In the decades between 1492 and 1522, European merchants and explorers progressed from relative ignorance about the shape of the globe to an atlas that was almost complete. They did so in search of spices, gold, silver and slaves, but with rudimentary technology, huge courage and boundless confidence in themselves and their calculations. The resulting exchange of flora, fauna, diet, disease and culture changed the world.
David Boyle describes these crucial years of exploration through stories of the dramatic encounters between civilizations that characterized the journeys. At most of these strange meetings, neither side possessed enough knowledge of the world to understand the other, and many involved brutality; some of them resulted in genocide, but just occasionally ? there were glimmerings of hope for the future.
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