There is no single survey of the different expansions covered by this chapter, but the selections edited by Joseph R. Levenson, European Expansion and the Counter Example of Asia, 1300-1600 (1967), remain a good introduction to Chinese expansion and Western impressions of China. Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System, a. d. 1250-1350 (1989), provides a stimulating speculative reassessment of the importance of the Mongols and the Indian Ocean trade in the creation of the modern world system; she summarizes her thesis in the American Historical Association booklet The World System in the Thirteenth Century: Dead-End or Precursor? (1993).
The Chinese account of Zheng He’s voyages is Ma Huan, Ying-yai Sheng-lan: “The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores" [1433], ed. Feng Ch’end Chun and trans. J. V. G. Mills (1970). A reliable guide to Polynesian expansion is Jesse D. Jennings, ed., The Prehistory of Polynesia (1979), especially the excellent chapter “Voyaging” by Ben R. Finney, which encapsulates his Voyage of Rediscovery: A Cultural Odyssey Through Polynesia (1994). The medieval background to European intercontinental voyages is summarized by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229-1492 (1987). Tim Severin, The Brendan Voyage (2000), vividly recounts a modern retracing of even earlier Irish voyages.
A simple introduction to the technologies of European expansion is Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns, Sails, and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400-1700 (1965; reprint, 1985). More advanced is Roger C. Smith, Vanguard of Empire: Ships of Exploration in the Age of Columbus (1993).
The European exploration is well documented and the subject of intense historical investigation. Clear general accounts based on the contemporary records are Boies Penrose, Travel and Discovery in the Age of the Renaissance, 1420-1620 (1952); J. H. Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery, Exploration, and Settlement, 1450-1650 (1963); and G. V. Scammell, The World Encompassed: The First European Maritime Empires, c. 8001650 (1981).
An excellent general introduction to Portuguese exploration is C. R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825 (1969). More detail can be found in Bailey W. Diffie and George D. Winius, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 1415-1580 (1977); A. J. R. Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire: A World on the Move (1998); and Luc Cuyvers, Into the Rising Sun: The Journey of Vasco da Gama and the Discovery of the Modern World (1998). John William Blake, ed., Europeans in West Africa, 1450-1560 (1942), is an excellent two-volume collection of contemporary Portuguese, Castilian, and English sources. The Summa Oriental of Tome Pires: An Account of the East, from the Red Sea to Japan, Written in Malacca and India in 1512-1515, trans. Armando Cortesao (1944), provides a detailed firsthand account of the Indian Ocean during the Portuguese’s first two decades there.
The other Iberian kingdoms’ expansion is well summarized by Henry Kamen, Spain, 1469-1714: A Society of Conflict, 2nd ed. (1991); and John Lynch, Spain 1516-1598: From Nation State to World Empire (1991). Miles H. Davidson, Columbus Then and Now: A Life Reexamined (1997), is a useful modern treatment. More focused on the shortcomings of Columbus and his Spanish peers is Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America, trans. Richard Howard (1985). William D. Phillips and Carla Rhan Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (1992), examines the mariner and his times in terms of modern concerns. Peggy K. Liss, Isabel the Queen: Life and Times (1992), is a sympathetic examination of Queen Isabella of Castile. For the conquest period see Matthew Restall, Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (2003); Rafael Varon Gabai, Francisco Pizarro and His Brothers (1997); and Kenneth J. Adrien and Roena Adorno, eds., Transatlantic Encounters (1991). Detailed individual biographies of all of the individuals in Pizarro’s band are also the subject of James Lockhart’s Men of Cajamarca:A Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru (1972). A firsthand account of Magellan’s expedition is Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan’s Voyage: A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation, available in a two-volume edition (1969).
The perceptions of the peoples European explorers encountered are not as well documented. David Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe, 1450-1850 (2002), and John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800, 2nd ed. (1998), examine Africans’ encounters with Europeans and their involvement in the Atlantic economy. The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, ed. Miguel Leon-Portilla (1962), presents Amerindian chronicles in a readable package, as does Nathan Wachtel, The Vision of the Vanquished: The Spanish Conquest of Peru Through Indian Eyes (1977). Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680, 2 vols. (1988, 1993), deals with events in that region.
World History
