xiii Introduction The Significance of Exploration The eastern coast of North America surprised European explorers when they reached it in 1497. John Cabot and those who followed him in the 16th century had hoped to find Marco Polo’s Cipango (modern Japan) or his treasure-laden city of Cathay. Instead, Europeans found strange and wonderful people and wild land that stretched on as far as the dense forest would allow the eye to see. Before Europeans visited and reported back on their discoveries, eastern North America was not widely known or even imagined by Europeans. The Indige­ nous people who lived in North America, of course, shared the same bewilderment when meeting Europeans for the first time. They too could not conceive of a continent beyond their own or of people so pale and hairy as Europeans. This all changed in the years following the discovery by Christopher Columbus that land lay far to the west of Europe, land that was not China but something else entirely. There followed a long period of conquest, commerce, and colonization, which was based on the findings of explorers who reconnoitered the lay of the land, its inhabitants, and its flora, fauna, and other natural resources. The exploration of eastern North America was thus the foundation of the Atlantic world that was created as flows of people, goods, and information grew across the ocean. Exploration was intimately linked with the story of conquest, commerce, and colonization. This explains in large part why different European nations settled where they did and, conversely, did not push into other areas. Explorers were also at the vanguard of the Columbian exchange—that Exploring Unpublished Manuscripts This book includes a number of documents that only exist as unpublished manuscripts stored in archives. Access to these unique handwritten documents is only possible in person unless they have been microfilmed or digitized. References to archival material are different from book citations, as archive collections are themselves different. References express a set of hierarchical relationships that identify specific documents uniquely within the context of the file and the collection in which they are stored. Thus, the reference for Document 93 in the chapter on Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres is ADM 1/482/452–5, which refers to, in increasing degrees of specificity, the papers of the Admiralty and naval forces of the United Kingdom and its predecessors, the in- coming correspondence of the Admiralty itself, a particular file of correspondence from commanding officers in North America in the 1750s and 1760s, and a particular letter that comprises folios 452 to 455.
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