On February 4, 1804, the American brigantine Lelia Byrd departed from Canton’s markets, sailed down the Pearl River estuary past Macao, tacked northeast through the East China Sea toward Japan and turned east into the Pacific Ocean. The ship arrived at the Columbia River three months later after a voyage, according to William Shaler, “not …
In 1552, Francisco López de Gómara, who had been chaplain and secretary to Hernando Cortés while he lived out his old age in Spain, published an account of the conquest of Mexico. López de Gómara himself had never been to the New World, but he could envision it nonetheless. “Many [Indians] came to gape at …
In January 1834, the slave trader Isaac Franklin wrote from New Orleans to his Richmond partner and slave buyer, Rice Ballard: “The fancy girl, from Charlattsvilla [Charlottesville], will you send her out or shall I charge you $1100 for her. Say quick, I wanted to see her . . . I thought that an old …
Setting out to address The Problem of Asia and Its Effect upon International Policies in 1900, the year of the joint expedition against the Boxers and one year into the Philippine-American War, the American navalist Alfred Thayer Mahan observed that “it would be an interesting study . . . to trace the genesis and evolution …
IN ITS SHORT CAREER, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel[1] has enjoyed remarkable success for a book not much concerned with diets, cats, or how to get rich quick. It has appeared on best-seller lists and as a selection for several book clubs, won a Pulitzer Prize, and accompanied President Clinton on his 1999 vacation …