Encyclopedia of Exploration Vol I: review (click here to return to list of reviews)

New Zealand Map Society: newsletter Datum Issue No.18 April 2003
Article reproduced here with their kind permission

Review by Brian Marshall

This big book is a comprehensive reference guide to the history and literature of exploration, travel and colonization from the earliest times to the year 1800. It is intended as a catalogue of expeditions, voyages and travels, rather than a biographical dictionary of the travelers themselves, and Howgego points out that for many early travellers the biographical information is often non-existent anyway.
Arrangement in general is alphabetical, by the name of the traveller. Each entry has an entry number, and an indication (in one or two words) of where the traveller was travelling. Brief biographical text follows, along with an account of the explorations made, and a bibliography of works by and about the traveller. If the traveller made more than one journey, there will be more than one entry. Herman Cortes, the Spanish conquistador and conqueror of Mexico, for example, has four entries: for his visits to Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti) and Cuba between 1506 and 1511, to Mexico between 1518 and 1522, to Guatemala and Honduras from 1524 to 1526, and finally to Baja California and Mexico in 1535-1536. These entries are followed by a comprehensive bibliography relating to the conquest of Mexico, which itself is divided into two parts. Part 1 details primary sources, contemporary documents, and early works, while Part 2 lists later works and general commentaries.
There are five entries for James Cook. The first includes some biographical background, and his visit to Newfoundland and other parts of Canada between 1757 and 1767. Other entries relate to his circumnavigation and exploration of Australia and the eastern Pacific 1768-1771, his 1772-1775 circumnavigation and exploration of the Pacific and Southern Oceans, and his 1776-1779 explorations of the northwest of North America, Hawaii and the Pacific. Each entry has its own list of references, and the final Cook entry is a bibliography of the third voyage and his life in general. This bibliography lists nearly 50 publications which appeared before 1800, and a select list of 69 general works and commentaries. I looked in vain for John Robson's Captain Cook's World, maps of the life and voyages of James Cook, R.N., published in 2000.
Entries are factual, and no attempt is made to judge the value of any expedition or the scale of importance of any particular explorer or journey.
Because there is often more than one entry for any particular explorer, the reader needs to be aware that the entry he/she has found for a person might not be the first or only one.
Interspersed with the entries for people are entries for particular topics. These include Anglican missionaries in India, Australia - early voyages and Australia - bibliography of early voyages, British travelers of the 18th century (a selection of travellers and navigators about whom very little is known except through their published narratives), Carthaginians in the Azores, Compagnie des Indies (the French East India Company), Cossack expansion into Siberia, Cossacks on the Taymyr Peninsula, Dominican missionaries in Thailand from 1567, and so on. While these are both useful and interesting, they are difficult to find, and a listing of these entries would be helpful. There are also entries for shipwrecks (which often led to inadvertent journeys of discovery as sailors found their way back to "civilization"). There is an index of ships at the back of this encyclopedia.
It is not easy to locate the names of explorers of a particular locality, if you do not already know the names. If the question is asked: "Who explored or visited New Zealand before 1800?", this encyclopedia is of limited help. It lacks a geographical (place name) index. As each entry includes a brief two-three word description of where the explorer went, it should have been possible to generate a listing from these. (Entries exist for the following contributors to the exploration of New Zealand: Maui (and Kupe), Tasman, Cook, Surville, Entrecasteaux, Malaspina and Vancouver, but there is no entry for Marian du Fresne and his unfortunate visit in 1772).
My own interest in exploration is directed towards the European exploration of Arabia, in particular Oman and the southeastern Arabian Peninsula. I compiled (and had published) a listing of explorers in this part of the world from 1792 to 1950, in a format not dissimilar to the one in this encyclopedia. I am aware of the amount of work that went into my listing, and the work involved to compile Howgego's listing is mind boggling. What he has produced is an awesome amount of information, of a nature that is often very elusive and difficult to track down and confirm for accuracy. His information is arranged into 2327 major articles, and an index that includes over 7500 names of persons and ships noted in the text. Each article contains a bibliography of primary and secondary texts, and there are almost 20,000 bibliographical citations accompanying the various articles.
The headings used for each article are clear, the use of double columns of text is effective, and the print is both pleasing and easy to read. The volume is sturdily bound. The cost of the book is $Australian 295, which represents good value for money.
There is a dedicated website (/www.explorersencyclopedia.com/), where readers can submit corrections and/or additions to this volume. Once moderated by the author, these will be freely available on the site. A further volume is in the pipeline, covering the period from 1800 to 1850.
Highly recommended.