This book provides a fresh and accessible introduction to recent debates about European exploration's role in the making of the modern world. It challenges celebratory narratives of exploration, concentrating instead on its contribution to imperial and scientific agendas and its dependence on indigenous agents. Reinterpreting Exploration: The West in the World...marks an important moment in an ongoing reassessment of the European project of exploration. Looking simultaneously backwards and forwards - tracing the development of current research avenues and gesturing towards new lines of enquiry? - the book investigates the 'epistemological foundations' and 'ideological agendas' of expeditionary culture and the resulting encounters with non-European peoples and places around the globe. Since popular literature persists in writing the history of exploration as the story of heroic and individualistic pioneers, this book provides a much-needed antidote.... Kennedy's collection has commendable chronological length, regional breadth, and thematic depth.