For half a century David Beers Quinn wrote on the history of the early relationship between England and North America. This volume was presented in tribute to his meticulous and authoritative but cautious scholarship, on the occasion of his 85th birthday. It includes his "Reflections" on a lifetime of research, and his bibliography. But his interests in the early period of "the expansion of Europe" have never been limited to England or North America, and this volume accordingly takes as its theme the widest historical context of the subject and period, the whole European outthrust and encounter, in its first phase. Ten contributions by recognized scholars provide select exemplars, to serve as a stimulating introduction to this vast theme. Three overview essays deal with specific regions of the outthrust, chosen because of differences in outcome: Ethiopia, the Far East, and Siberia. The remaining essays consider specific episodes in localities ranging from Guayana to China, and their discursive echoes, and are essentially concerned with a leading feature of David Quinn’s scholarship, the discovery, examination and interpretation of sources. A preliminary essay discusses the theme and links the various contributions within a framework of critical generalization.

Between the year 1000 and the mid-14th century, several remarkable events unfolded as Europeans made contact with a very substantial part of the inhabited world, much of it never previously known or suspected to exist by them. Leif Ericsson and other Vikings discovered North America; European crusading armies established themselves in Syria and Palestine; Marco Polo and other Italian merchants, and missionaries such as John of Monte Corvino, penetrated the dominions of Mongolia and China; the Vivaldi brothers sought to open a sea route to India; Jaime Ferrer was lured by dreams of locating the source of West African gold; and the Atlantic island groups, the Canaries, Madeira, and the Azores, were all discovered. In this detailed survey, Phillips describes these exciting quests while also exploring their closely related myths and legends, all the while setting the stage for the even greater exploits of Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and their successors. For this new Clarendon Paperback edition, Phillips has added both an introduction and a bibliographical essay, the latter of which surveys recent work in what is becoming a thriving area of new research.

Professor Hair’s aim here has been to explore the European written record for the history of Africa south of the Sahara. This effectively began with the arrival of the Portuguese on the Guinea coast and many of these articles focus on Sierra Leone; others extend the enquiry to southern Africa. One particular theme is the use of early vocabularies of African languages as a source for the history of local populations. At the same time, these studies help illuminate the European reaction to the peoples and the places they encountered.

Much has been written about the forging of a British identity in the 17th and 18th centuries, from the multiple kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. But the process also ran across the Irish sea and was played out in North America and the Caribbean. In the process, the indigenous peoples of North America, the Caribbean, the Cape, Australia and New Zealand were forced to redefine their identities. This text integrates the history of these areas with British and imperial history. With contributions from both sides of the Atlantic, each chapter deals with a different aspect of British encounters with indigenous peoples in Colonial America and includes, for example, sections on "Native Americans and Early Modern Concepts of Race" and "Hunting and the Politics of Masculinity in Cherokee treaty-making, 1763-1775". This book should be of particular interest to postgraduate students of Colonial American history and early modern British history.

This volume takes up current debates in comparative and historical sociology that deal with multiple modernities and civilizations. It does so through an examination of patterns of state formation, civilization and the development of capitalism in the interaction of European and American worlds over three centuries. The early part of the argument explores cutting-edge theoretical debates around the nature of early modern formations.

These 15 articles follow on from those in The Global Opportunity in that they examine how and why the Europeans expanded worldwide. Part one explores the means in terms of science, technology and material resources; part two examines the motives, primarily as a result of restricted resources in Europe; while part three concludes with the reasons that the expansion continued and grew - the momentum.

Humans and space When faced with the issue of space exploration, one generally has an idea of the ?elds of study and disciplines that are involved: technology, physics and chemistry, robotics, astronomy and planetary science, space biology and medicine, disciplines which are usually referred to as the ?sciences?. In recent discussions, the human element of space exploration has attracted more and more the interest of the space sciences. As a consequence, adjacent disciplines have gained in relevance in space exploration and space research, in times when human space ?ights are almost part of everyday life. These disciplines include psychology and sociology, but also history, philosophy, anthropology, cultural studies, political sciences and law. The cont- bution of knowledge in these ?elds plays an important role in achieving the next generation of space exploration, where humans will resume exploring the Moon and, eventually, Mars,and wherespacetourism isbeginningtobedeveloped. With regard to technology, one might soon be prepared for this. Much less is this the case with space exploration by humans, rather than by robots. Robotic explorations to other planets across the solar system have developed in the past 50 years, since the beginning of the ?space age? with the presence of humans in nearby space and the landing on the Moon. Space exploration is now not only focused on technological achievements,asitsdevelopmentalsohassocial,culturalandeconomicimpacts. This makes human space exploration a topic to address in a cross-disciplinary manner.