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RICHARDSON (Patrick). THE EXPANSION of Europe 1400-1660. London. 1966. - RICHARDSON (Patrick) THE EXPANSION of Europe 1400-1660 . London: Longmans, 1966. xii, 288 pp.: il.; 220 mm. Overview of European expansion between 1400 and 1660, by Patrick Richardson, Senior Lecturer in History at King's College School, Wimbledon. The two-and-a-half-century period it covers has been called ”the greatest adventure in European history.” In 1400, Europe was a closed community of states, with trade centered on the Mediterranean and the Baltic and the outside world connected only by overland caravans from the eastern Mediterranean; its sailors only knew the coasts of Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor. By 1660, almost the entire coastline of the globe was known, Europeans had visited, colonized, and explored all the major continents, and native empires had been defeated. The book tells the story of this movement and explains its results: the transformation of the European way of life by new cultures and imports from the East and the New World, the transport of millions of men and women, European and African, across the Atlantic, and the emergence of five great empires (Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English and French), which became a dominant feature of the European economy and politics for the next three hundred years. It also examines the economic, geographical, and technological bases of the ventures (crops, minerals, timber, and spices; winds, currents, and mountains; ships, maps, weapons, and instruments) and the figures involved: explorers, soldiers, missionaries, merchants, administrators, and pirates. It deals with the effort, the cost, the misery, and the triumphs of an expansion that led European countries to impose their laws, customs, cultures, religions, and trade on their citizens across all continents. ⚑ Auto-translated via Google Translate