The Year Our World Began: Felipe Fernández-Armesto (1492)
Felipe Fernández-Armesto by Nicholas Ashley
The year 1492 famously brought Columbus’s discovery of a maritime route to America. This was, according to today’s guest Felipe Fernández-Armesto, ‘a world-changing event if ever there was one.’ But what else was happening in that fateful year? What was happening in China? In Africa?
In this week’s brilliantly insightful and entertaining episode we set out on a journey of our own to glimpse 1492 in three telling scenes. Our guest is one of the finest imaginable. Felipe Fernández-Armesto is an eminent and hugely decorated author who had written extensively about maritime and world history. In this episode he guides us from the tranquil hills of China to the smouldering shores of the Caribbean in the year 1492.
But before all of that, he begins by telling us about the character at the centre of his latest ‘myth-busting’ biography: Ferdinand Magellan.
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Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan by Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s
Half a millennia ago the European world was embarking on the Age of Exploration. The event which stirred this new age into vivid life was Columbus’s voyage in 1492. The decisive factor behind Columbus’s achievement, Armesto explains, was his decision to sail with the wind behind him. It was this simple act of bravery that would change the world.
In the years after 1492 stories of strange lands and great riches would ripple back to Europe. But there was a even greater historical process at work at the time than people realised. As Armesto has argued, the events of the late fifteenth century brought an end to the old, divided world. From that point on the globe would become increasingly integrated. Globalisation had begun.
This is the period of history that we look back on in this episode of Travels Through Time. The catalyst for our discussion is a Armesto’s new book about a famous voyage from this early phase of the Age of Exploration.
Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage happened a generation after Columbus’s. Like Columbus’s, it has generally been fondly remembered. According to the legend, Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe was a terrific success. It was the first time an expedition had travelled right around the world. Magellan died a heroic death. Great riches had been brought back to the Spanish court, who had funded the enterprise in the first place.
Armesto’s book, Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan explodes this myth. As he explains, Magellan’s voyage was hardly the triumph of legend. Instead it can be seen today as ‘an ignoble failure’ in almost every way. The puzzle lies not so much in the facts, but in fact that Magellan – one of the most vicious and destructive of all the early explorers – remains such a cherished (and marketable) figure in our twenty-first-century, post-colonial world. How can this be?
In Straits, Armesto builds a new portrait of Magellan out of the context of his time. One of the years at the heart of that context is the year that we examine: 1492. When Columbus sailed in 1492 Magellan was still just a boy. But what other events were happening elsewhere in this old, localised world? To find out, Armesto takes us first to China to see the painter Shen Zhou, then to Africa to witness the death of Sonni Ali and finally, inevitably, to the shores of the Caribbean.
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Show Notes
Scene One: 15th day of 7th month (August 7th), Xiangcheng, China. The poet Shen Zhou paints a mystical experience.
Scene Two: November or December, death scene of Sonni Ali, perhaps in a crossing of the River Niger in the vicinity of Gao.
Scene Three: 12th October, somewhere in the West Indies, probably Watling Island. Columbus meets Indigenous Americans for the first time.
Memento: One of Shen Zhou’s paintings.
People/Social
Presenter: Peter Moore
Guest: Felipe Fernández-Armesto
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours
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About Felipe Fernández-Armesto
Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s awards for work in maritime and imperial history include the World History Association Book Prize, Spain’s Premio Nacional de Investigación Geogáfica, the Caird Medal and the John Carter Brown Gold Medal.
He is a Vice-president of the Hakluyt Society. In 2016 the King of Spain recognised his services to education and the arts with the award of the Gran Cruz de la Orden de Alfonso el Sabio. His previous publications include the critically acclaimed Out of Our Minds, A Foot in the River, 1492, Millennium, Pathfinders and Food: A History. He occupies the William P. Reynolds Chair at the University of Notre Dame, where he is a professor of history and, concurrently, of classics and of the history and philosophy of science.
