Discuss the nature and significance of modern geographical discoveries and colonisation.
Answers
Discoveries associated with new geographic objects predominated in the earlyphases of the development of geography. A particularly important role was attached to discoveries of previously unknownland areas (territorial discoveries). With the development of geography as a science, discoveries that help explain geographiclaws and deepen the knowledge of the nature of geographic phenomena and their interrelationships continue to acquire evergreater importance.
Territorial discoveries are closely associated with the general process of social development. Their preconditions, stimuli, andhistorical consequences are, in the final analysis, determined by the mode of production of material wealth and by specificeconomic and political circumstances. The sociohistorical role of territorial discoveries differs at various stages in society’sdevelopment.
The rudiments of geographic knowledge appeared as far back as primitive society and were reflected in legends and primitivedrawings, or “maps.” Among the peoples of antiquity who had achieved a certain cultural level, geographic outlooksdeveloped to the point where each group of people envisioned itself as living in the center of the inhabited world. In latertimes, the first scientific notions about the sphericity of the earth were also conceived, but they were not yet closelyassociated with the development of territorial discoveries, which were limited by certain regional boundaries beyond which,according to traditions, the habitable world came to an end (for example, the oecumene of the ancient Greeks).
One of the principle goals of government and colonialism was to abuse the settlements and their tenants to produce financial riches for the motherland and her enterprises. Therefore, extensive quantities of individuals were constrained into bondage or the arrangement of contracted workers, and huge ranges of regular living spaces were cleared and changed over to monocultural manors.
After the colonies picked up freedom, the recently independent nationals uncritically grasped a large portion of the negative esteems and have enthusiastically proceeded with the acts of their initial pilgrim aces.
Accordingly, in the previous settlements, the earth, particularly regular natural surroundings and their species, is being obliterated at a scale that is extraordinary ever.