Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration

Front Cover
W. W. Norton & Company, 2006 - 428 pages
Presenting the subject on a truly global scale, historian Fernández-Armesto tracks the pathfinders who, over the last five millennia, laid down the routes of contact that have drawn together the farthest reaches of the world. From the maritime expeditions connecting Queen Hatshepsut's Egypt to the exotic land of Punt in the second millennium BCE, through the merchants and missionaries of the ancient Silk Roads and the great Iberian explorers of the fifteenth century, to the nineteenth-century explorations of the polar regions, interior Africa, North America, and the South Pacific, Fernández-Armesto spins a narrative full of character and story. Embedding these explorations in the cultures, politics, and technologies of their times, he creates a history with depth and breadth.--From publisher description.

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Contents

Stretching The First Trail Finders from Gathering Cultures to Great Empires
ix
Reaching Exploring the Oceans to About a Thousand Years Ago
31
Stirring Landward Explorations in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
61
Springing The Maritime Turn of the Late Middle Ages and the Penetration of the Atlantic
97
Vaulting The Great Leap Forward of the 1490s
141
Girdling Connecting Global Routes c15001620
181
Connecting Global Reconvergence c1620c1740
225
Deepening Enhancing the WorldPiture c1740s1840s
269
Globalizing The Narrowing Horizon c1850c2000
329
NOTES
379
PICTURE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
396
INDEX
397
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