In the continuing debates about the cultural dimensions of globalization, the question of 'literature' has been something of a poor relation. This volume seeks to redress the balance. It takes as its starting point Goethe's idea of Weltliteratur, from which it then travels out to various parts of the globe at different historical junctures. Among its many concerns are the legacies of Goethe's idea, variable understandings of the term 'literature' itself, cross-cultural encounters,...

Shaping Entrepreneurship Research: Made, as Well as Found is a collection of readings designed to support entrepreneurship research. Focused on a worldview in which the future is open-ended and shapeable through human action – i.e. “made”, this collection reframes entrepreneurship as a science of the artificial rather than as a natural or social science. It posits an open-ended universe for the making of human artifacts even if large swathes of nature and society are not within th...

Science and Empire in the Atlantic World is the first book in the growing field of Atlantic Studies to examine the production of scientific knowledge in the Atlantic world from a comparative and international perspective. Rather than focusing on a specific scientific field or single national context, this collection captures the multiplicity of practices, people, languages, and agendas that characterized the traffic in knowledge around the Atlantic world, linking this knowledge to...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2014Discover the story of a real-life Captain Ahab of the slave trade, in a landmark book by one of today’s most original and highly acclaimed historiansOne morning in 1805, off a remote island in the South Pacific, seal hunter and abolitionist Captain Amasa Delano climbed aboard the Tryal, a distressed Spanish slaver. He spent all day on the ship, sharing food and water, yet...

With startling speed, Spanish conquistadors invaded hundreds of Native American kingdoms, took over the mighty empires of the Aztecs and Incas, and initiated an unprecedented redistribution of the world's resources and balance of power. They changed the course of history, but the myth they established was even stranger than their real achievements. This Very Short Introduction deploys the latest scholarship to shatter and replace the traditional narrative. Chapters explore New World civili...

From a Bancroft Prize-winning historian, the gripping tale of a shipwrecked Spaniard who walked across America in the sixteenth century.**“Once you start this book, it's nearly impossible to put it down.” -**Washington PostIn 1527, a mission set out from Spain to colonize Florida. But the expedition went horribly wrong: Delayed by a hurricane and knocked off course by a colossal error of navigation, the mission quickly became a des...

A series of lectures on the ethnic and social fusion that makes Brazil the country it is today. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

From food to the spread of political ideas, the landmass from northern Canada to the southern tip of Argentina is complexly bound together, yet these connections are generally ignored. In this groundbreaking and vividly rendered work, leading historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto tells, for the first time, the story of our hemisphere as a whole, showing why it is impossible to understand North, Central, and South America in isolation, and looking instead to the intricate and common forces tha...

The book is divided into two broad sections: In Slavery and Freedom, which features critical research on slavery and post-emancipation society, and Gender Paradigms.

During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, vibrant port cities became home to thousands of Africans in transit. Free and enslaved blacks alike crafted the necessary materials to support transoceanic commerce and labored as stevedores, carters, sex workers, and boarding-house keepers. Even though Africans continued to be exchanged as chattel, urban frontiers allowed a number of enslaved blacks to negotiate the right to hire out their own time, often greatly enhancing their autonomy within ...

First Globalization presents an original and sweeping conceptualization of the grand cultural-civilizational encounter between Asia and Europe. Now largely taken for granted, the exchange resonates in multiple ways even today. Offering a 'metageography' of the vast Eurasian zone, Geoffrey C. Gunn shows how between 1500 and 1800, a lively two-way flow in ideas, philosophies, and cultural products brought competing civilizations into serious dialogue and mostly peaceful exchange. In Europe, ...

A vivid account of the literary culture of the Spanish-speaking Americas from the time of Columbus to Latin American Independence, this Very Short Introduction explores the origins of Latin American literature in Spanish and tells the story of how Spanish literary language developed and flourished in the New World. A leading scholar of colonial Latin American literature, Rolena Adorno examines the writings that debated the justice of the Spanish conquests, described the novelties ...