Years ago I used to do book reviews on TPM. I’ve wanted to bring that back for a long time, perhaps even expanding it into a more regular part of the site. As I’ve mentioned before, my personal reading centers almost entirely on history – never anything tied to politics and seldom even history that’s not more than a century or two old. I spend a lot of time hunting around for good thick books of what you might call high-end popular history. So it’s always immensely satisfying when I find something really good that I can sink my teeth into. Here’s one of my recent finds: Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration by Felipe Fernández-Armesto.
I read at least a couple of Fernandez-Armesto’s books in graduate school and I think I skimmed others. I mainly know him as an historian of Iberia and the Americas and Atlantic exploration, though his writing and expertise range more broadly. In any case, most histories of exploration begin with European exploration or dabble with the brief era of Chinese reconnaissance in India and East Africa a half century earlier. But Fernandez-Armesto shifts the perspective entirely by starting the story with the first migrations out of East Africa, how and why our early human ancestors left and the paths they traveled, as best we can trace the story using archeology and DNA research. These were as much explorers – ‘pathfinders’, to use Fernandez-Armesto’s wording – as Columbus or de Gama or the various other sea-faring explorers who began reconnoitering the globe half a millennium ago. New archeology and especially DNA research now allows us to piece together quite a bit of the story. The exploration of land gets as much play as exploration by sea, though one of the most fascinating sequences in the book is Polynesian exploration and settlement of the Pacific.
Of course, we have no names, no written records for this history. So the narrative drive is more anonymous, less detailed. But it casts the entire history of humanity in a more comprehensive and comprehensible whole, with a long period of dispersal out of Africa, filling out almost every habitable portion of the globe, followed by a more recent era of convergence. There are a million little details – actually very big details – I learned along the way. One is very straightforward. Almost the entire history of ocean-going exploration was made into the wind – for the very simple reason that you need to have some confidence you can get back. It explains almost the entirety of peopling of the Pacific starting from the shores of East Asia. It makes perfect sense when you think about it but it’s not necessarily intuitive and it greatly constrains the nature of the activity. The first explorations from Iberia broke this mold. But for a very specific set of reasons, which we’ll get to in a moment. There is also a whole landward history of exploration across every part of the globe that is seldom told or if told not understood as part of the same history of exploration.
Of course, the story inevitably turns to why it was that Western Europe, a comparative global backwater, which ended up opening the pathways of transoceanic exploration and trade. East Asia and the monsoonal Indian Ocean zone were vastly wealthier. Europe had few if any advantages in maritime technology – vis a vis East Asia – when they began their explorations at the end of the 15th century.
I’ve never seen a totally satisfying explanation of this question, which has to figure as one of the most basic in the history of the modern world. Technology isn’t the answer in any clear way, at least not at the beginning. The main explanations tied to culture – Europeans either being naturally more inquisitive or rapacious – fall apart pretty quickly on close examination. There are any number of overlapping factors, many contingent or matters of happenstance. But the biggest answer seems to be that the peoples of East Asia and the Indian Ocean lived in a vibrant maritime trading zone and they already were where the greatest wealth and most prized trade goods were. The Europeans weren’t. The peoples of South Asia and East Asia where already where all the good stuff was. It was the Europeans who were bent on finding a way there.They were the only ones who had the need to find outlandish ways of getting to Asia. One key was finding, really happening upon the system of trade winds which made circuits to the Americas and back and forth to the Indian Ocean possible. Another key trigger was the financial success that grew out of the conquest and horrific genocide of the native inhabitants of the Canary Islands, something which freed up the money of investors who thought they could match the fantastic profits wrenched out of the Canaries in further explorations of Africa or new islands in the Atlantic.
It was only after the initial explorations had happened, that the further process of exploration and trade allowed Western Europeans to stitch together the globe’s various technologies and wealth and then pull together knowledge from different parts of the world. These together spurred a catalytic process which gave Europeans the edge in creating the first global trade and political system with Europe at the apex of power.
These are some of the elements of Fernandez-Armesto’s story. But as a historical narrative and effort to illuminate or explain various historical questions it is an exceptional piece of work. The fulcrum narrative of the late 15th and early 16th centuries is one I’m fairly familiar with. But there were repeated points in the book where he managed to pack so much illumination of a foundational historical question into one or two paragraphs that I found myself stopping and going back to reread the passage three or even four times to fully absorb the connections he was drawing. It’s really that good.
There were a few minor points I found to quibble with. I think he underestimates the role of horses and guns in allowing Cortes and later Pizarro to conquer massive native empires in the Americas. Yes, their armies were made up overwhelmingly of native allies. But it was their mix of mounted warfare, gunpowder weapons and steal that convinced native allies that the conquistadores were likely unstoppable. Seaborne cannons seem to play a bit more of a role in the early penetration of the Indian Ocean and East Asian trading zone. But these are minor, minor quibbles. This is a masterful narrative and a book that is an immense pleasure to read.
If you’re interested, you can see more about it here.
