Niall Ferguson Quote

Portuguese craftsmen such as Agostinho de Goes Raposo, Francisco Gois and João Dias perfected the construction of nautical instruments. The Portuguese caravel – and its successors the great nau (1480) and the galleon (1510) – were also significantly better than other sailing ships of the time. Finally, with the Cantino Map of 1502, the Portuguese achieved a breakthrough in cartography: the first modern projection of the world’s geography, with largely accurate depictions of the world’s major continents aside from Australia and Antarctica (plate 7).

Niall Ferguson

Portuguese craftsmen such as Agostinho de Goes Raposo, Francisco Gois and João Dias perfected the construction of nautical instruments. The Portuguese caravel – and its successors the great nau (1480) and the galleon (1510) – were also significantly better than other sailing ships of the time. Finally, with the Cantino Map of 1502, the Portuguese achieved a breakthrough in cartography: the first modern projection of the world’s geography, with largely accurate depictions of the world’s major continents aside from Australia and Antarctica (plate 7).

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About Niall Ferguson

Sir Niall Campbell Ferguson, ( NEEL; born 18 April 1964) is a British-American historian who is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Previously, he was a professor at Harvard University, the London School of Economics, New York University, a visiting professor at the New College of the Humanities, and a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. He was a visiting lecturer at the London School of Economics for the 2023/2024 academic year and at Tsinghua University in China from 2019 to 2020. He is a co-founder of the University of Austin.
Ferguson writes and lectures on international history, economic history, financial history, and the history of the British Empire and American imperialism. He holds positive views concerning the British Empire. In 2004, he was one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. Ferguson has written and presented numerous television documentary series, including The Ascent of Money, which won an International Emmy Award for Best Documentary in 2009. In 2024, he was knighted by King Charles III for services to literature.
Ferguson has been a contributing editor for Bloomberg Television and a columnist for Newsweek. He began writing a semi-monthly column for Bloomberg Opinion in June 2020 and has also been a regular columnist at The Spectator and the Daily Mail. In 2021, he became a joint-founder of the new University of Austin. Since June 2024, he is a bi-weekly columnist at The Free Press. Ferguson has also contributed articles to many journals including Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy. He has been described as a conservative and called himself a supporter of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.