492
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Well, he wasn't the only one doing monumental things that year.
Fernandez-Armesto has done amazing things digging into the detail of how 1492 signaled the beginning of the modern era. I especially appreciated his non-Euro-centric view of things. In fact, Columbus doesn't even appear in the book until 200 pages in. The author's focus is more on players like China, India, and the Arab caliphates of the time. Even for history buffs, this book is full of new and interesting information that will keep you turning those dense pages.
BTW...this book almost broke me. It's definitely not one to try and finish in one week.
To find out why I started my 52 week book challenge, what I've been reading, and how you can get involved, check out my original LinkedIn Publisher article or follow me.
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Well, he wasn't the only one doing monumental things that year.
Fernandez-Armesto has done amazing things digging into the detail of how 1492 signaled the beginning of the modern era. I especially appreciated his non-Euro-centric view of things. In fact, Columbus doesn't even appear in the book until 200 pages in. The author's focus is more on players like China, India, and the Arab caliphates of the time. Even for history buffs, this book is full of new and interesting information that will keep you turning those dense pages.
BTW...this book almost broke me. It's definitely not one to try and finish in one week.
To find out why I started my 52 week book challenge, what I've been reading, and how you can get involved, check out my original LinkedIn Publisher article or follow me.
June 15, 2018
As a survey of regional histories around the world during the era beginning in 1492, the author covers dizzying amounts of ground in single sentences without explaining to a history novice like me the contexts. The first third of the book I spent trying to understand complex passages which covered a lot of history without much success. After I stop thinking I could make sense of these rifts, I read more for big picture understanding without worrying about the hundred things on a page I didn’t know the history of. The chapter on Columbus read the best and the last chapter summary was one man’s interesting take on the world yesterday and our future. Rather dismissive of people, culture and change as randomness more than directedness. Glad i read the book.
October 24, 2020
"In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Nearly every schoolchild in America has memorized that couplet. Well, that wasn't the only thing going on in 1492.
Felipe Fernández-Armesto summarizes developments in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Mesoamerica which were happening in the historical period from (roughly) 1450 to 1520, which influenced the formation of the "modern" world as we know it now.
Warning: Keep a dictionary handy. The author uses a very advanced vocabulary. I noticed that a previous reader / owner had circled numerous words that were unfamiliar to him / her.
Felipe Fernández-Armesto summarizes developments in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Mesoamerica which were happening in the historical period from (roughly) 1450 to 1520, which influenced the formation of the "modern" world as we know it now.
Warning: Keep a dictionary handy. The author uses a very advanced vocabulary. I noticed that a previous reader / owner had circled numerous words that were unfamiliar to him / her.
April 8, 2018
This is a fun history read. There's a bit of prose to set the "scene" in each part of the world or major event the author covers. I personally enjoyed this, but I imagine if you came for just the History this might annoy you. Overall it was an easy read. There were a number of topics and persons I ended up writing down so I might read more about them. A fine way to get back into history if your memory is more than a little fuzzy.
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January 19, 2020The world didn't begin in 1492, but it was the beginning of the modern world. That is the case the Author makes. This survey of the world in 1492, only spent one chapter on Columbus's discovery and one chapter Ivan the ruler of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, whose conquests and consolidations formed modern Russia. He takes the reader on a voyage of the known world in 1492 and earlier. The writing is choppy at times, but there is a lot to learn from this book.
May 21, 2017
A masterful look at the context of 1492
1492 provides sufficient context for the significance of that fateful year. It is not only an explanation, but also provides a little historiography for how historical events have been examined.
This book is not about the impact of 1492, for that one can look at Charles Mann's 1491 and 1493.
1492 provides sufficient context for the significance of that fateful year. It is not only an explanation, but also provides a little historiography for how historical events have been examined.
This book is not about the impact of 1492, for that one can look at Charles Mann's 1491 and 1493.
August 9, 2019
I have never read anything by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto before but I am going to look for more of his histories because this one is spectacular in range and style. The way he blends the history of various cultures and regions into one harmonious whole with his own inimitable style.
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