Prior histories of the first Spanish mariners to circumnavigate the globe in the sixteenth century have focused on Ferdinand Magellan and the other illustrious leaders of these daring expeditions. Harry Kelsey's masterfully researched study is the first to concentrate on the hitherto anonymous sailors, slaves, adventurers, and soldiers who manned the ships. The author contends that these initial transglobal voyages occurred by chance, beginning with the launch of Magellan's armada in 1519, when the crews dispatched by the king of Spain to claim the Spice Islands in the western Pacific were forced to seek a longer way home, resulting in bitter confrontations with rival Portuguese. Kelsey's enthralling history, based on more than thirty years of research in European and American archives, offers fascinating stories of treachery, greed, murder, desertion, sickness, and starvation but also of courage, dogged persistence, leadership, and loyalty.

David Livingstone (1813-1873) was one of the supreme representatives of the British Empire. Yet his career suffered many set-backs during his own life-time, and since his death his reputation has swung between extremes of adulation and dismissal. Were his epic journeys through Africa purely to save souls and counter the slave trade? Or were they the first steps towards bringing the peoples of Central Africa under the control of Europeans who would destroy their values and exploit them economically? Beyond these questions, there lies the puzzle of Livingstone's own character and its contradictions.
Livingstone's career was certainly an extraordinary one. Born in poverty in Blantyre, Scotland, he educated himself by heroic endeavor, later proving him-self to be a remarkable linguist and scientist. His missionary journeys brought him into contact with a wide range of African peoples, for whom he showed remarkable sympathy. "David Livingstone: Mission and Empire is a scholarly and readable account of Livingstone's life and of his achievements.