History Through Geography: The Age of Exploration

How Geography Sheds Light on History: The Age of Exploration is an accessible introduction to world history that takes geography as its lens and the Age of Exploration, which brought the world's great civilizations into contact, as its starting point. Following the routes opened by European sailors from the mid-to-late fifteenth century through the end of the seventeenth, the book uses topographic and nautical maps to offer concise introductions to the geography, climate, monsoons, and ocean currents of the regions along those routes. It also examines how these factors shaped the routes and the course of human history. The book also surveys the civilizations that drove the Age of Exploration and those affected by it, analyzing each civilization's distinctive traits and the geographical factors behind them. It explores the different choices civilizations made when confronted with outside influences, and the different fates that followed. By challenging familiar assumptions about social development, it offers a unique perspective on human history.