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The tropics of empire : why Columbus sailed south to the Indies / Nicolás Wey Gómez

Author:
Wey Gómez, Nicolás
Published:
Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, ©2008.
Physical Description:
1 online resource (xxiv, 592 pages) : illustrations (some color), maps (some color).
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Open Access Unrestricted online access
Contents:
Introduction : why Columbus sailed south to the Indies -- Machina mundi : the moral authority of place in the early transatlantic encounter -- Columbus and the open geography of the ancients -- The meaning of India in pre-Columbian Europe -- From place to colonialism in the Aristotelian tradition -- En la parte del sol : Iberia's invention of the Afro-Indian tropics, 1434-1494 -- Between Cathay and a hot place : reorienting the Asia-America debate -- The tropics of empire in Columbus's Diario.
Summary:
"Everyone knows that in 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic, seeking a new route to the East. Few note, however, that Columbus's intention was also to sail south, to the tropics. In The Tropics of Empire, Nicolas Wey Gomez rewrites the geographical history of the discovery of the Americas, casting it as part of Europe's reawakening to the natural and human resources of the South. Wey Gomez shows that Columbus shared in a scientific and technical tradition that linked terrestrial latitude to the nature of places, and that he drew a highly consequential distinction between the higher, cooler latitudes of Mediterranean Europe and the globe's lower, hotter latitudes. The legacy of Columbus's assumptions, Wey Gomez contends, ranges from colonialism and slavery in the early Caribbean to the present divide between the industrialized North and the developing South."--Jacket.
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ISBN:
9780262232647
0262232642
Digital File Characteristics:
data file
Bibliography Note:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 535-568) and index.
View MARC record | catkey: 34507968