Commerce meets conquest in this swashbuckling story of the six merchant-adventurers who built the modern world, as told by Canada’s Simon Winchester” (Globe and Mail).Through the Age of Heroic Commerce, from the 17th to the 19th centuries, a rogue’s gallery of larger-than-life merchant kings ruled vast tracts of the globe and expanded their far-flung monopolies to generate revenue for their shareholders, feather their own nests and satisfy their vanity and curiosity. Their exploit...

When Columbus triumphantly returned from America to Spain in 1493, his discoveries inflamed an already-smouldering conflict between Spain's renowned monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, and Portugal's João II. Which nation was to control the world's oceans? To quell the argument, Pope Alexander VI - the notorious Rodrigo Borgia - issued a proclamation laying the foundation for the Treaty of Tordesillas, an edict that created an imaginary line in the Atlantic Ocean dividing the entire known (a...

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed the dawn of a golden age of science, during which time there was a dedicated drive to accurately categorise nature and explain the natural world. Enthusiastic naturalists, amateur and professional, set off to collect and classify plants and animals across the New World, and many of these finds still bear the names of those who discovered them today.In this new and updated edition, The Noble Quest...

The authoritative biography of the famous Norwegian polar explorer: "A fascinating account of a complex and driven man" ( Burnaby Now).The Last Viking unravels the life of the man who stands head and shoulders above all those who raced to map the last corners of the world. In 1900, the four great geographical mysteries—the Northwest Passage, the Northeast Passage, the South Pole, and the North Pole—remained blank spots on the globe. Within twenty years Roal...

Commerce meets conquest in this swashbuckling story of the six merchant-adventurers who built the modern worldIt was an era when monopoly trading companies were the unofficial agents of European expansion, controlling vast numbers of people and huge tracts of land, and taking on governmental and military functions. They managed their territories as business interests, treating their subjects as employees, customers, or competitors. The leaders of these trading enterprises exercised ...

The story of the world's largest, longest, and best financed scientific expedition of all time, triumphantly successful, gruesomely tragic, and never before fully toldThe immense 18th-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue. Until no...

Among the explorers made famous for revealing hitherto impenetrable cultures-T. E. Lawrence and Wilfred Thesiger in the Middle East, Richard Burton in Africa-Knud Rasmussen stands out not only for his physical bravery but also for the beauty of his writing. Part Danish, part Inuit, Rasmussen made a courageous three-year journey by dog sled from Greenland to Alaska to reveal the common origins of all circumpolar peoples. Lovers of Arctic adventure, exotic cultures, and timeless legend will ...

It was an era when monopoly trading companies were the unofficial agents of European expansion, controlling vast numbers of people and huge tracts of land, and taking on governmental and military functions. The leaders of these trading enterprises exercised virtually unaccountable, dictatorial political power over millions of people.The merchant kings of the Age of Heroic Commerce were a rogue's gallery of larger-than-life men who, for a couple hundred years, expanded their far-flu...

An "exciting" account of the feud between monarchs, clergy, and explorers that split the globe between Spain and Portugal and made the oceans a battleground ( Kirkus Reviews).When Columbus triumphantly returned to Spain in 1493, his discoveries inflamed an already-smoldering conflict between Spain's monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, and Portugal's João II. Which nation was to control the world's oceans? To quell the argument, Pope Alexander VI—the notorious...

From 1792 to 1795, George Vancouver sailed the Pacific as the captain of his own expedition and as an agent of imperial ambition. To map a place is to control it, and Britain had its eyes on America's Pacific coast. And map it Vancouver did. His voyage was one of history's greatest feats of maritime daring, discovery, and diplomacy, and his marine survey of Hawaii and the Pacific coast was at its time the most comprehensive ever undertaken. But just two years after returning to Britain, th...

La Grande spedizione, nota anche come Seconda spedizione in Kamčhatka o la Grande spedizione del Nord, da San Pietroburgo attraverso la Siberia fino alla costa del Nord America, è stata la spedizione scientifica più ambiziosa e ben finanziata della storia. È durata quasi dieci anni, ha abbracciato tre continenti e le sue scoperte geografiche, cartografiche e di storia naturale sono alla pari con i viaggi di James Cook, o le circumnavigazioni scientifiche di Alessandro Malaspina e Louis-Ant...

When Columbus triumphantly returned from America to Spain in 1493, his discoveries inflamed an already-smoldering conflict between Spain's renowned monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, and Portugal's João II. Which nation was to control the world's oceans? To quell the argument, Pope Alexander VI issued a proclamation laying the foundation for the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, an edict that created an imaginary line in the Atlantic Ocean dividing the entire known (and unknown) world between ...