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The twenty-first century has seen many historians turning to world history, as this gives us the best background to understanding the world in which we live. A splendid example is Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads, which shows that, for most of world history, Europe was of little importance. After the fall of the Roman Empire, it was a backwater and did not begin to drag itself slowly out of this position until 1500. Until this time, most ideas and peoples did not spread from the West to East but from East to West. All the major world religions we see today, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, began in the East. Goldin and Kutarna (henceforth referred to as ‘the authors’) choose two periods, which they regard as pivotal in bringing about significant changes in global history: the Renaissance and the modern world from 1990. These are not treated as separate blocks but references to both are found in each chapter, as different topics are discussed. The term Renaissance is notoriously vague but the authors regard it as useful to cover 1450 to 1550, a rebirth in Europe of the knowledge and values of ancient Greece and Rome, and yet, elastic enough to include the Reformation which divided the Christian Church in Europe for the first time in a thousand years, a division which still persists in the Catholic and Protestant Churches. Why then was the Renaissance important? In 1450, global history and trade were impossible, as much of the world (both landmasses and oceans) were unknown. The far-reaching voyages of the Portuguese and Spanish in the late 15th and early 16th centuries to Africa, Asia and the Americas provided the information which enabled Mercator to produce an accurate world map in 1569, which remains the basic model for maps today, though it did not include Australia, unknown then. These voyages are very important not only because they give an accurate geographical knowledge of the world but also because the huge continent of America was eventually occupied by Europeans. In 1521, Cortés conquered the Aztec Empire in Mexico for Spain and in 1533 Pizarro took control of the Inca Empire in Peru. North America was later settled by Britain and France, so the whole vast continent was occupied by Europeans and helped bring about European world hegemony. Another major event in the Renaissance was the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in Germany about 1450. Now knowledge could be spread quickly and cheaply: it also encouraged the spread of literacy. The Renaissance was therefore very important in world history but there is a great leap of over four hundred years to the authors’ second pivotal moment in 1990. During this time, there were other turning points in world history: the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, which has continued ever since and has brought profound changes in physics, chemistry and biology; the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century; the ESEÑAS

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Goldin, Ian &amp; Kutarna, Chris: Age of Discovery. Navigating the Risks and Rewards of our New Renaissance. London, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. 328 pp.