By 1800, after three centuries of extraordinary and at times violent explorations driven by a complex mixture of capitalism, Christianity, and conquest, Europeans had produced fairly complete maps of the coastal outlines of the globe and brought back to their capital cities elaborate accounts of, and specimens by the shipload from, what they saw as a New World. In so doing, they had radically changed the form and content of all the major sciences in Europe. Whereas in 1500 a botanical book might list hundreds of different species, by 1800 there were tens of thousands recorded and no end in sight; and whereas in 1500 a geographer might be able to sketch out portions of the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia with wildly varying degrees of accuracy, by 1800 he could precisely map those continents as well as Australia and the Americas and myriad islands in between.