The wilderness in the backyard
By the middle of the 18th century, European explorers had visited and mapped most of the world, and yet there was unknown terrain close to home. Mountaineering, which is now…
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May 26, 2018
National Pride and polar exploration
For centuries, the dominant political entity in Europe was the Holy Roman Empire, which encompassed large tracts of Central Europe from northern Italy to the shores of the Baltic. However,…
May 14, 2018
La Salle and the death of explorers
Frenchman René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle explored the Mississippi River in the 1780s -- an endeavor which, according to the rules of European exploration of the new world, meant…
April 24, 2018
Vitus Bering could see Russia from his grave
When Vitus Bering, a Dane in the employ of Imperial Russia (under the Tsars Peter I, Catherine I, Peter II, Anna, and Ivan VI) set out on his first journey…
April 2, 2018
Exploration on a Whim
By the end of the 19th century, most of the inhabited world had been explored and much of it made subject to the European imperialist powers. Conquest and wealth through…
March 14, 2018
Plus Ultra
“Plus ultra,” Francis Bacon’s motto for the Age of Discovery is the fitting emblem for this 1567 map based on Spanish explorations of the New World. The “Ne plus ultra”…
March 7, 2018
Ferdinand Magellan and the renaming of the South Sea
On November 1, 1520, All-Saints’ Day — in the South American spring — Ferdinand Magellan entered the strait that he named for the day: Estrecho de Todos los Santos (Strait of…
February 12, 2018