Roger Crowley

Fine.

Thank you very much, Dan.

I'm delighted to be talking to you.

In the middle of the 15th century in Europe, we talk about being on the verge of the Age of Discovery, but we're really talking about Europe as being isolated.

It's cut off now by the Ottoman Empire from a lot of the things which were valuable to it in terms of trade and in terms of spices and the goods of the Orient.

The big players in Europe at this point, I suppose, is the Holy Roman Empire, of which Charles V is going to be the emperor of a very large dynasty.

The places like Venice are fading.

because they're locked into the Mediterranean and cannot now trade so easily with the world beyond.

So the opportunity for Europe now lies in what is beyond Europe.

And what is beyond Europe is the Atlantic, of which Europe knew very, very little.

The Arabs called it the great green sea of darkness.

And we're going to see the Atlantic pioneers taking Europe

beyond Europe.

And that really is going to be those countries which border the Atlantic and can learn how to sail the Atlantic and crack the code of the Atlantic and the world beyond.

Nobody knew if

there was a way around Africa.

To a certain extent, the geography of Ptolemy from the second century AD taught that what we now call Africa wrapped around the world.

And the Indian Ocean was actually a lake.

So the mystery of what lay beyond Europe is really the only way now that Europe can escape from a sort of slightly claustrophobic feeling, I think, of being muzzled by the spread of Islam.

Absolutely.