Archangel, To Which There Had Previously Resorted
Annually Upwards Of One Hundred Ships From England, Holland, Hamburgh, &C.
Declined; And Early In The Eighteenth Century Petersburgh, Then Scarcely
Ten Years Old, Beheld Itself A Commercial City Of Great Importance.
Having now brought the historical sketch of the progress of discovery and
of commercial enterprise down to the commencement of the eighteenth
century, it will be necessary, as well as proper, to contract the scale on
which the remainder of this volume is to be constructed.
For, during nearly
the whole of the period which intervenes between the commencement of the
eighteenth century and the present time, the materials are either so
abundant or so minute, that to insert them all without discrimination and
selection, would be to give bulk, without corresponding interest and value,
to the work.
So far as discovery is concerned, it is evident, from the sketch of it
already given, that nearly the entire outline of the globe had been traced
before the period at which we are arrived: what remained was to fill up
this outline. In Asia, to gain a more complete knowledge of Hither and
Farther India, of China, of the countries to the north of Hindostan, of the
north and north-east of Asia, and of some of the Asiatic islands. In
Africa, little besides the shores were known; but the nature of the
interior, with its burning sands and climate, uninhabitable, or inhabited
by inhospitable and barbarous tribes, held out little expectation that
another century would add much to our knowledge of that quarter of the
world; and though the perseverance and enterprise of the eighteenth
century, and what has passed of the nineteenth, have done more than might
reasonably have been anticipated, yet, comparatively speaking, how little
do we yet know of Africa! America held out the most promising as well as
extensive views to future discovery; the form and direction of her
north-west coast was to be traced. In South America, the Spaniards had
already gained a considerable knowledge of the countries lying between the
Atlantic and the Pacific, but in North America, the British colonists had
penetrated to a very short distance from the shores on which they were
first settled; and from their most western habitations to the Pacific, the
country was almost entirely unknown.
The immense extent of the Pacific Ocean, which presented to navigators at
the beginning of the eighteenth century but few islands, seemed to promise
a more abundant harvest to repeated and more minute examination, and this
promise has been fulfilled. New Holland, however, was the only portion of
the world of great extent which could be said to be almost entirely unknown
at the beginning of the eighteenth century; and the completion of our
knowledge of its form and extent may justly be regarded as one of the
greatest and most important occurrences to geography contributed by the
eighteenth century.
The truth and justice of these observations will, we trust, convince our
readers, that, in determining to be more general and concise in what
remains of the geographical portion of our works, we shall not be
destroying its consistency or altering the nature of its plan, but in fact
preserving both; for its great object and design was to trace geographical
knowledge from its infancy till it had reached that maturity and vigour, by
which, in connection with the corresponding increased civilization, general
information and commerce of the world, it was able to advance with rapid
strides, and no longer confining itself to geography, strictly so called,
to embrace the natural history of those countries, the existence, extent,
and form of which it had first ascertained.
The great object and design of the commercial part of this work was
similar; to trace the progress of commercial enterprises from the rudest
ages of mankind, the changes and transfers it had undergone from one
country to another, the causes and effects of these, as well as of its
general gradual increase, till, having the whole of Europe under its
influence, and aided by that knowledge and civilization with which it had
mainly contributed to bless Europe, it had gained its maturity and vigour,
and by its own expansive force pushed itself into every part of the globe,
in which there existed any thing to attract it.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, commerce had not indeed assumed
those features, or reached that form and dimensions by which it was
distinguished at the end of this century; but as its dimensions gradually
enlarge, it will be necessary to be less particular and more condensed.
Our plan indeed of being more minute in the early history of geographical
science and commercial enterprise, is founded on an obvious as well as a
just and important principle. In the infancy of geography and commerce,
every fact is important, as reflecting light on the knowledge and state of
mankind at that period, and as bearing on and conducing to their future
progress; whereas when geography and commerce have been carried so far as
to proceed in their course as it were by their own internal impulse,
derived from the motion they have been acquiring for ages, their interest
and importance is much diminished from this cause, as well as from the
minuteness of the objects to which, - all the great ones having been
previously occupied by them, - they must necessarily be confined.
Several circumstances co-operated to direct geographical discovery, during
the eighteenth century, principally towards the north and north-east of
Asia, and the north-west of America. The tendency and interest of the
Russian empire to stretch itself to the east, and the hope still cherished
by the more commercial and maritime nations of Europe, that a passage to
the East Indies might be discovered, either by the north-east round Asia,
or by the north-west, in the direction of Hudson's Bay, were among the most
powerful of the causes which directed discovery towards those parts of the
globe to which we have just alluded.
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