The Medieval Expansion of Europe

Second revised edition with a new introduction and bibliographical essay surveying recent work and new research in this area. This is a book about Medieval Europe's encounter with the wider world between 1000 and 1500, covering the journeys of Marco Polo, the Crusaders, John of Monte Corvino and others.

Between the year 1000 and the middle of the fourteenth century a remarkable series of events unfolded as Europeans made contact with a very substantial part of the inhabited world, much of it never previously known to or suspected by them. Leif Ericsson and other Vikings from Greenland discovered North America; European crusading armies established themselves in Syria and Palestine; Marco Polo and other Italian merchants, and missionaries such as John of Monte Corvino penetrated the dominions of the Mongol great Khans as far as China; the Vivaldi brothers sought to open a sea route to India; Jaime Ferrer was lured by dreams of locating the source of West African gold; and the Atlantic island groups, the canaries, Madeira, and the Azores, were all discovered. For this Clarendon Paperback edition, Professor Phillips has added a new Foreword and Conclusion, as well as a bibliographical essay, surveying recent work in what is becoming a thriving area of research.