Summary of Russell Shorto's The Island at the Center of the World

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 In the year 1608, a man of ambition, intellect, and arrogance walked across London. He was a man of his age, and his complex personality was built around an impressive self-confidence. He was heading toward St. Paul’s Cathedral, which then, as now, dominated the skyline.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822524415

IRB Media

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Insights on Russell Shorto's The Island at the Center of the World

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In the year 1608, a man of ambition, intellect, and arrogance walked across London. He was a man of his age, and his complex personality was built around an impressive self-confidence. He was heading toward St. Paul’s Cathedral, which then, as now, dominated the skyline.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

In 1608, England’s rise to global empire was underway, and one of the forces behind that rise was the Muscovy Company. From the bravado of its formal name, one might think the company had been founded out of sheer exuberance. But it was desperation that drove them toward new horizons.

#2

The rise of England can be traced to the intellectual voraciousness of John Dee, who spent his summer abroad in 1547 and returned with new knowledge and insights. He spent long candle-lit nights poring over Frisius's maps with a Flemish scholar named Gerhard Kremer.

#3

The English were interested in finding a northern passage that would render obsolete the Spanish and Portuguese monopoly on the Southern Hemisphere. They believed that near the pole, the sun shines for five months continuously, which has enough strength to warm the ground and make it temperate.

#4

The company expanded and the nation with it. The queen died and the Russia trade fell off. Faced with financial crisis, the company’s directors made a decision to return to their original purpose. They would revive the Renaissance dream and commit themselves anew to discovering a northern passage to Asia.

#5

Hudson was a seasoned mariner who had served in the defeat of the Armada in 1588. He was born and raised to the sea, and he was obsessed with finding a northern passage to Asia. He believed he would be the one to find it.

#6

Hudson’s first voyage was pure madness. He was relying on an established theory that the lucky sailor who ventured across the top of the world would benefit from the perpetual clearness of the day without any darkness of the night. They made it above eighty degrees latitude, within six hundred miles of the North Pole, before Hudson noted drily, This morning we saw that we were compassed in with Ice in abundance.

#7

Hudson’s second voyage was a failure, but he was still convinced that he was close to finding a route to Asia. He was now convinced that the answer lay in the unknown region that was being labeled America.

#8

Hudson was a man of energy and obsession, who thrived on contradictions. He sought to expand human civilization by immersing himself in the void of nature, while strolling in the easy center of culture and society.

#9

After the Muscovy Company rejected him, Hudson was approached by the Dutch consul Emanuel van Meteren, who wanted to hire him. He spoke on behalf of Dutch merchants who were desirous of abetting Hudson's ambition.

#10

In the seventeenth century, to enter Amsterdam was to be gently assaulted in the senses. There was the squeal of caroming sea birds and the slap of oars, a stew of smells, and the sensation of gliding into an orderly enclosed space.

#11

The geography of Hudson’s new home, Manhattan, was vastly different