Yeah, I hate it when someone takes data someone else has curated in their native tongue and then makes nifty visualizations with it. Clearly, he should have gone and tracked down, translated, cleaned and digitized the relevant shipping logs from China, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, India and Russia and whomever else before compiling and releasing any visualization. What a racist white nerd.

I don't think so, Portuguese and Spanish data seems to be almost removed from it, it cherry picks the age of sail past 1750 when the African Cape of Good Hope had been passed around 1448. Brasil, South America and India first endeavours don't even show up. Either the authors had restricted data sets or this is simply a partial representation that is clueless of the age of sail it wants to portray.