Discovery in the North Atlantic from the 6th to the 17th century

Olaf Uwe Janzen is a history professor at the Memorial University of
Newfoundland.

The publisher describes this as a “highly readable account of
exploration in the North Atlantic” with “fresh and provocative
insights.” Readable, it is; through an introduction and seven
chapters, Sharp describes St. Brendan and the Irish, the Norse, John
Cabot and the Bristol voyages, Cartier and other early French voyages,
the Elizabethan “thrust,” Basque whalers, and seventeenth-century
searches for the Northwest Passage. Sharp tries to place these voyages
within a European social and economic context. However, there is no
obvious thesis to unite the millennium of North Atlantic voyages. The
book therefore rarely rises above the level of simply chronicling these
voyages. Nor is Sharp successful in being either fresh or provocative.
Each chapter, with the exception of that on the Basque, is based on
familiar, often dated, sources. Important recent scholarly research is
missing. References to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography are
conspicuously absent. So is the debut volume of McClelland & Stewart’s
Canadian Centenary series, Tryggvi Oleson’s truly provocative but
still valuable Early Voyages and Northern Approaches. Sharp also tries
too hard to establish a “cause-effect” relationship between the
voyages of discovery and subsequent European efforts at developing the
New World. Thus, Sir Humphrey Gilbert is credited with “England
acquiring its first overseas possession,” a hyperbolic interpretation
still favored by the Newfoundland tourist industry but of dubious
historical veracity, for it ignores both the full generation that would
pass before colonization was attempted in Newfoundland and Great
Britain’s refusal to accept Newfoundland as a colony before 1824. The
great international fishery at Newfoundland during the sixteenth century
is perceived as an immediate effect of the voyages of discovery made
between 1497 and 1502, though there is not a shred of evidence linking
court-sponsored explorations with subsequent exploitation. In short,
this book does not add to the literature; the reader interested in its
subject would be better served elsewhere.