Exploration is not only curiosity. It becomes a political project. Empires fund voyages, surveys, and scholars because ignorance turns into strategic weakness.
Maps and measurements function as tools of control. To govern a place, it must be counted, named, and fitted into categories. Scientific expeditions often move alongside soldiers and merchants, each enabling the other.
The relationship runs both ways. Empires gain power from knowledge, and science gains resources, prestige, and access from empire. Laboratories and navies grow together; so do botanists and tax collectors.
The moral tension remains. “Progress” can disguise extraction, and “discovery” can soften brutality. Yet the engine keeps turning because knowledge pays. A measured world is easier to manage, exploit, and redesign.