In Search of Trade and Fortune

Reframes Cabot and Columbus within centuries of Atlantic trade and exploration.

What did John Cabot and Christopher Columbus truly achieve—and what did they inherit? In this compelling reassessment, Lydia Towns traces their voyages not as radical departures, but as chapters in a much older story of Atlantic navigation and commerce. Beginning with Celtic and Viking seafarers, she outlines the long prelude to the so-called Age of Exploration, showing how knowledge, ambition, and trade routes shaped the journeys of Cabot and Columbus. Drawing on recent scholarship, Towns reframes these figures within the systems they extended, not invented. She then follows their legacy into the modern age, examining how national myths, public memory, and political uses of history continue to shape our understanding of early exploration. Discovery, this book suggests, was never a solitary act.