Stephen R. Bown

Traces the discovery of the cure for scurvy by three determined individuals, including a navy surgeon, a sea captain, and a charismatic gentleman, tracing the recorded history of the disease while discussing the factors that challenged the research and distribution of its cure. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail

Scurvy

Commerce meets conquest in this swashbuckling story of the six merchant-adventurers who built the modern world, as told by Steven Bown, .Canada's Simon Winchester. (Globe and Mail). Through the Age of Heroic Commerce, from the 17th to the 19th centuries, a rogue's gallery of larger-than-life merchant kings ruled vast tracts of the globe and expanded their far-flung monopolies to generate revenue for their shareholders, feather their own nests and satisfy their vanity and curiosity. Their exploits changed the world during an age of unfettered globalization, mirroring a world we know today. Merchant Kings looks at each ruling monopoly through its greatest merchant king and considers their stories together for the first time.

When Companies Ruled the World, 1600-1900

Merchant Kings

Looks at the life of the Norwegian polar explorer, describing Amundsen's approach to expeditions and his flair for self-promotion and publicity.

The Life of Roald Amundsen

The Last Viking

Wanderers & Nomads

The true story involving a corrupt pope -- the patriarch of the family fictionalized in the hit Showtime series The Borgias -- in an explosive feud between monarchs and the Church that divided the world in half. When Columbus triumphantly returned from America to Spain in 1493, his discoveries inflamed an already-smouldering conflict between Spain's renowned monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, and Portugal's Joao II. Which nation was to control the world's oceans? To quell the argument, Pope Alexander VI -- the notorious Rodrigo Borgia -- issued a proclamation laying the foundation for the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, an edict that created an imaginary line in the Atlantic Ocean dividing the entire known (and unknown) world between Spain and Portugal. The edict was to have a profound influence on world history: it propelled Spain and Portugal to superpower status, steered many other European nations on a collision course and became the central grievance in two centuries of international espionage, piracy and warfare. The treaty also began the fight for "the freedom of the seas," a distinctly modern notion, championed in the early seventeenth century by the Dutch legal theorist Hugo Grotius, whose arguments became the foundation of international law. At the heart of one of the greatest international diplomatic and political agreements of the last five centuries were the strained relationships and passions of a handful of powerful individuals. They were linked by a shared history of quarrels, rivalries and hatreds that dated back decades. Yet the struggle ultimately stemmed from Isabella's determination to defy tradition and the king and to choose Ferdinad as her husband.

How a Family Feud in Medieval Spain Divided the World in Half

1494

Disaster and Triumph on the World s Greatest Scientific Expedition

Island of the Blue Foxes

legendarna wyprawa Beringa

Wyspa niebieskich lisów

A history of gunpowder and dynamite traces the discovery of nitrate and the international impact of its use, chronicling the global struggle to find raw materials while citing the contributions of such figures as Alfred Nobel and Fritz Haber. By the author of Scurvy.

Dynamite, Nitrates, and the Making of the Modern World

A Most Damnable Invention

A história ensina que o descobrimento da América por Colombo, em 1492, trouxe à tona uma questão delicada. A expedição do navegador genovês havia sido financiada por dois diferentes patronos, com longo histórico de antipatia mútua: de um lado, o rei português Dom João II; de outro, os reis Fernando e Isabel de Castela e Aragão. Qual dos dois reinos teria primazia sobre os mares e terras recém-descobertos? Em 1494 - Como uma briga de família na Espanha Medieval dividiu o mundo ao meio, o autor canadense Stephen R. Bown conta as tramas paralelas que se enredaram para formar a grande história do Tratado de Tordesilhas, documento que dividiu o mundo ao meio e transformou os oceanos em campo de batalha entre várias nações europeias. Uma história em que o xadrez político é jogado lance a lance por personagens movidos por poderosas motivações: da obstinada Isabel, tornada rainha graças a sua luta particular pelo direito de escolher o próprio marido, ao arrogante e ganancioso Colombo em sua busca pela glória nos mares. Sem deixar de mencionar o brilho intelectual de Hugo Grotius, teórico jurídico holandês que no século XVII fixou a ideia de "Mare Libertum", desencadeando um novo entendimento sobre a exploração dos oceanos, que resultaria na legislação marítima internacional atualmente em vigor. Coube ao papa Alexandre VI – Rodrigo Bórgia, amigo do rei Fernando II de Aragão – resolver o impasse entre Espanha e Portugal ao emitir a bula papal Inter Caetera, que estabeleceu as bases para o Tratado de Tordesilhas, assinado em 1494. O decreto proclamava a criação de uma linha imaginária no Oceano Atlântico, de polo a polo do globo terrestre, repartindo todo o mundo conhecido (e também o desconhecido) entre os dois países. Considerado um dos maiores acordos diplomáticos e políticos de todos os tempos, o tratado e suas consequências abriram caminho para o surgimento do conceito moderno de liberdade dos mares – o uso desimpedido das vias aquáticas do mundo para comércio e viagens. Recheado de informação histórica, 1494 mescla relatos de época com detalhes que contribuem para resgatar os ambientes da época. Mérito do escritor Stephen R. Bown, especializado em livros históricos, sobretudo enfocando grandes exploradores e história da ciência.

How a Surgeon, a Mariner and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail

Scurvy took a terrible toll in the Age of Sail, killing more sailors than were lost in all sea battles combined. The threat of the disease kept ships close to home and doomed those vessels that ventured too far from port. The willful ignorance of the royal medical elite, who endorsed ludicrous medical theories based on speculative research while ignoring the life-saving properties of citrus fruit, cost tens of thousands of lives and altered the course of many battles at sea. The cure for scurvy ranks among the greatest of human accomplishments, yet its impact on history has, until now, been largely ignored. From the earliest recorded appearance of the disease in the sixteenth century, to the eighteenth century, where a man had only half a chance of surviving the scourge, to the early nineteenth century, when the British conquered scurvy and successfully blockaded the French and defeated Napoleon, Scurvy is a medical detective story for the ages, the fascinating true story of how James Lind (the surgeon), James Cook (the mariner), and Gilbert Blane (the gentleman) worked separately to eliminate the dreaded affliction. Scurvy is an evocative journey back to the era of wooden ships and sails, when the disease infiltrated every aspect of seafaring life: press gangs "recruit" mariners on the way home from a late night at the pub; a terrible voyage in search of riches ends with a hobbled fleet and half the crew heaved overboard; Cook majestically travels the South Seas but suffers an unimaginable fate. Brimming with tales of ships, sailors, and baffling bureaucracy, Scurvy is a rare mix of compelling history and classic adventure story.

Commerce meets conquest in this swashbuckling story of the six merchant-adventurers who built the modern world It was an era when monopoly trading companies were the unofficial agents of European expansion, controlling vast numbers of people and huge tracts of land, and taking on governmental and military functions. They managed their territories as business interests, treating their subjects as employees, customers, or competitors. The leaders of these trading enterprises exercised virtually unaccountable, dictatorial political power over millions of people. The merchant kings of the Age of Heroic Commerce were a rogue's gallery of larger-than-life men who, for a couple hundred years, expanded their far-flung commercial enterprises over a sizable portion of the world. They include Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the violent and autocratic pioneer of the Dutch East India Company; Peter Stuyvesant, the one-legged governor of the Dutch West India Company, whose narrow-minded approach lost Manhattan to the British; Robert Clive, who rose from company clerk to become head of the British East India Company and one of the wealthiest men in Britain; Alexandr Baranov of the Russian American Company; Cecil Rhodes, founder of De Beers and Rhodesia; and George Simpson, the "Little Emperor" of the Hudson's Bay Company, who was chauffeured about his vast fur domain in a giant canoe, exhorting his voyageurs to paddle harder so he could set speed records. Merchant Kings looks at the rise and fall of company rule in the centuries before colonialism, when nations belatedly assumed responsibility for their commercial enterprises. A blend of biography, corporate history, and colonial history, this book offers a panoramic, new perspective on the enormous cultural, political, and social legacies, good and bad, of this first period of unfettered globalization.

When Companies Ruled the World, 1600--1900

From 1792 to 1795, George Vancouver sailed the Pacific as the captain of his own expedition — and as an agent of imperial ambition. To map a place is to control it, and Britain had its eyes on America's Pacific coast. And map it Vancouver did. His voyage was one of history’s greatest feats of maritime daring, discovery, and diplomacy, and his marine survey of Hawaii and the Pacific coast was at its time the most comprehensive ever undertaken. But just two years after returning to Britain, the 40-year-old Vancouver, hounded by critics, shamed by public humiliation at the fists of an aristocratic sailor he had flogged, and blacklisted because of a perceived failure to follow the Admiralty’s directives, died in poverty, nearly forgotten. In this riveting and perceptive biography, historian Stephen Bown delves into the events that destroyed Vancouver’s reputation and restores his position as one of the greatest explorers of the Age of Discovery.

Stephen R. Bown

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