Reviews for Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration

The average rating for Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-07-07 00:00:00 Sandra Fenton-goss "Passion", which Fernandez-Armesto says is what drove him to write Pathfinders, is not really evident in this work. So although it is full of intelligent and thought-provoking observations - I hadn't realized, for example, that maritime exploration had almost always been limited to the direction against the prevailing winds (because it was at least as important to get home as to get anywhere new) - it has a rather academic flavour and can be a bit dense in places. Better than 3 stars though. He starts from the very earliest days of human life with the "divergence" of peoples spreading out across the world, before launching into all the "convergences" that resulted from intentional exploration, beginning many thousand years BC with the first agricultural societies around Mesopotamia. In later chapters he deals with the development of the Silk Roads between China and Eurasia, the 15th century Portuguese and Spanish voyages, and so on right to the present day (or at least the last century when exploration of the known world was essentially complete). Also, he says, he wanted to limit his narrative to this: "this book has a bigger objective and one we can accomplish if we stick to it: to trace the infrastructure of the history of the world - the routes that put the sundered peoples back in touch with each other after their long history of divergence and enabled them to exchange objects and ideas" - which may explain the absence of certain explorers that, according to some other reviewers, should have been included. But this is still a huge landscape, and in attempting to be so complete he has had to skim over so much that it's at once excessively detailed but still feels like it misses too much. For instance, he devotes many pages to the routes that the US railway pioneers explored from the Atlantic to the Pacific yet just one line to the corresponding trans-Siberian crossing. Part of the problem may also be that he's at his best on the renowned sea voyagers of the 15th to 18th centuries while the voyagers from earlier centuries are necessarily anonymous, so it's impossible for him to treat every era in a similar way. And despite his intended limitation, he has thrown in a number of what one might call re-interpretations of earlier voyages - ones that follow in others' footsteps - and explorations such as those to the Poles where there were certainly no "sundered peoples" to meet the explorers. In short, a bit daunting and uneven, though Fernandez-Armesto is a good demolisher of myths and I did like one of his concluding remarks … "An inescapable lesson of this book is that exploration has been a march of folly in which almost every step forward has been the failed outcome of an attempted leap ahead."

Review # 2 was written on 2014-09-28 00:00:00 Angela Ju The ocean to be cross'd, the distant to be brought near, The lands to be welded together. -Walt Whitman The stories of the great explorers have always enchanted me. I assumed they went off on their wild adventures simply for the heck of it all, but as this book makes clear, the main reason for the beginning of the 'Pathfinders' was to overcome the adverse balance of trade. Because China and the lands of the Indian Ocean provided silks and spices and gems, the Romans and later Europeans were the end-consumers with a burning desire to control the sources. This book looks at exploration from the ancient times, providing chapters on every corner of the globe. Each discovery is presented chronologically, so that we see mankind grow braver as the centuries roll on. The Polynesians were quite exceptional, as they developed a system of sailing against the wind, which sounds crazy. However, by doing this, the masters of the currents could ensure the ability to return quickly with the wind, which could be life-saving. Hawaii was a one-off discovery, which allowed its culture to develop in isolation until Mr. Cook came along. What makes an explorer go through great perils? The Norwegians felt the answer was in man's threefold nature. One motive is fame, another curiosity, and a third is lust for gain. Magellan's famous voyage was barely survived (minus the leader) thanks to scurvy and absolute fear. Franklin's men died in the frozen wastes of the Arctic. Chinese explorers fought with dragons who spit wind. Mysterious demons were blamed for lost paths and treacherous reefs. "We are in an unknown world and we stop for...blubber." The book shows there were always disputes about priorities. Find new lands or exploit new lands. Or do both. Propaganda was used to build up dreams of glory, such as naming the southern tip of Africa, the 'Cape of Good Hope'. As anyone who has ever sailed in those wild seas filled with huge rogue waves would know, the name was a misnomer. The greatest ocean in the world was named the 'Pacific' so that the next set of explorers would believe it was a benevolent and glassy field of blue. Patriotic pride exempts explorers from sanity. The author does not hold back on occasional slipped-in thoughts about various countries and explorers. 1. "Cortes is overrated as a conqueror." 2. "The English tend to be self-congratulatory about their maritime traditions." 3. "England was a realm of lightly gilded savagery and serious underachievement." 4. The Lewis and Clark Expedition was a "heroic failure". I am right in the middle as to my thoughts about this publication. The research is there and I did rather enjoy some of the revisionist razzing. But the writing feels academic and the weird orientations of the maps...disoriented me. I had to keep turning the book around to get a feel as to where I was when a map appeared. Still, I could not stop reading, hearing the sirens much as the sailors heard the seas. "Stop staring at the sail and steer by the feel of the wind on your cheeks." Book Season = Summer (broiling sun, no water, no land)