In 1505 Giovanni Battista Ramusio became secretary to Alvise Mocenigo of Venice. This administrative position drew him into the diplomatic and mercantile networks of a maritime republic. Those networks later supplied the materials for his influential collection of voyages and travels.

Ramusio's career helped turn merchants' reports, sailors' memories and diplomatic papers into literary geography. His later compilations shaped European travel prose and gave writers new images of Africa, Asia and the Americas.