New Books In History

Why the heck is “America” called “America” and not, say, “Columbia?” You’ll find the answer to that question and many more in Toby Lester‘s fascinating and terrifically readable new book The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America its Name (Free Press, 2009). As Toby points out, medieval Europeans thought the earth had three parts–Europe, Asia and Africa, with Jerusalem at the dead center and water all around. (And no, they didn’t think the earth was flat…). But in 1507 a peculiar item appeared–the Waldseemüller map– that outlined a fourth part of the world called “America,” with the Atlantic Ocean on the one side and an unnamed ocean on the other. Here’s the really curious thing though: at that time no European had ever seen what we now call the “Pacific Ocean.” Balboa was the first to see it, and he didn’t do so until 1513. So where did Waldseemüller and his colleagues get the idea that there was a continent between Europe and Asia and that an undiscovered ocean separated Asia from it? Was it just a good (educated) guess, or did the mapmakers have information that has not come down to us? You want the answer? Well you can listen to the interview and then go buy the book. All will be reveled!

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Tags: 14th Century, 15th Century, 16th Century, Atlantic World, Cartography, Catholicism, China, Christendom, Columbus, Early Modern Europe, Empires, Exploration, Explorers, Globalization, Humanism, Imperialism, Marco Polo, Middle Ages, Mongols, Northwest Passage, Religion, Travel, Travel Literature by Marshall Poe
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When we speak of the “Age of Discovery,” we usually mean the later fifteenth and sixteenth century. You know, Columbus, Magellan and all that. But the “Age of Discovery” continued well into the seventeenth century as Europeans continued to travel the globe in search of riches, fame and adventure. And after they made port at home, they often “wrote” books about their travels for readers eager to hear about what was “out there”–or at least what these travelers said was “out there.” Take the subject of Kees Boterbloem new book The Fiction and Reality of Jan Struys. A Seventeenth-Century Dutch Globetrotter (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008). Sturys was an illiterate, itinerant, indefatigable Dutch sail maker. He went everywhere, did everything, and when he got back from his adventures he was asked by some profit-seeking Dutch publishers to “contribute” his tales to a book about his travels. Of course Stuys could neither read nor write, but that didn’t stand in the way of the publishers. They assigned him a ghost writer who listened to Struys’ stories and, where he found them wanting, embellished them with material purloined from other travel books. The results were part fact, part fiction, and all international bestseller. It was in such books that Europeans learned about the “discoveries,” and by such books that modern publishing was born. We should thank Kees for telling us the tale in this fascinating account.

By the way, Kees is also editor of The Historian, a journal of popular history that you should really read.

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Tags: 17th Century, Dutch Republic, Early Modern Europe, Fiction, Muscovy, Publishing, Russia, Trade, Travel, Travel Literature by Marshall Poe
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