SOURCE: An introduction to Dawn of Modern Geography: A History of Exploration and Geographical Science, Vol. III, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1906, pp. 1-14.

In the following excerpt, Beazley provides an overview of the surge in geographic exploration that occurred from the mid-thirteenth to the early years of the fifteenth century—providing context for Polo's explorations.

Our conquest of the world we live in has a long history; in that history there are many important epochs, eras in which a vital advance was made, wherein the whole course of events was modified; but among such epochs there are few of greater importance, of deeper suggestiveness, and of more permanent effect than the century and a half [1260-1420] in which we gradually embark upon the oceanic stage of our development. For, in relation to man's knowledge of the earth and his exploration of the same, it is now that...