Hoping to explore the world from the comfort of home? UBC Library now has online access to the Oxford Companion to World Exploration.
This book examines the lives and expeditions of heroic and influential explorers including Lewis and Clark, Ferdinand Magellan, Cheng Ho, Hernan Cortes, Ibn Battuta, Vitus Bering, and Christopher Columbus. National expeditions, including Portuguese, British, French, Chinese, Dutch, and Spanish are covered, as are navigational and marine sciences, such as navigational techniques, ocean currents and winds, longitude, cartography, and aerial surveys. The temporal scope ranges ranges from the ancient cultures of Egypt, Persia, Greece, Byzantium, China, Polynesia, and Rome, through to modern space exploration.
Sample entries:
– Mary and Louis Leakey
– Archaeology and “Discoveries” Sites
– Arctic, with 3 sub-entries on Early Knowledge; Nineteenth-Century Images; and Russian Arctic
– Central and South America, with 6 sub-entries on Colonies and Empires; Conquests and Colonization; Scientific Inquiry; Trade and Trade Goods; Trade Routes; and Utopian Quests
– Medical Aspects of Exploration