Geography
The Atlantic World comprises Europe, Africa, North America and South America.
Travel over land was difficult and expensive, so settlements were made along the coast, especially where rivers allowed small boats to travel inland. Distant settlements were linked by elaborate sea-based trading networks. Since the easiest and cheapest way of long-distance travel was by sea, international trading networks emerged in the Atlantic world, with major hubs at London, Amsterdam, Boston and Havana. Time was a factor, as sailing ships averaged about 2 knots speed (50 miles a day). Navigators had to rely on maps of currents or they would be becalmed for days or weeks. One major goal for centuries was finding a Northwest Passage (through what is now Canada) from Europe to Asia.
Read more about this topic: Atlantic World
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“The California fever is not likely to take us off.... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of the pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“At present cats have more purchasing power and influence than the poor of this planet. Accidents of geography and colonial history should no longer determine who gets the fish.”
—Derek Wall (b. 1965)
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)