Surveys the art of the Age of Exploration in Europe, the Far East, and the Americas

First published in 2004, this volume recognises that there is much more to museums than the documenting, monumentalizing, or theme-parking of identity, history and heritage. This landmark anthology aims to make strange the very existence of museums and to plot a critical, historical and ethical understanding of their origins and history. A radical selection of key texts introduces the reader to the intense investigation of the modern European idea of the museum that has taken place over the last fifty years. Texts first published in journals and books are brought together in one volume with up-to-the-minute and specially commissioned pieces by leading administrators, curators and art historians. The selections are organized by key themes that map the evolution of the debate and introduced by Donald Preziosi and Claire Farago, two considerable critics, who write with the edge and enthusiasm of art historians who have spent their lives working with museums. Grasping the World is an invaluable resource for students and teachers of art history and museum studies.

Catalogue for quincentenary exhibition examining the art and history of the principal cultures in Europe and the Mediterranean, eastern Asia, and the Americas.

Following a study on the world flows of American products during early globalization, here the authors examine the reverse process. By analyzing the imperial political economy, the introduction, adaptation and rejection of new food products in America, as well as of other European, Asian and African goods, American Globalization, 1492–1850, addresses the history of consumerism and material culture in the New World, while also considering the perspective of the history of ecological globalization. This book shows how these changes triggered the formation of mixed imagined communities as well as of local and regional markets that gradually became part of a global economy. But it also highlights how these forces produced a multifaceted landscape full of contrasts and recognizes the plurality of the actors involved in cultural transfers, in which trade, persuasion and violence were entwined. The result is a model of the rise of consumerism that is very different from the ones normally used to understand the European cases, as well as a more nuanced vision of the effects of ecological imperialism, which was, moreover, the base for the development of unsustainable capitalism still present today in Latin America. Chapters 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 11, and 13 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com

Drawing on newly discovered sources and writing with brilliance, drama, and profound historical insight, Hugh Thomas presents an engrossing narrative of one of the most significant events of Western history. Ringing with the fury of two great empires locked in an epic battle, Conquest captures in extraordinary detail the Mexican and Spanish civilizations and offers unprecedented in-depth portraits of the legendary opponents, Montezuma and Cortés. Conquest is an essential work of history from one of our most gifted historians.

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

After decades of politically charged controversy, the reputation and standing of Christopher Columbus lies battered beneath mountains of misjudgments and distortions. The surge of historical revisionism now ravaging the legendary explorer insists that his daring adventures brought only tragic consequences: disease, death, subjugation of native peoples, incitement of the African slave trade, destruction of the environment, and other horrors. But is this a legitimate assessment of Europe's inevitable western expansion? In Columbus and the Crisis of the West, Dr. Robert Royal carefully examines the mind and motives of Christopher Columbus, distinguishing him as the greatest explorer of his age, whose courage and vision extended Christian Europe and inspired the American spirit. Yet you won't find here a full-throated defense of Christopher Columbus. Rather, Dr. Royal examines what actually happened in the decades following 1492, when two widely divergent cultures met and mingled. Refusing to ignore or underplay the tragedies of America's origins, Royal masterfully places these events in historical context, protecting them from the contemporary biases that are moving forward at ramming speed to crush fragile truths. In these pages you'll explore Columbus's spirituality and the apocalyptic vision that guided him, as well as the disparate ways in which Puritans and Catholics viewed and approached the indigenous peoples. You'll also discover what life was really like for them, the truth about Indian environmentalism, the essence of the “noble savage,” and the soundness of the claim that the native peoples were innocents living in harmony with nature. Here is the book that cuts through the fashionable pieties of our time by boldly refuting the most popular indictments of Columbus and early America. Finally, a serious classical scholar who confronts with power the crusading revisionist historians who are leveraging the Native American conquest in an effort to defile, dishonor, and ultimately upend Western civilization.

Discusses the prehistoric peoples who occupied the Americas, describing the civilizations of such advanced cultures as the Iroquois, Cherokee, and the Zuni, and the technical achievements of various other Native American groups.