>I would say the world grew substantially
I suppose it is the way you look at it, grew in one way, shrank in another.
At one time if you lived in Europe then other parts of the world (the Americas, India, the East such as China etc), seemed a long way away, almost too far for the "ordinairy" person to ever get to.
Then explorers discoverd various routes and all of a sudden those place did not seem so remote and distant, and ordinairy people could get a boat there, so it that sense the world shrunk.
It is a bit like today, when we can hop on a plane and get almost anywhere in the world in less than 24 hours, people say the world has shrunk when of course it hasn't.