Sublime

This vast realm of geographical ignorance reduced European activity in the Outer World to an archipelago of settlements, mines and trading depots connected by a skein of pathways kept open only by constant effort.

On the larger stage of Eurasian or global economic competition, the maritime sector of the European economy, for all its success in developing the commodity trades across the Atlantic, and in finding customers among the expatriate Europeans in the Americas, was simply too small, too restricted in economic and demographic capacity, to aspire to