This book presents groundbreaking new research on a fifteenth-century world map by Henricus Martellus, c. 1491, now at Yale. The importance of the map had long been suspected, but it was essentially unstudiable because the texts on it had faded to illegibility. Multispectral imaging of the map, performed with NEH support in 2014, rendered its texts legible for the first time, leading to renewed study of the map by the author. This volume provides transcriptions, translations, and commentary on the Latin texts on the map, particularly their sources, as well as the place names in several regions. This leads to a demonstration of a very close relationship between the Martellus map and Martin Waldseemüller’s famous map of 1507. One of the most exciting discoveries on the map is in the hinterlands of southern Africa. The information there comes from African sources; the map is thus a unique and supremely important document regarding African cartography in the fifteenth century. This book is essential reading for digital humanitarians and historians of cartography.

This title was first published in 2002. When did Africa emerge as a continent in the European mind? This book aims to trace the origins of the idea of Africa and its evolution in Renaissance thought. Particular attention is given to the relationship between the process of acquiring knowledge through travel and exploration, and its representation within a discourse which also includes previously acquired cosmographical elements. Among the themes investigated are: How did the image of Africa evolve from the conception of a symbolic space to a Euclidean representation? How did the Renaissance rediscovery of Antiquity interact with the Portuguese discoveries along the African coast? And once Africa was circumnavigated, how was the inner landmass depicted in the absence of first-hand knowledge? Also, overall, in this whole process what was the interplay of myth and reality?

The transformation of the medieval European image of the world in the period following the Great Discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries is the subject of this volume. The first studies deal specifically with the emergence of the concept of the terraqueous globe. In the following pieces Dr Randles looks at the advances in Portuguese navigation and cartography that helped sailors overcome the obstacles to the circumnavigation of Africa and the crossing of the Atlantic, and at the impact of the Discoveries on European culture and science. Other articles are concerned with Portuguese naval artillery, and with attempts to classify the indigenous societies of the newly-discovered lands and to map the interior of Africa.

With dozens of rare color maps and other documents, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia follows the story of map-making, exploration and colonization in Asia from the 16th to the 19th centuries. It documents the idea of Southeast Asia as a geographical and cosmological construct, from the earliest of times up until the down of the modern era. using maps, itineraries, sailing instructions, traveler's tales, religious texts and other contemporary sources, it examines the representation of Southeast Asia, both from the historical perspective of Western exploration and cartography, and also through the eyes of Asian neighbors. Southeast Asia has always occupied a special place in the imaginations of East and West. This book recounts the fascinating story of how Southeast Asia was, quite literally, put on the map, both in cartographic terms and as a literary and imaginative concept.

A fascinating narrative history of the great voyages of discovery, and is the only book of its kind to span the crucial period 1400-1600 in one readable book.

This four-volume collection brings together rare pamphlets from the formative years of the English involvement in the Caribbean. Texts presented in the volumes cover the first impressions of the region, imperial rivalries between European traders and settlers and the experience of day-to-day life in the colonies. Volume 1: Conceptualizing the West Indies The texts in this volume chart the growth of English interest in the West Indies, as seen through the publications of the time. Beginning with the Spanish discovery and colonization there followed reports of Spanish cruelty. Gradually the English started to make incursions into the area and this new era of colonization is reflected in the sources. Later publications document the landscape of the islands, the native inhabitants and the other settlers who began to arrive.