Fernandez-Armesto, Pathfinders

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration, Norton & Company, New York, 2006.

Dr. Fernandez-Armesto, a professor of History at University of Notre Dame, dedicates his exploration anthology to the study of human convergence over the span of the last millennium. How might one be able to cover such a rich historical topic in a short 400 page book? The answer is with scant amount of detail, or in depth explanation of cultural implications for these convergences. Pathfinders, which was obviously written as a popular history, with few references, and an almost exclusive dependence on secondary sources, is a fast read, one that can spark the readers interest and hopefully persuade her to branch off and conduct her own research. Fernandez-Armesto’s purpose for writing the book is “to understand the world we live in and plan its future,” (2). His cultural history is designed to explain how our political map was formed by human convergence. His claim however, is problematic. He offers specific examples of instances of convergence, such as his discussion on European fascination and movement towards Mecca, but fails to explain the cultural implications of Europeans entering Islam’s holy city (362-365) all that is offered is a short antidote of the experience. From what I can gather from the anthology, that the author’s thesis is: the history of human convergence has been long and complex, and has by no means ceased because territorial earth has been explored. Humans are continuously converging in cultural, environmental and social practices, and this process only accelerates with globalization.

Fernandez-Armesto divides the book into 9 chapters that are arraigned chronologically. His first chapter reaches back over 150,000 years ago (he refers to the time as BC instead of BCE) when homo sapiens were diverging and conquering the planet. Chapter 2 is a discussion of humans exploring the oceans a thousand years ago. The next section covers cultural convergence in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Chapter 4 is where the book becomes more relevant to his thesis in tying convergence to the modern era; he discusses maritime travel into the Atlantic. This body of water he believes is much more crucial to the spread of culture compared to the Pacific. Fernandez-Armesto explains that the Chinese cut themselves off from the opportunity to mix cultures because they halted their policy of exploration. Chapter 5 titled “The Great Leap Forward of the 1490s” explains the significance of this date to Europeans, with a special ode to Columbus, “Columbus insisted on their natural goodness. He portrayed them as innocent, unwarlike creatures, uncorrupted by material greed – indeed improved by poverty,” (167). He forgets

to describe the genocide that Columbus brings upon these people in search for riches, including his practice of severing hands of natives that failed to produce gold for the invaders, regardless of the fact that there was no gold on the island of Hispaniola.

Chapter 6 and 7 cover increased cultural interaction due to an increase in demand for traded goods between 1500 and 1740. Chapter 8 is a continuation of this thesis, with the added efficiency of technology in the pre modern era, 1740-1840. His final chapter “The Narrowing Horizon, 1850-2000 is a romanticized explanation of Westerners’ desire to conquer the unknown. For example he includes a touching story of Dr. Livingston and Stanly in their quest to “discover” central Africa. However he does not address the contradiction of this statement, central Africa had already been discovered long before by its native inhabitance. He includes a small explanation of European’s sense of accomplishment when entering this new territory, but he fails to even mention the Congo genocide that Belgium, or any other European power unleashed upon the natives. The book ends with an inspiriting call to further exploration, the bottom of the sea, space, some really high mountains that have yet to be climbed.

The anthology, while I found it to have some pretty interesting stories about the logistics of exploration, is obviously a case of one author trying to cover too much history is one book. Each chapter could have been expanded into a monograph that would have allowed more room for thoughtful analysis. I do however ascribe to his main point, human interaction drives history, and those who are left in isolation are culturally doomed. <span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">