Explorers

Explorers, travelers to places previously uninvestigated by the culture from which they came. Explorers had one or more of several motives: scientific curiosity, economic gain, religious conversion, or political domination.

For information on:

• first person to circumnavigate the globe, see Ferdinand Magellan
• some leading explorers of Africa, see Sir Samuel White Baker; Heinrich Barth; James Bruce; David Livingstone; Mungo Park; John Hanning Speke; Sir Henry Morton Stanley
• other explorers of Africa, see Sir Richard Francis Burton; Verney Lovett Cameron; Hugh Clapperton; Paul Belloni Du Chaillu; Mehmed Emin Pasha; Sir Harry H. Johnston; Mary Henrietta Kingsley; Richard Lemon Lander; Frederick John Dealty Lugard, 1st Baron Lugard; May French Sheldon; Joseph Thomson
• earliest white explorers of the Americas, see Leif Eriksson; Christopher Columbus
• Spanish explorers of the Americas, see Hernando de Alarcón; Diego de Almagro; Pedro de Alvarado; Vasco Núñez de Balboa; Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca; Francisco Vásquez de Coronado; Hernán Cortés; Hernando De Soto; Pánfilo de Narváez; Francisco de Orellana; Francisco Pizarro; Juan Ponce de León; Sebastián Vizcaíno; Juan de Oñate
• English explorers of the Americas, See Captain James Cook; Sir Francis Drake; Bartholomew Gosnold; Sir Walter Raleigh; George Vancouver
• French and Flemish explorers of the Americas, see Jean-Baptiste le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville; Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville; Étienne Brûlé; Jacques Cartier; Samuel de Champlain; Médard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers; Louis Hennepin; René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle; Pierre du Gua, sieur de Monts; Pierre Esprit Radisson
• explorers of the Americas from other nations, see Alexander Freiherr von Humboldt; Eusebio Francisco Kino; Henri de Tonty; Amerigo Vespucci; Estevanico; Pedro Álvares Cabral; John Cabot; Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo
• Americans who explored America, see James Bridger; William Clark; John Charles Frémont; Robert Gray; Meriwether Lewis; John Muir; Zebulon Montgomery Pike; John Wesley Powell; Henry Rowe Schoolcraft; Jedediah Strong Smith
• Canadian and French-Canadian explorers, see Sir Alexander Mackenzie; Peter Skene Ogden; David Thompson; John McLoughlin; Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d' Iberville; Louis Joliet
• Norwegian explorer of Greenland, see Erik the Red
• explorers of the Arctic, see Roald Amundsen; Robert Abram Bartlett; Vitus Jonassen Bering; Louise Arner Boyd; Frederick Albert Cook; George Washington De Long; Lincoln Ellsworth; Sir John Franklin; Adolphus Washington Greely; Charles Francis Hall; Matthew A. Henson; Elisha Kent Kane; Donald Baxter MacMillan; Fridtjof Nansen; Otto Gustav Nordenskjöld; Adolf Erik Nordenskjöld; Sir William Edward Parry; Robert Edwin Peary; John Rae; Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen; Sir George Hubert Wilkins
• Antarctic explorers, see Roald Amundsen; Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen; Richard Evelyn Byrd; Lincoln Ellsworth; Sir Vivian Ernest Fuchs; Sir Edmund Percival Hillary; Sir Douglas Mawson; Otto Gustav Nordenskjöld; Robert Falcon Scott; Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton; Sir George Hubert Wilkins
• explorers of Asia and the Indian subcontinent, see João de Castro; Vasco da Gama; Ellsworth Huntington; Sir Aurel Stein
• explorers of Australia, see John Forrest, 1st Baron Forrest; Charles Sturt; Abel Janszoon Tasman
• South Seas explorers, see Captain James Cook; Antoine Raymond Joseph de Bruni, Chevalier d'Entrecasteaux

For more explorers, see the Related Articles module on this page.