P.LeBel First Encounters

 

First Encounters

How Explorers and Conquerors

Have Shaped International Trade and Relations

A mini-course in four sessions

Phillip LeBel, Ph.D.

Emeritus Professor of Economics

Montclair State University

Montclair, New Jersey 07043

lebelp@montclair.edu

A Gallery of Noted Observers

Herodotus

484-425 BCE

Julius Caesar

100-44 BCE

Tacitus

56-120 CE

Ibn Fadlan

877-930

Marco Polo

1254-1324 CE

1300-1372 CE

Ibn Battuta

1304-1377 CE

Zheng He

1371-1433 CE

John Cabot

1450-ca.1498 CE

1451-1506 CE
1451-1512 CE

Vasco da Gama

ca. 1480-1524 CE

Vasco Nunez de Balboa

1475-1519 CE

1480-1521 CE

Cabeza de Vaca

1490-ca. 1535 CE

John Smith

1580-1631 CE

John Winthrop

1588-1649 CE

Abel Tasman

1603-1659 CE

James Cook

1728-1779 CE

René Chateaubriand

1768-1848 CE

Margaret Mead

1901-1978 CE

   

Course Session Materials

Readings on First Encounters  

Battuta, Ibn. (1963, 1929, 1325-1354).  Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325-1354, translation by H.A.R. Gibb.  (London:  Routledge and Kegan Paul).
Boorstin, Daniel J. (1983).  The Discoverers – A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and  Himself.  (New York: Vintage Books).
Caesar, Julius (1982, 58-51 BCE).  The Conquest of Gaul, translation by S.A. Handford, with an Introduction by Jane F. Gardner (New York:  Penguin Books)
Chateaubriand, François René (1961, 1801). Atala, René, Les Natchez, extraits.  (Paris: Classiques Larousse).
Columbus, Christopher (1992, 1492).  The Log of Christopher Columbus, His own account of the voyage that changed the world, new translation by Robert H. Fuson.  (Camden, Maine:  International Marine Publications).
Cosmas, An Egyptian Monk (1965, 6th Century CE). The Aksumite Empire of the Sixth Century, in Richard Pankhurst, editor, Travelers to Ethiopia (Addis Ababa:  Oxford University Press).
De Las Casas, Bartolomé (2003, 1542).  An Account, Much Abbreviated, of the Destruction of the Indies, translation by Andrew Hurley, edited with an Introduction by Franklin W. Knight).  (Indianapolis, Indiana:  Hackett Publishing Company).
De Vaca, Alvar Nunez (2003, 1542). The Journal and Ordeal of Cabeza de Vaca, His Account of the First European Exploration of the American Southwest, translation by Cyclone Covey.  (Mineola, New York:  Dover Publications).
Ezana (1967, 4th Century, CE). Stone Inscription – on the Axumite Kingdom, edited by Richard Pankhurst, in Ethiopian Royal Chronicles. (Addis Ababa:  Oxford University Press).
Fadlan, Ibn (2012, 922).  Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness, Arab Travelers in the Far North.  (New York:  Penguin Books).
Hakluyt, Richard (1582) Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of America and the Islands Adjacent.
Herodotus (1960, 425-415 BCE). The Histories, translation by Aubrey de Sélincourt).  (Baltimore, Maryland:  Penguin Books).
Hodgson, Godfrey (2009). The Myth of American Exceptionalism (New Haven:  Yale University Press).
Kuper, Adam (2023) The Museum of Other Peoples (New York:  Pantheon Books).
Levathes, Louise (1994).  When China Ruled the Seas, The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433.  (New York:  Oxford University Press).
Mandeville, Sir John (2006, 1481).  The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, the Fantastic 14th Century Account of a Journey to the East.  (Mineola, New York:  Dover Books).
Mun, Thomas (1664) England’s Treasure by Forraign Trade, or the Balance of our Forraign Trade is the Rule of our Treasure, pdf file.
Murray, William Vans (1996, 1893, 1792). A Vocabulary of the Nanticoke Dialect, with an Introduction by Daniel Garrison Brinton.  (Holland, Bucks County, Pennsylvania:  Evolution Publishing)
Polo, Marco (1999, 1298-1299). Marco Polo and the Discovery of the New World, translation by John Larner (New Haven:  Yale University Press).
Polo, Marco (1958, 1298-1299). The Travels, Translation with an Introduction by Ronald Latham.  (New York:  Penguin Books).
Ricardo, David (1965, 1817). The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Introduction by Michael P. Fogarty.  (London:  Everyman’s Library).
Shorto, Russell (2004).  The Island at the Center of the World.  (New York:  Vintage Paperback Publishing).
Smith, Adam (2010, 1759). The Theory of Moral Sentiments. (Digireads.com).
Smith, Captain John (2007, 1630).  The Journals of Captain John Smith, edited by John M. Thompson.  (Washington, D.C.:  National Geographic Adventure Series).
Tacitus, Publius Cornelius (2009, 1948, 98).  Agricola and Germania, translation by Harold Mattingly.  (New York: Penguin Books).
Unknown (1965, 1st century CE). The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea – The Aksumite Empire and its Commerce, in Richard Pankhurst, editor, Travelers to Ethiopia.  (Addis Ababa:  Oxford University Press)
Winthrop, John (1630) – Shining City on a Hill, pdf document.
Zinn, Howard (1999).  A People’s History of the United States – 1492 to the Present.  (New York:  Harper Perennial)

About the course instructor


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