The Medieval Expansion of Europe

Between the year 1000 and the middle of the fourteenth century a remarkable series of events unfolded as Europeans made contact with a very substantial part of the inhabited world, much of it never previously known to or suspected by them. Leif Ericsson and other Vikings from Greenland discovered North America; European crusading armies established themselves in Syria and Palestine; Marco Polo and other Italian merchants, and missionaries such as John of Monte Corvino penetrated the dominions of the Mongol great Khans as far as China; the Vivaldi brothers sought to open a sea route to India; Jaime Ferrer was lured by dreams of locating the source of West African gold; and the Atlantic island groups, the canaries, Madeira, and the Azores, were all discovered. For this Clarendon Paperback edition, Professor Phillips has added a new Foreword and Conclusion, as well as a bibliographical essay, surveying recent work in what is becoming a thriving area of research.

Maps; Preface; Preface to the Second Edition; Introduction; The Beginnings of the Medieval Expansion of Europe; Europe and Asia; Two Continents and an Ocean; Europe and the World c.1100-1450; The Fifteenth-Century Expansion of Europe; Conclusion; Bibliography; Some Recent Writings; Index

"The best available survey of medieval knowledge of, and contact with, the lands beyond Europe before 1492."--Journal of World History "The accumulation of valuable information, leavened by many acute and illuminating observations...is quite breath-taking in its scope....Here is the ideal, comprehensive survey we have all been waiting for."--Irish Historical Studies "An excellent and fascinating book....Phillips has covered an enormous range....At once an extremely able work of synthesis and a book with a clear and persuasive thesis of its own."--Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies "The reader is...teased with old and new problems. How genuine is the Vinland Map? Were the Genoese Vivaldi brothers trying to anticipate Vasco da Gama or Columbus when they sailed West through the Straits of Gibraltar in 1291?...Phillips's book is full of fascinating detail, as well as being clear, wide-ranging, and equipped with a useful bibliography."--Welsh History Review

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