Screen LibraryThe tropics of empire：why Columbus sailed south to the Indies
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Published: |
MIT Press,
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| Publisher Address: | Cambridge, Mass. |
| Publication Dates: | c2008. |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Series: |
Transformations |
| Subjects: | |
| Carrier Form: | xxiv, 592 p.: ill. (some col.), maps (some col.) ; 24 cm. |
| ISBN: |
9780262232647 (hardcover : alk. paper) 0262232642 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
| Index Number: | N871 |
| CLC: | N871.0 |
| Call Number: | N871.0/W546 |
| Contents: |
Includes bibliographical references (p. [535]-568) and index. Introduction : why Columbus sailed south to the Indies -- Machina mundi : the moral authority of place in the early transatlantic encounter -- Columbus and the open geography of the ancients -- The meaning of India in pre-Columbian Europe -- From place to colonialism in the Aristotelian tradition -- En la parte del sol : Iberia's invention of the Afro-Indian tropics, 1434-1494 -- Between Cathay and a hot place : reorienting the Asia-America debate -- The tropics of empire in Columbus's Diario. "Everyone knows that in 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic, seeking a new route to the East. Few note, however, that Columbus's intention was also to sail south, to the tropics. In The Tropics of Empire, Nicolas Wey Gomez rewrites the geographical history of the discovery of the Americas, casting it as part of Europe's reawakening to the natural and human resources of the South. Wey Gomez shows that Columbus shared in a scientific and technical tradition that linked terrestrial latitude to the nature of places, and that he drew a highly consequential distinction betwee |