Exploration has been a common literary topic throughout the history of humans. However, much of this historical tradition bas possessed a fairly narrow Ill focus, emphasizing the drama and heroics of an individual explorer or concentrating on a description of a particular exploration. There has been little attempt at understanding the process of exploration and placing this important process in context with the historic and geographic phenomena that both affect and are affected by it. In this thesis, the author has broken the process of exploration down into a theoretical structure that is presented in a holistic model. This model has then been applied to the history of 15th century Portuguese exploration to test its applicability and usefulness
