ABSTRACT
A hundred years ago in 1892 it seemed self-evident to all but the dogged supporters of Leif Eiriksson's claim to priority that Christopher Columbus was a heroic figure who had discovered the New World. By 1100 European armies under the sign of the cross had captured Antioch and Jerusalem and had begun to establish European-controlled states on the coastal margins of the eastern Mediterranean. The important points to note are that by the middle of the fourteenth century a very substantial part of the inhabited world, much of it never previously known to or suspected by Europeans, had been revealed to them and that the 'world economy' of Europe was linked to other much larger economies stretching far beyond its boundaries into the farthest reaches of Asia and even Africa. Medieval Europe was not, however, unique in its mastery of the techniques of international trade, in its resources of shipping, or knowledge of the means of navigating the seas.
