During the early modern period, regional specified compendia - which combine information on local moral and natural history, towns and fortifications with historiography, antiquarianism, images series or maps - gain a new agency in the production of knowledge. At the core of the publication are compendia on the Americas which research has described as chorographies, encyclopeadias or - more recently - 'cultural encyclopaedias'. Studies on Asian and European encyclopeadias, universal histories and chorographies help to contextualize the American examples in the broader field of an early modern and transcultural knowledge production, which inherits and modifies the ancient and medieval tradition.