Legendary Explorers

"At two o'clock in the morning the land was discovered…As I saw that they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force, I presented them with some red caps, and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith they were much delighted, and became wonderfully attached to us." – Christopher Columbus's diary, October 11-12, 1492 A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? The Age of Exploration and the explorers who set out on their history-making expeditions left many legacies and profoundly influenced history around the world. The voyages of men like Columbus and the conquests of men like Cortes escalated tensions between the European nations, initiated imperialistic empires on a global scale, helped birth the United States, and ensured that the wars in the 20th century were truly world wars. In Charles River Editors' Legendary Explorers series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of the most important explorers of history in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. The most seminal event of the last millennium might also be its most controversial. As schoolchildren have been taught for over 500 years, "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue." In October of that year, the Italian Christopher Columbus immortalized himself by landing in the New World and beginning the process of European settlement in the Americas for Spain, bringing the Age of Exploration to a new hemisphere with him. Ironically, the Italian had led a Spanish expedition, in part because the Portugese rejected his offers in the belief that sailing west to Asia would take too long. Columbus had better luck with the Spanish royalty, successfully persuading Queen Isabella to commission his expedition. In August 1492, Columbus set west for India at the helm of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. Befitting a legendary trip, the journey was star-crossed from the beginning. The Pinta's rudder broke early on, and just days into the journey Columbus' compass stopped pointing due north and started pointing to the Earth's magnetic north pole, something the Europeans knew nothing about. Columbus knew that the uncertainty of the expedition's destination made his crew nervous, so he hid his compass' "malfunction" from his crew. Additionally, after 30 days of sailing, the expedition still had not sighted land, so Columbus started lying to his crew about the distance they sailed each day, telling them they had sailed fewer miles than they actually had so as not to scare them even more. On October 7, 1492, the three ships spotted flocks of birds, suggesting land was nearby, so Columbus followed the direction in which the birds flew. On the night of October 11, the expedition sighted land, and when Columbus came ashore the following day in the Bahamas, he thought he was in Japan, but the natives he came into contact with belied the descriptions of the people and lands of Asia as wealthy and resourceful. Instead, the bewildered Columbus would note in his journal that the natives painted their bodies, wore no clothes and had primitive weapons, leading him to the conclusion they would be easily converted to Catholicism. When he set sail for home in January 1493, he brought several imprisoned natives back to Spain with him. Everyone agrees that Columbus's discovery of the New World was one of the turning points in history, but agreements over his legacy end there. Although his other three voyages to the New World were far less successful and largely overlooked in the narrative of his life, Columbus became such a towering figure in Western history that the United States' capital was named after George Washington and him.

Ferdinand Magellan, known in his native Portugal as Fernão de Magalhães and in Spain, where he moved later in life, as Fernando de Magallanes, was unquestionably one of the more remarkable figures of the so-called Age of Discovery, a period in which Europeans spread their political and commercial influence around the globe. Accordingly, his name is often invoked alongside that of Columbus, but the nature of his achievements has sometimes been misunderstood. Magellan has sometimes been credited with "proving the world was round," since he and his crew were the first Europeans to reach Asia via a westward route. But such a claim is based on a popular misconception, referred to by historian Jeffrey Burton Russell as the "myth of the flat earth": the belief that medieval Europe had erroneously believed the earth was flat. In reality, essentially no educated Europeans of the late 15th and early 16th centuries doubted the spherical shape of the earth, which had been persuasively established by the scientists of ancient Greece – even down to Eratosthenes's relatively accurate measurement of its circumference in the third century B.C. It is also not quite true that Magellan himself circumnavigated the globe – in fact, he died in combat in the Philippines, leaving his surviving crew to complete the voyage. It is, on the other hand, certainly the case that Magellan was one of the most accomplished navigators of his time, and that he crucially charted territories previously unexplored by Europeans. Perhaps the most important fact about Magellan, though, is that he succeeded precisely where Christopher Columbus before him had failed. While Columbus has gone down in history as the discoverer of America (for Europeans), finding a new continent was never his true goal: in fact, America came into Columbus's life as an unanticipated and troublesome obstacle on his planned journey to Asia. He had staked his career and his nautical reputation on the theory that the breadth of the body of water separating Europe from Asia was far less than most geographers had predicted. While most thought that a ship heading west toward Asia would run out of supplies long before arriving. As it turned out, Columbus was wrong and his detractors were right: the figure for the circumference of the earth first arrived at by Eratosthenes was more or less correct, and were there nothing in between Europe and Asia, sailors attempting to reach the East by the West would starve in mid-ocean. Yet as Columbus unwittingly demonstrated, there was something in between: namely, the adjoining continents of North and South America. When Columbus arrived in the Caribbean islands scattered between these two continents, he believed he was on the edge of Asia, and initially interpreted the northern coast of Cuba as a part of China. Only toward the end of his career, as he sailed along the coast of what is now Venezuela, did Columbus begin to acknowledge that he was in fact on the edge of a new continent, but in his bewildered state he associated it with the earthly paradise of Christian legend.

"I have not told half of what I saw." – Marco Polo A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' Legends of the Middle Ages series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of important medieval men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. Marco Polo (1254-1324) is an instantly recognizable name, and he is known for his travels, but it's safe to say that his influence and importance has been greatly overlooked in the nearly 700 years since he died. Born in Venice, Marco Polo was in a fortuitous position to participate in the Mediterranean trade, but he was still a young man when he went on the journey that would make him famous and greatly inspire the Age of Exploration. Though he was destined to become famous, Marco Polo was simply following in the footsteps of his own family, and it's believed that he was already a teenager before he met his father and uncle, who had been traveling to the Far East and, according to Marco Polo, had met Kublai Khan, the famous grandson of Genghis Khan. A few years later, they set off for Asia again, this time with Marco Polo, and they would not return to Venice for 24 years. When they came back, they had allegedly traveled about 15,000 miles and brought back plenty of riches and treasure. Marco Polo was hardly the only European merchant or trader who traveled to the Far East, but it was his written account of his travels that would generate extreme interest in Asia. Having described such a rich land full of desired resources, Marco Polo's travels became a source for European cartographers of the era, and they became the impetus for men like Christopher Columbus, who added his own annotations to Marco Polo's account and used it as a reference for his own legendary expedition in search of the Far East. Centuries later, historians have scoured over the account and what was written in an effort to validate its authenticity, leading to sharp debates today. Legendary Explorers: The Life and Legacy of Marco Polo chronicles the life and travels of the Venetian merchant, while analyzing how his account influenced subsequent explorers. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Marco Polo like you never have before, in no time at all.

"Among these temples there is one which far surpasses all the rest, whose grandeur of architectural details no human tongue is able to describe; for within its precincts, surrounded by a lofty wall, there is room enough for a town of five hundred families." – Hernán Cortés A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? The Age of Exploration and the explorers who set out on their history-making expeditions left many legacies and profoundly influenced history around the world. The voyages of men like Columbus and the conquests of men like Cortés had dramatic consequences for the natives, escalated tensions between the European nations, initiated imperialistic empires on a global scale, helped birth the United States, and ensured that the wars in the 20th century were truly world wars. In Charles River Editors' Legendary Explorers series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of the most important explorers of history in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. During the Age of Exploration, some of the most famous and infamous individuals were Spain's best known conquistadors. Naturally, as the best known conquistador, Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) is also the most controversial. Like Christopher Columbus before him, Cortés was lionized for his successes for centuries without questioning his tactics or motives, while indigenous views of the man have been overwhelmingly negative for the consequences his conquests had on the Aztecs and other natives in the region. Just about the only thing everyone agrees upon is that Cortés had a profound impact on the history of North America. Of course, the lionization and demonization of Cortés often take place without fully analyzing the man himself, especially because there are almost no contemporaneous sources that explain what his thinking and motivation was. If anything, Cortés seemed to have been less concerned with posterity or the effects of the Spanish conquest on the natives than he was on relations with the Mother Country itself. Of the few things that are known about Cortés, it appears that he was both extremely ambitious and fully cognizant of politics and political intrigue, even in a New World thousands of miles west of Spain itself. Cortés spent much of his time in Mexico and the New World defending himself against other Spanish officials in the region, as well as trying to portray and position himself in a favorable light back home. While those ambitions and politics understandably colored his writings about his activities and conquests, scholars nevertheless use what he wrote to gain a better understanding of the indigenous natives he came into contact with. Even then, however, what he wrote was scarce; Cortés's account of his conquest of Mexico is comprised of five letters he addressed to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. As Adolph Francis Bandelier noted in the Catholic Encyclopedia in 1908, "Cortés was a good writer. His letters to the emperor, on the conquest, deserve to be classed among the best Spanish documents of the period. They are, of course, coloured so as to place his own achievements in relief, but, withal, he keeps within bounds and does not exaggerate, except in matters of Indian civilization and the numbers of population as implied by the size of the settlements. Even there he uses comparatives only, judging from outward appearances and from impressions." Legendary Explorers: The Life and Legacy of Hernán Cortés chronicles Cortés's life, but it also examines the aftermath of his conquest and analyzes the controversy surrounding his legacy. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events in his life, you will learn about Cortés like you never have before, in no time at all.

"Friends and comrades! On that side [south] are toil, hunger, nakedness, the drenching storm, desertion, and death; on this side ease and pleasure. There lies Peru with its riches; here, Panama and its poverty. Choose, each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. For my part, I go to the south." – Francisco Pizarro A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? The Age of Exploration and the explorers who set out on their history-making expeditions left many legacies and profoundly influenced history around the world. The voyages of men like Columbus and the conquests of men like Cortés had dramatic consequences for the natives, escalated tensions between the European nations, initiated imperialistic empires on a global scale, helped birth the United States, and ensured that the wars in the 20th century were truly world wars. In Charles River Editors' Legendary Explorers series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of the most important explorers of history in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. During the Age of Exploration, some of the most famous and infamous individuals were Spain's best known conquistadors. Naturally, as one of the best known conquistadors, Francisco Pizarro (1471/6-1541) is also one of the most controversial. Like Christopher Columbus and Hernan Cortés before him, Pizarro was celebrated in Europe for subduing the Inca Empire, a culture that fascinated his contemporaries. At the same time, naturally, indigenous views of the man have been overwhelmingly negative. . If Columbus and Cortés were the pioneers of Spain's new global empire, Pizarro consolidated its immense power and riches, and his successes inspired a further generation to expand Spain's dominions to unheard of dimensions. Furthermore, he participated in the forging of a new culture: like Cortés, he took an indigenous mistress with whom he had two mixed-race children, and yet the woman has none of the lasting fame of Cortés's Doña Marina. With all of this in mind, it is again remarkable that Pizarro remains one of the less well-known and less written about of the explorers of his age. On the other hand, there are certain factors that may account for the conqueror of Peru's relative lack of lasting glory. For one, he was a latecomer in more than one sense. Cortés's reputation was built on being the first to overthrow a great empire, so Pizarro's similar feat, even if it bore even greater fruit in the long run, would always be overshadowed by his predecessor's precedent. But Pizarro also lacked the youthful glamour of Cortés: already a wizened veteran in his 50s by the time he undertook his momentous expedition, he proceeded with the gritty determination of a hardened soldier rather than the audacity and cunning of a young courtier. Legendary Explorers: The Life and Legacy of Francisco Pizarro chronicles Pizarro's life, but it also examines the aftermath of his conquest and analyzes the controversy surrounding his legacy. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events in his life, you will learn about Pizarro like you never have before, in no time at all.