---
title: "History of geography"
chunk: 7/11
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geography"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:59:47.409771+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Early modern period ==

Following the journeys of Marco Polo, interest in geography spread throughout Europe. From around c. 1400, the writings of Ptolemy and his successors provided a systematic framework to tie together and portray geographical information. This framework was used by academics for centuries to come, the positives being the lead-up to the geographical enlightenment, however, women and indigenous writings were largely excluded from the discourse.
The European global conquests started in the early 15th century with the first Portuguese expeditions to Africa and India, as well as the conquest of America by Spain in 1492 and continued with a series of European naval expeditions across the Atlantic and later the Pacific and Russian expeditions to Siberia  until the 18th century.
European overseas expansion led to the rise of colonial empires, with the contact between the "Old" and "New World"s producing the Columbian Exchange: a wide transfer of plants, animals, foods, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases and culture between the continents.
These  colonialist endeavours in 16th and 17th centuries revived a desire for both "accurate" geographic detail, and more solid theoretical foundations. The Geographia Generalis by Bernhardus Varenius, which was used in Newton's teaching of geography at Cambridge, and Gerardus Mercator's world map are prime examples of the new breed of scientific geography.
The Waldseemüller map Universalis Cosmographia, created by German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in April 1507, is the first map of the Americas in which the name "America" is mentioned.
The Eurocentric map was patterned after a modification of Ptolemy's second projection but expanded to include the Americas. The Waldseemuller Map has been called "America's birth certificate" Waldseemüller also created printed maps called globe gores, that could be cut out and glued to spheres resulting in a globe.
This has been debated widely as being dismissive of the extensive Native American history that predated the 16th-century invasion, in the sense that the implication of a "birth certificate" implies a blank history prior.

=== 16th–18th centuries in the West ===