Search

When "the Admiral went ashore in the armed longboat" in the early morning of 12 October 1492, accompanied by the royal banners, royal attendants, and fellow captains in order to "take, as in fact he did take, possession of the said island for the king and the queen, his lords," Columbus certainly had no idea of the magnitude of what he was accomplishing. But, then, how could he? For it was arguably the most important human act since the development of agricul ture, more resonant in earthly affairs ^^ than even the founding of the great religions, more percussive in the lives of more humans (and more other species), and ultimately more fateful for the earth itself.

'There is nothing else quite like it, and there is room, and a need, for quality books on this area in this era' - Colin G. Calloway, author of "The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600-1800: War, Migration and the Survival of an Indian People". This illustrated collection of essays examines early Native American contact with European explorers, fishermen, and traders in 'Norumbega', the sixteenth-century name of the Atlantic coast of New England near the Penobscot River in Maine. This coast was the focus of several French and English voyagers seeking a northwest passage and other avenues to riches and treasure. A tacit division gradually emerged: the French concentrated on the region north of the Penobscot and the English on the lands to the south.The 100 illustrations in this book come largely from the Osher Map Library at the University of Southern Maine and include many rare early maps (1500-1800). Ten are reproduced in full color. Emerson W. Baker is an assistant professor of history at Salem State College. Edwin A. Churchill is the chief curator, Maine State Museum. Richard S. D'Abate is the associate director of the Maine Humanities Council. Kristine L.Jones is an independent scholar. Victor A. Konrad is director of the Fulbright Canada Program. Harald E. L. Prins is an associate professor of anthropology, Kansas State University.

(1989). What Columbus Died Believing: The True Geographic Concepts of the Great Discoverer. Terrae Incognitae: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 9-16.

. . records of urban populations suggest that for most of human history cities did not generally grow beyond the 50,000 to 100,000 range. For most of its celebrated life the city of Athens hovered around 50,000 people, though at periods of particular power the surrounding state may have grown to 150,000 or 200,000. The Italian cities that nurtured the Renaissance were no larger than 80,000, and most of them held closer to 50,000—the Rome of Michelangelo had perhaps 55,000 people, the Florence of Leonardo 50,000, and Venice, Padua, and Bologna at their height probably 50,000 to 80,000. Boston and Philadelphia at the time of the Revolution did not have more than 30,000 people, New York had even fewer. In fact, it seems that only rarely did historical cities go much beyond 100,000, and then only temporarily when serving as the capitals of empires. . . . The very existence of giant cities is so recent as to be a mere eye-blink in recorded history. It was not until 1800 that any city grew to more than one million people—that was industrialized London—and by 1900 there were only ten others of that size. The conclusion of the great Greek city planner Constantine Doxiades, who spent his life categorizing such things, seems on the mark: "If we look back into history . . . we find that, throughout the long evolution of human settlements, people in all parts of the world have tended to create urban settlements which reached an optimum size of 50,000 people."

The works of Frank and Magdoff particularly inserted a specifically Marxist set of theorizations offering answers to the big question of why the U.S. found itself involved in increasingly costly global imperialist operations. The third current began outside the U.S. and had its impact more narrowly contained within the circles of students and teachers of economics. Its originator was Piero Sraffa in Cambridge, England, whose 1960 Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities shook some basic theoretical foundations of the Samuelson-type neo-classical synthesis in economics while also lending itself to a reformulation of Marxist economics whose mathematical rigors and apparent direct applicability to current economic discussions generally gained it wide attention. It began to seem that Marxist theory had made quantum leaps toward respectability in economics just as neo-classical economics was in theoretical trouble and under heavy fire for having nothing interesting to say about poverty, imperialism and other burning social issues of the day. Out of these three intertwined and mutually effective currents emerged some key developments of importance within economics by the end of the 60s. Young economists-mostly graduate students and junior facultyformed a successful counter organization to the dominant American Economic Association. Called the Union for Radical Political Econom