Dimensions
158 x 233 x 32mm
Discovery, Exploration, Settlement 1450-1650
Beginning with Henry the Navigator and ending 250 years later when the "Reconnaissance" was complete, this book is less concerned with the voyages of discovery themselves than with an analysis of the factors that made the voyages possible in the first place. Thus the rapidly developing technical devices used by seamen - the ships, charts, instruments and weapons they used are analysed along with the political, economic and psychological inducements that favoured overseas enterprise.
The first part is devoted to analysis and description; the second to a narrative of events and the third summarises the geographical knowledge that the explorers accumulated. The sixty-four pages of illustrations include maps and charts; navigational instruments; plans of forts and settlements; drawings of ships and some of the flights of fancy that inspired engravers and woodcutters of the time.
