Everything about The Age Of Discovery totally explained
The
Age of Discovery or
Age of Exploration was a period from the early
15th century and continuing into the early
17th century, during which
Europeans explored the world by ocean searching for trading partners and particular trade goods. The most desired trading goods were
gold,
silver and
spices. Western Europeans used these technologies to seek a viable trade route to Asia which would be uncontested by Mediterranean powers. In terms of shipping the most important developments were the creation of the
carrack and
caravel designs in
Portugal. These vessels evolved from
medieval European designs from the North Sea and both the Christian and Islamic Mediterraenan. They were the first ships that could leave the relatively placid and calm
Mediterranean,
Baltic or
North Sea and sail safely on the open
Atlantic.
Exploration by Land
The prelude to the Age of Exploration was a series of European expeditions crossing
Eurasia by land in the late
Middle Ages. While the
Mongols had threatened Europe with pillage and destruction, the Mongol states also unified much of Eurasia creating trade routes and communication lines stretching from the Middle East to China. A series of Europeans took advantage of these to explore eastwards. These were almost all Italians as the trade between Europe and the Middle East was almost completely controlled by traders from the Italian city states. The close Italian links to the
Levant created great curiosity and commercial interest in countries which lay further east. The
Papacy also launched expeditions in hopes of finding converts, or the fabled
Prester John.There were many different types of causes and effects on the Age Of Exploration.
The first of these travelers was
Giovanni de Plano Carpini who journeyed to
Mongolia and back from 1241–1247. The most famous traveler, however, was
Marco Polo who wrote of journeys throughout Asia from 1271 to 1295 in which he described being a guest at the
Yuan Dynasty court of
Kublai Khan. His journey was written up as
Travels and the work was read throughout Europe. In 1439,
Niccolò Da Conti published an account of his travels to India and Southeast Asia. In 1466-1472, a Russian merchant
Afanasy Nikitin of
Tver described travels to
India in his book
A Journey Beyond the Three Seas.
These journeys had little immediate effect. The Mongol Empire collapsed almost as quickly as it formed and soon the route to the east became far more difficult and dangerous. The
Black Death of the fourteenth century also blocked travel and trade. The land route to the East was controlled by Mediterranean commercial interests and Islamic empires that both controlled the flow and price of goods. The rise of the aggressive and expansionist
Ottoman Empire further limited the possibilities of European overland trade.
Exploration begins in Portugal
It wasn't until the
carrack and then the
caravel were developed in
Iberia that Western Europeans seriously considered Asiatic trade and oceanic exploration.
Monetarists believe the main reason the Age of Exploration began was because of a severe shortage of
bullion in Europe. The European economy was dependent on gold and silver currency, but low domestic supplies had plunged much of Europe into a recession. Another factor was Christian European access to the silk trade. The
eastern trade routes were controlled by the
Ottoman Empire after the
Turks took control of
Constantinople in 1453, and they barred Europeans from those trade routes.
The first great wave of expeditions was launched by
Portugal under Prince
Henry the Navigator. Sailing into the open Atlantic the
Madeira Islands were discovered in 1419, and in 1427 the
Azores, they then became Portugeuse colonies. The main project of Henry the Navigator was exploration of the West Coast of
Africa. For centuries the only trade routes linking
West Africa with the Mediterranean world were over the
Sahara Desert. These routes bringing
slaves and gold were controlled by the Muslim states of North Africa, long rivals to Portugal and Spain. The Portuguese monarchy hoped that the Islamic nations could be bypassed by trading directly with West Africa by sea. It was also hoped that south of the Sahara the states would be
Christian and potential allies against the Muslims in the
Maghreb. In 1434 the Portuguese explorers surmounted the obstacle of
Cape Bojador . In the
bull Romanus Pontifex the trade monopoly for newly discovered countries beyond Cape Bojador was granted to the Portuguese.
Within two decades, the barrier of the Sahara had been overcome and trade in slaves and gold began in what is today
Senegal. A trading fort was built at
Elmina.
São Tomé e Príncipe became the first
sugar producing colony. In 1482 an expedition under
Diogo Cão made contact with the
Kingdom of Kongo. The crucial breakthrough was in 1487 when
Bartolomeu Dias rounded (and later named) the
Cape of Good Hope and proved that access to the
Indian Ocean was possible from the Atlantic. In 1498
Vasco da Gama made good on this promise by reaching India.
A New World?
Portugal's rival
Castile had been somewhat slower than its neighbour to begin exploring the Atlantic, and it wasn't until late in the fifteenth century that Castilian sailors began to compete with their Iberian neighbours. The first contest was for control of the
Canary Islands, which Castile won. It wasn't until the union of
Aragon and Castile and the completion of the
reconquista that the large nation became fully committed to looking for new trade routes and colonies overseas. In 1492 the joint rulers of the nation conquered the
Moorish kingdom of Granada, that had been providing Castile with African goods through tribute, and they decided to fund
Christopher Columbus' expedition that they hoped would bypass Portugal's lock on Africa and the Indian Ocean reaching Asia by travelling west.
Columbus didn't reach Asia, but rather found what was to the Europeans a
New World:
America. In 1500, the Portuguese navigator,
Pedro Álvares Cabral explored the land that's today called
Brazil. For the two European monarchies a division of influence became necessary to avoid conflict. This was resolved by Papal intervention in 1494 when the
Treaty of Tordesillas divided the world between the two powers. The Portuguese "received" everything outside of Europe east of a line that ran 270
leagues west of the
Cape Verde islands; this gave them control over Africa, Asia and eastern South America (Brazil). The Spanish received everything west of this line, territory that was still almost completely unknown, and proved to be mostly the western part of the American continent plus the
Pacific Ocean islands.
Columbus and other Spanish explorers were initially disappointed with their discoveries - unlike Africa or Asia the Caribbean islanders had little to trade with the Spanish ships. The islands thus became the focus of colonization efforts. It wasn't until the continent itself was explored that Spain found the wealth it had sought in the form of abundant gold. In the Americas the Spanish found a number of empires that were as large and populous as those in Europe. However, small bodies of Spanish
conquistadors, with large armies of indigenous Americans groups, managed to conquer these states. The most notable amongst the conquered states were the
Aztec empire in
Mexico (conquered in 1521) and the
Inca empire in modern
Peru and
Ecuador (conquered in 1532). During this time,
pandemics of European disease such as smallpox devastated the indigenous populations. Once Spanish sovereignty was established, the Spanish focused on the extraction and export of gold and silver.
In 1519 the Spanish crown funded the expedition of the Portuguese navigator
Ferdinand Magellan. The goal of the mission was to find the
Spice Islands by traveling west, which would place the islands in Spain's economic and political sphere. The expedition managed to cross the Pacific Ocean and reach the Spice Islands, and was the first to
circumnavigate the world upon its return three years later. Magellan died in the Pacific, leaving the Spaniard
Juan Sebastián Elcano the task of completing the voyage. The expedition was a failure in the sense that its route was impractical. The Strait of Magellan was too far south and the Pacific Ocean too vast. It wasn't a realistic alternative to the Portuguese route around Africa. The Spanish were able to establish a presence in the Pacific, but not based on Magellan's voyage. Rather, a cross-Pacific route was established, by other explorers, between Mexico and the
Philippines. The eastbound route to the Philippines first sailed by Alvaro de Saavedra in 1527. The westbound return route was harder to find, but was eventually discovered by
Andrés de Urdaneta in 1565. For a long time these routes were used by the
Manila galleons, thereby creating a trade link joining China, the Americas, and Europe via the trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic routes.
Decline of the Portuguese monopoly
Portuguese exploration and colonization continued despite the new rivalry with Spain. The Portuguese became the first Westerners to reach and trade with
Japan. Under the King
Manuel I the Portuguese crown launched a scheme to keep control of the lands and trade routes that had been declared theirs. The strategy was to build a series of forts that would allow them to control all the major trade routes of the east. Thus forts and colonies were established on the
Gold Coast,
Luanda,
Mozambique,
Zanzibar,
Mombassa,
Socotra,
Ormuz,
Calcutta,
Goa,
Bombay,
Malacca,
Macau, and
Timor.
Portugal had difficulty expanding its empire inland and concentrated mostly on the coastal areas. Over time the Portuguese state proved to simply be too small to provide the funds and manpower sufficient to manage and defend such a massive and dispersed venture. The forts spread across the world were chronically undermanned and ill-equipped. They couldn't compete with the larger powers that slowly encroached on its empire and trade. The days of near monopoly of east trade were numbered. In
1580 the Spanish King Philip II became also King of Portugal, as rightful heir to the Crown after his cousin Sebastião died without sons (Philip II of Spain was grandson of Manuel I of Portugal). The combined empires were simply too big to go unchallenged. The Dutch, French and English explorers ignored the
Papal division of the world. The principle of a free seafaring trade was justified in the concept of
Mare Liberum by the Dutch
jurist Hugo Grotius whose practical application of the principles of international law drew on the work of Spanish theorists such as
Fernando Vazquez and the
School of Salamanca. During the
17th century as the Dutch, English and French established ever more trading posts in the east, at the expense of Portugal, the wealth gained added to their military might while Portugal's weakened as it lost trading posts and colonies in West Africa, the Middle East and the Far East.
Bombay was given away to the English as a marriage gift. Some, like Macau,
East Timor, Goa,
Angola, and Mozambique, as well as Brazil, remained in Portuguese possession. The Dutch attempted to conquer Brazil, and at one time controlled almost half of the occupied territory, but were eventually defeated.
Northern European involvement
The nations outside of Iberia refused to acknowledge the Treaty of Tordesillas.
France, the
Netherlands, and
England each had a long maritime tradition and, despite Iberian protections, the new technologies and maps soon made their way north.
The first Northern European mission (1497) was that of the English expedition led by the Italian,
John Cabot (
Giovanni Caboto). It was the first of a series of French and English missions exploring
North America. Spain put limited efforts into exploring the northern part of the Americas as its resources were fully stretched by its efforts in Central and South America where more wealth had been found. In 1525,
Giovanni da Verrazzano became the first recorded European to visit the East Coast of the present-day
United States. The expeditions of Cabot,
Jacques Cartier (first voyage 1534) and others were mainly hoping to find an oceanic
Northwest Passage to Asian trade. This was never discovered, but in their travels other possibilities were found and in the early seventeenth century colonists from a number of Northern European states began to settle on the east coast of North America.
It was the Northern Europeans who also became the great rivals to the Portuguese in Africa and around the Indian Ocean. The Dutch, French, and English sent ships which flouted the Portuguese monopoly. They also founded trading forts and colonies of their own. Gradually the Portuguese and Spanish market share declined. The Northern Europeans also took the lead in exploring the last unknown regions of the Pacific Ocean and the North-American west coast. Dutch explorers such as
Willem Jansz and
Abel Tasman explored the coasts of
Australia while in the eighteenth century it was English explorer
James Cook who mapped much of
Polynesia. Cook travelled as far as Alaska, leaving his mark with place names on
Bristol Bay and Turnagain Arm in
Alaska.
End of the Age of Exploration
The Age of Exploration is generally said to have ended in the early seventeenth century. By this time European vessels were sufficiently well built and their navigators competent enough to travel to virtually anywhere on the planet by sea. European naval exploration continued. The east coast of Australia was first explored in 1770. Arctic and Antarctic seas were not explored until the
19th century. It took much longer for Europeans to explore the interiors of continents. Africa's deep interior wasn't explored by Europeans until the mid to late 19th and early 20th centuries, due to a lack of trade potential in this region, and to serious problems with contagious
tropical diseases in sub-Saharan Africa.
Impact of the Age of Exploration on non-European powers
The voracious European appetite for trade, commodities, empire and slaves greatly affected many other areas of the world. Spain participated in the destruction of wealthy oppressive empires in America, only to substitute their own brutal rule. New religions were forced onto people, as were new languages, sexual and political cultures. In areas of the Americas where states didn't exist, but the land was perceived by Europeans to be desirable; Europeans ethnically cleansed the local inhabitants, traded with their new neighbours, and set off economic changes which impacted deep within the continent.
Similarly, in coastal Africa, local states supplied the appetite of European slave traders, changing the complexion of coastal African states and fundamentally altering the nature of African slavery, causing impacts on societies and economies deep inland.
Economic and cultural impacts of the Age of Exploration on European powers
As a wider variety of global luxury commodities entered the European markets by sea, previous European markets for luxury goods stagnated. The Atlantic trade largely supplanted pre-existing Italian and German trading powers which had relied on their Baltic, Russian and Islamic trade links. The new commodities also caused social change, as sugar, spices, silks and chinawares entered the luxury markets of Europe. Additionally, the increase in wealth experienced by Spain coincided with a major inflationary cycle, both within Spain and within Europe generally.
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