Jose-Juan Lopez-Portillo, McGill University, Canada Jill Moore, Thomas Goldstein, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, R.A. Fletcher, Claudio Sanchez Albornoz, Teofilo F. Ruiz, Abdoolkarim Vakil, Stephen Lay, Carlos-Alberto Campos, Joseph F. O'Callaghan, Alfred W. Crosby, P.E. Russell A.J.R. Russell-Wood, Anthony Luttrell, Charles Verlinden, Virginia Rau, P.E.H. Hair.

• Contents: Contents: Introduction; Bibliography; Part I The Background: The expedition of the brothers Vivaldi: new archival evidence, Jill Moore; The role of the Italian merchant class in Renaissance and discoveries, Thomas Goldstein; The origins of the European Atlantic, Felipe Fernández-Armesto. Part II Peninsular Reconquests: The survival of a notion of Reconquista in late 10th- and 11th-century León, Felipe Fernández-Armesto; Reconquest and crusade in Spain c.1050-1150, R.A. Fletcher; The frontier and Castilian liberties, Claudio Sánchez Albornoz; Trading with the ‘other’: economic exchanges between Jews, Muslims, and Christians in late medieval northern Castile, Teofilo F. Ruiz; From the Reconquista to Portugal Islâmico: Islamic heritage in the shifting discourses of Portuguese historiography and national identity, Abdoolkarim Vakil; The Reconquest as crusade in the anonymous De expugatione Lyxbonensi, Stephen Lay. Part III The Castilian Ocean: The Atlantic islands and the development of southern Castile at the turn of the 15th century, Carlos-Alberto Campos; Castile, Portugal and the Canary Islands: claims and counterclaims, 1344-1479, Joseph F. O’Callaghan; An ecohistory of the Canary islands: a precursor of European colonialization in the New World and Australia, Alfred W. Crosby. Part IV The Portuguese Ocean: White kings on black kings: Rui de Pina and the problem of black African sovereignty, P.E. Russell; Prince Henry the Navigator: the rise and fall of a culture hero, P.E. Russell; Before Columbus: Portugal’s African prelude to the Middle Passage and contribution to discourse on race and slavery, A.J.R. Russell-Wood; Slavery and slaving in the Portuguese Atlantic (to about 1500), Anthony Luttrell; Feudal and demesnial forms of Portuguese colonization in the Atlantic zone in the 14th and 15th centuries, especially under Henry the Navigator, Charles Verlinden; The settlement of Madeira and the sugar cane plantations, Virginia Rau; How the South was won - and how Portuguese discoveries began, P.E.H. Hair; Index.

'There is much to admire in this collection of essays. Readers of this Journal will find in it a multifaceted, stimulating and useful account of Iberian expansion into the Atlantic in the fifteenth century.' International Journal of Maritime History