In this book Peter Whitfield concentrates on the intellectual context of exploration. How did explorers and their patrons understand their expanding world and their place in it? What were they really seeking, and how did they believe they could achieve it? How did they balance the known and the unknown in their minds? Historical maps are vitally important in answering these questions, and this book displays the geographical ideas of the explorers themselves, through the maps that they used or the new maps which they caused to be made.