The World Encompassed : the First European Maritime Empires c.800-1650

Methuen & Co. Ltd, London, first edition, 1981. Cloth, 4to, 24 cm,. xiv, 538 pp, ills, maps ;. From the blurb: "In this authoritative study Geoffrey Scammell traces the course of European expansion between about 800 and 1650, during which time the world known to western Europeans was enlarged in a way unparalleled before or since. The book takes a broad historical perspective, linking the classic age of European expansion to its medieval antecedents. The Norse reached North America in the tenth century, Italian missionaries and traders were established in China in the high Middle Ages, and during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in some of the greatest voyages ever made under sail, Iberian explorers crossed the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and established footholds in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Parts of South America were conquered by the Spaniards in campaigns of an audacity scarcely equalled in military history, and indigenous states and civilizations were overthrown. But in North America the French, Dutch and English were confined to the Atlantic seaboard, whilst in Asia Europeans, despite their development of an important maritime economy, secured possessions of no more than a few islands and remained on the fringes of landmasses whose size and cultures they only imperfectly understood. How and why such events came to pass - why some colonies failed and others flourished, how indigenous societies were exploited for European benefit, how the spread of Christianity affected colonized territories, how attitudes to colour and slavery were formed - are among the questions with which the book is concerned. The author has a fundamental knowledge of marine technology and seafaring, the development of which is demonstrated in the book's illustrations. His study, based on wide-ranging research, is a stimulating and perceptive one and makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the influence of empire on both colonial and metropolitan societies. Tapemark on front board (from old repair to dustwrapper), otherwise near Very Good in quite torn dustwrapper.