ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that travel collections should be understood as a genre of historical writing. They are the result of humanist cultural and textual practices undertaken to make sense of an enlarged world. The focus is on Ramusio's Navigationi et viaggi being the prototype of this new historical genre, and the chapter contextualises genres as social practices involving collecting material about the world, understanding this as part of an effort to renew knowledge done to satisfy the curiosity of scholars and providing a valuable tool for princes and their advisors, as well as for merchants. Ramusio's innovating spatial organisation of the material was done to present readers with a totally new conception of the world. After discussing the geographical and historical knowledge-preserving project of Ramusio, the chapter looks at genre negotiations involved in the genre field to which the Navigationi et viaggi belongs, placing the compilation both on diachronic and synchronic timescales. The chapter concludes that, while conceptually solving the challenges posed by his time, Ramusio supplied his readers with a new social vision of an interconnected terraqueous globe, and in doing so, invented a new genre of historical writing, effectively becoming 'the first historian of the age of discovery'.
