During the early modern centuries, when Europeans were experiencing the Renaissance and the Reformation and their long aftermath of traumatic conflict, some nations took part in a remarkable expansion that carried European sailors, merchants, missionaries, settlers, and adventurers to almost every quarter known world” meaning known to them— of the globe. What Westerners called “the spread outward at a breathtaking pace.
In the age of Homer the known world of the West had encompassed little more than the eastern Mediterranean and its fringes; under Alexander the Great and the Romans it was still centered on the Mediterranean and the western fringes of Asia, with much of the interior of Europe and Africa hazy or blank. Then the explorations of the late Middle Ages launched a continuous process that culminated in rapid advances in Western geographical knowledge.
