Age of Discovery
During the Age of Discovery (a.k.a.the Age of Exploration, the Age of Reconnaissance or the Age of Contact), between the 15th and 18th centuries, seafarers from European countries explored,conqueted and colonised much of the rest of the globe.
Portuguese navigators began working their way down Africa's west coast around 1420. At that point, Europeans had some knowledge of a part of the globe that wasn't mch larger than the classic Greek oikoumene — a fraction of the planet's northern hemisphere.
What lay on the other side of the equator and the Atlantic Ocean or beyond China was unknown.
Around 250 years later, James Cook sailed along Australia's east coast, almost completing the outline of the continent. While there were still uncharted coasts in various out of the way locations Cook's expeditions eliminated the possibility of an undiscovered continent lurking somewhere in the South Pacific.
Historians have applied various labels to that quarter of a milennium that slots in between Europe's Middle Ages and 19th century Imperialism. None of them are entirely satisfactory to most quibblers over detail. Newfoundland wasn't actually newly found. Marco Polo's Cipangu — Japan — was known to lie beyond China, although no Eurpoean travellers are known to have arrived there.
Still, although none of them are entirely satisfactory, they provide a convenient shorthand description of the period that ended when James Cook sailed past my notional vantage point in a fictional version of my adopted home town.
