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Something very important to remember: It wasn't all that long ago that maps had areas marked "here there be dragons." Nor was it all that long ago that travel from Europe to the Americas took months, few people ever went more than half a day's walk from their home town, and information moved at the speed of a horse. Look at the time the Crusades took to get from various parts of Europe to Jerusalem (even leaving out side trips to sack Byzantium). An island as small as England had strong nobles because information and orders took so long to go to and from the borders.
And that's with a planet that's mostly water. Reduce the water (or just arrange things to remove some significant deserts) and you can double the land area.
Incidentally, I would strongly recommend reading Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel". Not only is it a phenomenally good book, but it explains a lot about how civilizations grow and spread, and how things like available food plants and animals, climactic zones, etc., influence them. And it's a really good book. It's a ton of fun to read. I would consider it mandatory reading for a speculative fiction writer.
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