Felipe Fernández-Armesto


Felipe Fernández-Armesto is a British professor of history and author of several popular works, notably on cultural and environmental history.

Life and career

He was born in London; his father was the Spanish journalist Felipe Fernández Armesto and his mother was Betty Millan, a British-born journalist and co-founder and editor of The Diplomatist, the in-house journal of the diplomatic corps in London.
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto joined the history department at the University of Notre Dame in 2009, after occupying chairs at Tufts University and at Queen Mary College, University of London. He had spent most of his career teaching at Oxford, where he was an undergraduate and doctoral student. He has had visiting appointments at many universities and research institutes in Europe and the Americas and has honorary doctorates from La Trobe University and the University of the Andes, Colombia. He began his teaching career at Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey.
In 1982 he published The Canary Islands after the Conquest: The Making of a Colonial Society in the Early Sixteenth Century, an archival study of the Canary Islands during the period of their original settlement. In 1987 he published Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic 1229–1492, a study of the earliest phase of European imperialism when Europeans left the Mediterranean and colonized the islands along the northwest coast of Africa.
Fernández-Armesto gained media attention in 2007 for allegedly being a victim of police brutality at the hands of the Atlanta Police Department, following an incident of jaywalking.

Awards and honours

Among other distinctions, Fernández-Armesto has won the John Carter Brown Medal, the Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum, the Premio Nacional an Investigacion of the Sociedad Geográfica Española, Spain's Premio Nacional de Gastronomia for his history of food, and the Tercentenary Medal of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Selected works

Columbus and the Conquest of the Impossible Ferdinand and Isabella The Canary Islands after the Conquest: The Making of a Colonial Society in the Sixteenth Century Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229–1492 The Spanish Armada: The Experience of War in 1588 Columbus Barcelona: A Thousand Years of the City's Past The Times Illustrated History of Europe Millennium: A History of Our Last Thousand Years Reformation: Christianity and the World 1500-2000 or Reformations: A Radical Interpretation of Christianity and the World, 1500-2000 Truth: A History and a Guide for the Perplexed Civilizations or Civilizations: Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature Food: A History or Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food The Americas: A Hemispheric History or The Americas: A History of A Hemisphere Ideas That Changed the World Humankind: A Brief History Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America The World: A Brief History 1492. The Year the World Began Our America: A Hispanic History of the United States
  • A Foot in the River: Why Our Lives Change–and the Limits of Evolution
  • The Oxford Illustrated History of the World
  • Out of Our Minds: What We Think and How We Came to Think It
  • Straits: Beyond the Myth of Magellan
  • ''How the Spanish Empire Was Built: A 400 Year History''

As editor

A History of England
  • ''The Times Guide to the Peoples of Europe: The Essential Handbook to Europe's Tribes''