Università Roma Tre

Exploration and geographical knowledge from ancient to modern
The concepts of geographic horizon and geographical discovery. Travel and Geography in ancient and medieval times. The medieval nautical cartography. The maritime republics. Spain and Portugal from the Middle Ages and Modern Age. The Portuguese on the route to India. Great geographical discoveries: premises and consequences. The seventeenth century. The Illuminismo. The “construction” of geographical science in the nineteenth century. The modern exploration. The history of discovery and its exploitation. The Geography and contemporary society.

Ilaria Luzzana Caraci, Al di là di altrove, Milano Mursia, 2009;
Historical Atlas.

The Great geographical exploration and the beginning of modernity
The discovery of the New World was the result of a complex series of drives and motivations of political, economic, cultural and religious. Its premises are located in the transformation of European societies in the fifteenth century, particularly in commercial areas of Italy and the Iberian Peninsula. The sum of these factors produced a thrust expansion into the East Indies and West over several decades that changed the framework of geographical knowledge. European civilization came into contact with human and geographical realities unknown, difficult to understand and explain cultural patterns so common and accepted.

Francesco Surdich, Verso i mari del Sud. L’esplorazione del Pacifico centrale e meridionale da Magellano a Malaspina, Roma, Aracne, 2015