Abstract
Between 1505 and 1508, Duarte Pacheco Pereira, a Portuguese soldier and explorer, wrote Esmeraldo de situ orbis, a book on “cosmography and seamanship,” one of the most important travel guides of its time. In addition to drawing up the known trade routes and borders in Africa and the East, Pereira also set out to chronicle the journeys undertaken. This article reviews Pereira’s book, proposing that the author offers political legitimation to the lands conquered while breaking with both the mediaeval religious maps and the traders’ maps of the Mediterranean Portolans to develop the first modern travel guides. He exposed the new world presented by the navigations that had been mapping new lands in Africa and Asia since the previous century.
Keywords
Portuguese expansion; Renaissance; travel routes; cosmography;
Esmeraldo de situ orbis