Historical Geography and Exploration
How exploration, colonization, and historical migration reshaped the map of the world.
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How the earliest civilizations understood, mapped, and organized geographic space, from river-valley agriculture and Greek mathematical geography to the trade networks that first stitched the ancient world together.
A survey of the European voyages of discovery — Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, English, and French — that connected the world's continents by sea, transformed global trade and cartography, and brought catastrophic and lasting consequences for the peoples of the Americas and the Pacific.
How European colonial empires partitioned and administered the world from the late nineteenth century onward, and how the borders, infrastructure, and institutions they imposed continue to shape the political map today.
A survey of the overland and maritime networks that connected distant civilizations long before modern globalization, from the Silk Road and the Indian Ocean world to the Trans-Saharan gold trade and the Hanseatic League.
An exploration of the great human migrations that populated the continents, tracing the journey from early human dispersal out of Africa to the mass movements of the historical era.
A survey of how colonial territories became independent states across the twentieth century, and of the border disputes, artificial-state tensions, and economic-dependency patterns that followed decolonization.
How history's great trading cities rose to prominence because of their geographic position — river confluences, straits, oases, and harbors — and why some of them later declined.