Everyone knows that in 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic, seeking a new route to the East. Few note, however, that Columbus's intention was also to sail south, to the tropics. In The Tropics of Empire, Nicolandaacute;s Wey Gandoacute;mez rewrites the geographical history of the discovery of the Americas, casting it as part of Europe's reawakening to the natural and human resources of the South. Wey Gandoacute;mez shows that Columbus shared in a scientific and technical tradition that linked terrestrial latitude to the nature of places, and that he drew a highly consequential distinction between the higher, cooler latitudes of Mediterranean Europe and the globe's lower, hotter latitudes. The legacy of Columbusandrsquo;s assumptions, Wey Gandoacute;mez contends, ranges from colonialism and slavery in the early Caribbean to the present divide between the industrialized North and the developing South.

This distinction between North and South allowed Columbus to believe not only that he was heading toward the largest and richest lands on the globe but also that the people he would encounter there were bound to possess a nature (whether andquot;childishandquot; or andquot;monstrousandquot;) that seemed to justify rendering them Europe's subjects or slaves. The political lessons Columbus drew from this distinction provided legitimacy to a process of territorial expansion that was increasingly being construed as the discovery of the vast and unexpectedly productive andquot;torrid zone.andquot; The Tropics of Empire investigates the complicated nexus between place and colonialism in Columbus's invention of the American tropics. It tells the story of a culture intent on remaining the moral center of an expanding geography that was slowly relegating Europe to the northern fringe of the globe.

Wey Gandoacute;mez draws on sources that include official debates over Columbus's proposal to the Spanish Crown, Columbus's own writings and annotations, and accounts by early biographers. The Tropics of Empire is illustrated by color reproductions of period maps that make vivid the geographical conceptions of Columbus and his contemporaries.

andquot;This superb, learned book offers a Columbus the vast scholarship on the Genoese has failed to notice: a man who sailed to the tropics, not the East. Rooted in ancient and medieval sources, the 'open earth model' of Columbus predicted a bountiful, temperate paradise in the equator, rich in gold, commodities, and spiritless slaves. Columbus's tropics explain the ruthless nature of the early modern European imperial expansion to the New World. A tour de force, a model of scholarship!andquot;
andmdash;Jorge Caandntilde;izares-Esguerra, Alice Drysdale Sheffield Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin

andquot;The Tropics of Empire is an extraordinary work of history, learned, imaginative, and immensely revealing. Nicolandaacute;s Wey Gandoacute;mez recreates the complex and now forgotten world of cosmological and geographical learning within which Columbus planned his voyage to Asia. Through close reading of a vast range of sources he shows us exactly why Columbus thought he could sail south, as well as west, to Asia, and how he envisioned the material and human world that he would find there. Wey Gandoacute;mez makes clear that Columbus's wide reading and speculative thinking had dramatic consequences in the real world, not only for him but for the inhabitants of the Americas.andquot;
andmdash;Anthony T. Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History, Princeton University

andquot;In this challenging book, Nicolandaacute;s Wey Gandoacute;mez proves something everyone thought was impossible: there are useful new things to say about Columbus.andquot;
andmdash;Felipe Fernandaacute;ndez-Armesto, Prandiacute;ncipe de Asturias Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization, Tufts University

andquot;Mr. [Wey] Gandoacute;mez's volume... offer[s] tremendous insight into the prevailing medieval understanding of the shape of the world Columbus encountered and absorbed.andquot;
andmdash; Alfred W. Crosby, The New York Sun

A radical revision of the geographical history of the discovery of the Americas that links Columbus's southbound route with colonialism, slavery, and todayandrsquo;s divide between the industrialized North and the developing South.

Nicols Wey Gmez studies the early modern Hispanic world at Brown University.