"1492: the year our world began" by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

This book considers individual events across the world in 1492 and shows how each led to the development of the modern, western-dominated world.

It is sometimes not very well written. He meanders disjointedly. He repeats himself. Sometimes it seems as if the book has been composed in short sections that have not been integrated properly.

I also have problems accepting his thesis (which he himself disavows) that so much depended on a single year. I also wonder how he can be so authoritative  (eg "The conventional explanations [for how the Spaniards so easily defeated the Aztecs]  - that the Spaniards were inherently superior, that they were mistaken for gods  and preceded by omens, that their technology was decisive, that disease undermined defence, and that their enemies were subverted by corroded morale - are all false."; pp287-8 and his rubbishing of the theory that the Chinese fleets under Zheng-He circumnavigated the globe as espoused by Gavin Menzies in '1421' p226) when he is dealing with the whole world. When you paint a big canvas you expect broad strokes but you shouldn't deny the art of the miniaturist.

Nevertheless I enjoyed this book because he gave me alternative perspectives for some things I thought I knew:

• "The idea that the demand for spices was the result of the need to disguise tainted meat and fish is one of the great myths of the history of food. Fresh foods in mediaeval Europe were fresher than they are today, because they were produced locally." p17; 
• "Mediaeval Castilians eschewed olive oil and used lard as their main source of dietary fat" p88; 
• "Few of the people foul-mouthed as 'motherfuckers' in gangland parlance actually practice incest" p89; 
• The Turks were unable to conquer the western Mediterranean world because the prevailing winds were against them and the straits of Messina south of Sicily effectively bottled them up p112; 
• Columbus sold his plan of a voyage across the Atlantic with a different spin for whichever audience he had, sometimes talking of new islands like the Canaries, sometimes of an unknown continent and sometimes of a route to Cathay p183; 
• Maritime exploration is encouraged by winds that blow into your face because then you know you are likely to be able to get home p241 but Monsoon systems with regular seasonal winds are best and led to early and well-established trading routes across the Indian Ocean p242; 
• "Whatever modernity is, the high valuation of the individual is part of it" p272

But possibly the very best bits of this book were the things I didn't even know I didn't know:

• How Islam came to dominate Western Africa
• The economic effects of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492
• The explanation of how Muscovy became Russia
• The origin of pre-Berber cultures in the Canary Islands and the hundred years it took the Spaniards to conquer them despite the fact that they had no weapons other than sticks and stones

So a great little introduction which has opened my eyes and made me want to read at least half a dozen more specialised histories!

October 2011; 321 pages
The richness of the pre-Mediaeval Indian Ocean