1492 by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto Bloomsbury, HK$117
1492. Many will associate the date with Christopher Columbus' discovery of a route to America. But much else happened in that 'amazingly neglected' single year of global history that, says historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, is the best from which to date modernity and the 'beginnings of the world we are in now'. Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile (monarchs who sponsored the Genoese adventurer's journey that linked the Old World with the New) conquered Granada, the last Muslim-ruled state on the northern shore of the western Mediterranean, and expelled from Spain not only Jews but also the last Moors, as Muslims were called. China, however, was beyond the reach of Columbus, who apparently fantasised about discovering the Orient. What would he have found? At the time, writes Fernandez-Armesto, China was the equivalent of a global superpower 'bigger and richer than all its possible competitors combined', with a population of about 100 million, twice that for the whole of Europe. And yet, while Europe ascended, China slipped from its perch and for five centuries remained in the shadows.