354 Pages
by
Routledge
European Approaches to North America, 1450-1640 by David Quinn provides a series of insights into the early cartography and exploration of the North Atlantic and North America, and what was believed and written about this by Europeans. Its focus is the two hundred years from the mid-15th century. The work demonstrates how detailed studies can throw much light on more general developments, and enable them to be seen close up. It is primarily concerned with English developments, but looks also at Champlain and Henri IV and the origins of French settlement in Canada, while the final paper - one of four not previously published - presents a broader, comparative perspective on European settlement patterns.
Contents: Foreword; Atlantic islands; Columbus and the North: England, Iceland and Ireland (with new appendix); The early cartography of Maine in the setting of early European exploration of New England and the Maritimes; The Americas in the Rotz Atlas of 1542; Maps of the age of European exploration; The literature of travel and discovery, 1560-1600; Englishmen and others; European perceptions of American ecology, 1492-1612; Religion in North America in the 16th century; North America: a last resort ?; Bermuda in the age of exploration and early settlement; The preliminaries to New France: site selection for the fur trade by the French, 1604-1608; Henri Quatre and New France; The editing of Richard Hakluyt’s ’Discourse of Western Planting’; Settlement patterns in early modern colonisation; Index.
Biography
David B.Quinn
’This valuable collection deserves wide attention.’ Journal of Early Modern History, 4, 3-4 ’...it is a real pleasure - not to mention instructive - to see an informed master at work...the volume reveals many passages into a broad Atlantic world that still promises rich rewards to those who explore it.’ 16th Century Journal, Vol. XXXI, No. 4 (2000) ’All scholars of European expansion into English-speaking North America are heavily dependent upon the editions provided by David [Quinn]...It is good, and necessary, to see that mind at work.’ The International History Review, Vol. XXII, No. 4 (December 2000)
