causes of voyages of discovery

What Was the Age of Exploration?

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The Birth of the Age of Exploration

The discovery of the new world, opening the americas, the end of the era, contributions to science, long-term impact.

• M.A., Geography, California State University - East Bay
• B.A., English and Geography, California State University - Sacramento

The era known as the Age of Exploration, sometimes called the Age of Discovery, officially began in the early 15th century and lasted through the 17th century. The period is characterized as a time when Europeans began exploring the world by sea in search of new trading routes, wealth, and knowledge.

During this era, explorers learned more about areas such as Africa and the Americas and brought that knowledge back to Europe. Massive wealth accrued to European colonizers due to trade in goods, spices, and precious metals. Nevertheless, there were also vast consequences. Labor became increasingly important to support the massive plantations in the New World, leading to the trade of enslaved people, which lasted for 300 years and had an enormous impact on Africa and North America.

The impact of the Age of Exploration would permanently alter the world and transform geography into the modern science it is today.

Key Takeaways

• During the Age of Exploration, methods of navigation and mapping improved, switching from traditional portolan charts to the world's first nautical maps; the colonies and Europe also exchanged new food, plants, and animals. 
• The Age of Exploration also decimated indigenous communities due to the combined impact of disease, overwork, and massacres.
• The impact persists today, with many of the world's former colonies still considered the developing world, while colonizing countries are the First World countries, holding a majority of the world's wealth and annual income.

Many nations were looking for goods such as silver and gold, but one of the biggest reasons for exploration was the desire to find a new route for the spice and silk trades.

When the Ottoman Empire took control of Constantinople in 1453, it blocked European access to the area, severely limiting trade. In addition, it also blocked access to North Africa and the Red Sea, two very important trade routes to the Far East.

The first of the journeys associated with the Age of Discovery were conducted by the Portuguese. Although the Portuguese, Spanish, Italians, and others had been plying the Mediterranean for generations, most sailors kept well within sight of land or traveled known routes between ports.  Prince Henry the Navigator  changed that, encouraging explorers to sail beyond the mapped routes and discover new trade routes to West Africa.

Portuguese explorers discovered the Madeira Islands in 1419 and the Azores in 1427. Over the coming decades, they would push farther south along the African coast, reaching the coast of present-day Senegal by the 1440s and the Cape of Good Hope by 1490. Less than a decade later, in 1498, Vasco da Gama would follow this route to India.

While the Portuguese were opening new sea routes along Africa, the Spanish also dreamed of finding new trade routes to the Far East. Christopher Columbus , an Italian working for the Spanish monarchy, made his first journey in 1492. Instead of reaching India, Columbus found the island of San Salvador in what is known today as the Bahamas. He also explored the island of Hispaniola, home of modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Columbus would lead three more voyages to the Caribbean, exploring parts of Cuba and the Central American coast. The Portuguese also reached the New World when explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral explored Brazil, setting off a conflict between Spain and Portugal over the newly claimed lands. As a result, the  Treaty of Tordesillas  officially divided the world in half in 1494.

Columbus' journeys opened the door for the Spanish conquest of the Americas. During the next century, men such as Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro would decimate the Aztecs of Mexico, the Incas of Peru, and other indigenous peoples of the Americas. By the end of the Age of Exploration, Spain would rule from the Southwestern United States to the southernmost reaches of Chile and Argentina.

Great Britain and France also began seeking new trade routes and lands across the ocean. In 1497, John Cabot , an Italian explorer working for the English, reached what is believed to be the coast of Newfoundland. Many French and English explorers followed, including Giovanni da Verrazano, who discovered the entrance to the Hudson River in 1524, and Henry Hudson, who mapped the island of Manhattan first in 1609.

Over the next decades, the French, Dutch, and British would all vie for dominance. England established the first permanent colony in North America at Jamestown, Va., in 1607. Samuel du Champlain founded Quebec City in 1608, and Holland established a trading outpost in present-day New York City in 1624.

Other important voyages of exploration during this era included Ferdinand Magellan's attempted circumnavigation of the globe, the search for a trade route to Asia through the Northwest Passage , and Captain James Cook's voyages that allowed him to map various areas and travel as far as Alaska.

The Age of Exploration ended in the early 17th century after technological advancements and increased knowledge of the world allowed Europeans to travel easily across the globe by sea. The creation of permanent settlements and colonies created a network of communication and trade, therefore ending the need to search for new routes.

It is important to note that exploration did not cease entirely at this time. Eastern Australia was not officially claimed for Britain by Capt. James Cook until 1770, while much of the Arctic and Antarctic were not explored until the 20th century. Much of Africa also was unexplored by Westerners until the late 19th century and early 20th century.

The Age of Exploration had a significant impact on geography. By traveling to different regions around the globe, explorers were able to learn more about areas such as Africa and the Americas and bring that knowledge back to Europe.

Methods of navigation and mapping improved as a result of the travels of people such as Prince Henry the Navigator. Before his expeditions, navigators had used traditional portolan charts, which were based on coastlines and ports of call, keeping sailors close to shore.

The Spanish and Portuguese explorers who journeyed into the unknown created the world's first nautical maps, delineating not just the geography of the lands they found but also the seaward routes and ocean currents that led them there. As technology advanced and known territory expanded, maps and mapmaking became more and more sophisticated.

These explorations also introduced a whole new world of flora and fauna to Europeans. Corn, now a staple of much of the world's diet, was unknown to Westerners until the time of the Spanish conquest, as were sweet potatoes and peanuts. Likewise, Europeans had never seen turkeys, llamas, or squirrels before setting foot in the Americas.

The Age of Exploration served as a stepping stone for geographic knowledge. It allowed more people to see and study various areas around the world, which increased geographic study, giving us the basis for much of the knowledge we have today.

The effects of colonization persist as well, with many of the world's former colonies still considered the developing world and the colonizing nations the First World countries, which hold a majority of the world's wealth and receive a majority of its annual income.

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The Ages of Exploration

Age of discovery, age of discovery.

15th century to the early 17th century

The Age of Discovery refers to a period in European history in which several extensive overseas exploration journeys took place. Religion, scientific and cultural curiosity, economics, imperial dominance, and riches were all reasons behind this transformative age. The search for a westward trade route to Asia was one of the largest motivations for many of these voyages. Christopher Columbus’ voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492 lead to the discovery of a New World, and created a new surge in exploration and colonization. World maps changed as European powers such as England, France, Spain, the Dutch, and Portugal began claiming lands. But there were also negative effects to the Europeans’ arrival in the New World. Europeans encountered, and in many cases conquered and enslaved, native peoples of the new lands to which they traveled.

Advancements in ships, navigational instruments, and knowledge of world geography grew significantly. Vessels of the Age of Discovery continued to be built of wood and powered by sail or oar, and, on occasion, both. Medieval navigational tools such as the compass, kamal, astrolabe, cross-staff, and the mariner’s quadrant were still used but became replaced by more effective tools. Newer tools such as the mariner’s astrolabe, traverse board, and back staff soon provided better navigational support in determining longitude and latitude. These tools, along with improved maps enabled explorers to travel the vast oceans as never before. The Age of Discovery created a new period of global interaction, and began a new age of European colonialism that would intensify over the next several centuries.

• The Mariners' Educational Programs
• Bibliography

The Age of Enlightenment

The age of discovery, europe’s early trade links.

A prelude to the Age of Discovery was a series of European land expeditions across Eurasia in the late Middle Ages. These expeditions were undertaken by a number of explorers, including Marco Polo, who left behind a detailed and inspiring record of his travels across Asia.

Learning Objectives

Understand the exploration of Eurasia in the Middle Ages by Marco Polo, and why it was a prelude to the advent of the Age of Discovery in the 15th Century

Key Takeaways

• European medieval knowledge about Asia beyond the reach of Byzantine Empire was sourced in partial reports, often obscured by legends.
• In 1154, Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi created what would be known as the  Tabula Rogeriana — a description of the world and world map. It contains maps showing the Eurasian continent in its entirety, but only the northern part of the African continent. It remained the most accurate world map for the next three centuries.
• Indian Ocean trade routes were sailed by Arab traders. Between 1405 and 1421, the Yongle Emperor of Ming China sponsored a series of long range tributary missions. The fleets visited Arabia, East Africa, India, Maritime Southeast Asia, and Thailand.
• A series of European expeditions crossing Eurasia by land in the late Middle Ages marked a prelude to the Age of Discovery. Although the Mongols had threatened Europe with pillage and destruction, Mongol states also unified much of Eurasia and, from 1206 on, the Pax Mongolica  allowed safe trade routes and communication lines stretching from the Middle East to China.
• Christian embassies were sent as far as Karakorum during the Mongol invasions of Syria. The first of these travelers was Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, who journeyed to Mongolia and back from 1241 to 1247. Others traveled to various regions of Asia between 13th and the third quarter of the 15th centuries; these travelers included Russian Yaroslav of Vladimir and his sons Alexander Nevsky and Andrey II of Vladimir, French André de Longjumeau and Flemish William of Rubruck, Moroccan Ibn Battuta, and Italian Niccolò de’ Conti.
• Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, dictated an account of journeys throughout Asia from 1271 to 1295. Although he was not the first European to reach China, he was the first to leave a detailed chronicle of his experience. The book inspired Christopher Columbus and many other travelers in the following Age of Discovery.
• Tabula Rogeriana : A book containing a description of the world and world map created by the Arab geographer, Muhammad al-Idrisi, in 1154. Written in Arabic, it is divided into seven climate zones and contains maps showing the Eurasian continent in its entirety, but only the northern part of the African continent. The map is oriented with the North at the bottom. It remained the most accurate world map for the next three centuries.
• Pax Mongolica : A historiographical term, modeled after the original phrase Pax Romana, which describes the stabilizing effects of the conquests of the Mongol Empire on the social, cultural, and economic life of the inhabitants of the vast Eurasian territory that the Mongols conquered in the 13th and 14th centuries. The term is used to describe the eased communication and commerce that the unified administration helped to create, and the period of relative peace that followed the Mongols’ vast conquests.
• Maritime republics : City-states that flourished in Italy and across the Mediterranean. From the 10th to the 13th centuries, they built fleets of ships both for their own protection and to support extensive trade networks across the Mediterranean, giving them an essential role in the Crusades.

European medieval knowledge about Asia beyond the reach of Byzantine Empire was sourced in partial reports, often obscured by legends, dating back from the time of the conquests of Alexander the Great and his successors. In 1154, Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi created what would be known as the Tabula Rogeriana at the court of King Roger II of Sicily. The book, written in Arabic, is a description of the world and world map. It is divided into seven climate zones and contains maps showing the Eurasian continent in its entirety, but only the northern part of the African continent. It remained the most accurate world map for the next three centuries, but it also demonstrated that Africa was only partially known to either Christians, Genoese and Venetians, or the Arab seamen, and its southern extent was unknown. Knowledge about the Atlantic African coast was fragmented, and derived mainly from old Greek and Roman maps based on Carthaginian knowledge, including the time of Roman exploration of Mauritania. The Red Sea was barely known and only trade links with the Maritime republics, the Republic of Venice especially, fostered collection of accurate maritime knowledge.

Indian Ocean trade routes were sailed by Arab traders. Between 1405 and 1421, the Yongle Emperor of Ming China sponsored a series of long-range tributary missions. The fleets visited Arabia, East Africa, India, Maritime Southeast Asia, and Thailand. But the journeys, reported by Ma Huan, a Muslim voyager and translator, were halted abruptly after the emperor’s death, and were not followed up, as the Chinese Ming Dynasty retreated in the haijin , a policy of isolationism, having limited maritime trade.

Prelude to the Age of Discovery

A series of European expeditions crossing Eurasia by land in the late Middle Ages marked a prelude to the Age of Discovery. Although the Mongols had threatened Europe with pillage and destruction, Mongol states also unified much of Eurasia and, from 1206 on, the Pax Mongolica allowed safe trade routes and communication lines stretching from the Middle East to China. A series of Europeans took advantage of these in order to explore eastward. Most were Italians, as trade between Europe and the Middle East was controlled mainly by the Maritime republics.

Christian embassies were sent as far as Karakorum during the Mongol invasions of Syria, from which they gained a greater understanding of the world. The first of these travelers was Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, who journeyed to Mongolia and back from 1241 to 1247. About the same time, Russian prince Yaroslav of Vladimir, and subsequently his sons, Alexander Nevsky and Andrey II of Vladimir, traveled to the Mongolian capital. Though having strong political implications, their journeys left no detailed accounts. Other travelers followed, like French André de Longjumeau and Flemish William of Rubruck, who reached China through Central Asia. From 1325 to 1354, a Moroccan scholar from Tangier, Ibn Battuta, journeyed through North Africa, the Sahara desert, West Africa, Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, having reached China. In 1439, Niccolò de’ Conti published an account of his travels as a Muslim merchant to India and Southeast Asia and, later in 1466-1472, Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin of Tver travelled to India.

Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, dictated an account of journeys throughout Asia from 1271 to 1295. His travels are recorded in Book of the Marvels of the World , (also known as The Travels of Marco Polo , c. 1300), a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. Marco Polo was not the first European to reach China, but he was the first to leave a detailed chronicle of his experience. The book inspired Christopher Columbus and many other travelers.

The Travels of Marco Polo : Marco Polo traveling, miniature from the book The Travels of Marco Polo ( Il milione ), originally published during Polo’s lifetime (c. 1254-January 8, 1324), but frequently reprinted and translated.

The geographical exploration of the late Middle Ages eventually led to what today is known as the Age of Discovery: a loosely defined European historical period, from the 15th century to the 18th century, that witnessed extensive overseas exploration emerge as a powerful factor in European culture and globalization. Many lands previously unknown to Europeans were discovered during this period, though most were already inhabited, and, from the perspective of non-Europeans, the period was not one of discovery, but one of invasion and the arrival of settlers from a previously unknown continent. Global exploration started with the successful Portuguese travels to the Atlantic archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores, the coast of Africa, and the sea route to India in 1498; and, on behalf of the Crown of Castile (Spain), the trans-Atlantic Voyages of Christopher Columbus between 1492 and 1502, as well as the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1519-1522. These discoveries led to numerous naval expeditions across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans, and land expeditions in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia that continued into the late 19th century, and ended with the exploration of the polar regions in the 20th century.

Portuguese Explorers

During the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese explorers were at the forefront of European overseas exploration, which led them to reach India, establish multiple trading posts in Asia and Africa, and settle what would become Brazil, creating one of the most powerful empires.

Compare the Portuguese Atlantic explorations from 1415-1488 with the Indian Exploration, led by Vasco da Gama from 1497-1542

• Portuguese sailors were at the vanguard of European overseas exploration, discovering and mapping the coasts of Africa, Asia, and Brazil. As early as 1317, King Denis made an agreement with Genoese merchant sailor Manuel Pessanha, laying the basis for the Portuguese Navy and the establishment of a powerful Genoese merchant community in Portugal.
• In 1415, the city of Ceuta was occupied by the Portuguese in an effort to control navigation of the African coast. Henry the Navigator, aware of profit possibilities in the Saharan trade routes, invested in sponsoring voyages that, within two decades of exploration, allowed Portuguese ships to bypass the Sahara.
• The Portuguese goal of finding a sea route to Asia was finally achieved in a ground-breaking voyage commanded by Vasco da Gama, who reached Calicut in western India in 1498, becoming the first European to reach India.
• The second voyage to India was dispatched in 1500 under Pedro Álvares Cabral. While following the same south-westerly route as Gama across the Atlantic Ocean, Cabral made landfall on the Brazilian coast— the territory that he recommended Portugal settle.
• Portugal’s purpose in the Indian Ocean was to ensure the monopoly of the spice trade. Taking advantage of the rivalries that pitted Hindus against Muslims, the Portuguese established several forts and trading posts between 1500 and 1510.
• Portugal established trading ports at far-flung locations like Goa, Ormuz, Malacca, Kochi, the Maluku Islands, Macau, and Nagasaki. Guarding its trade from both European and Asian competitors, it dominated not only the trade between Asia and Europe, but also much of the trade between different regions of Asia, such as India, Indonesia, China, and Japan.
• Vasco da Gama : A Portuguese explorer and one of the most famous and celebrated explorers from the Age of Discovery; the first European to reach India by sea.
• Cape of Good Hope : A rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, named because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to India and the East.

Introduction

Portuguese sailors were at the vanguard of European overseas exploration, discovering and mapping the coasts of Africa, Asia, and Brazil. As early as 1317, King Denis made an agreement with Genoese merchant sailor Manuel Pessanha (Pesagno), appointing him first Admiral with trade privileges with his homeland, in return for twenty war ships and crews, with the goal of defending the country against Muslim pirate raids. This created the basis for the Portuguese Navy and the establishment of a Genoese merchant community in Portugal.

In the second half of the 14th century, outbreaks of bubonic plague led to severe depopulation; the economy was extremely localized in a few towns, unemployment rose, and migration led to agricultural land abandonment. Only the sea offered alternatives, with most people settling in fishing and trading in coastal areas. Between 1325-1357, Afonso IV of Portugal granted public funding to raise a proper commercial fleet, and ordered the first maritime explorations, with the help of Genoese, under command of admiral Pessanha. In 1341, the Canary Islands, already known to Genoese, were officially explored under the patronage of the Portuguese king, but in 1344, Castile disputed them, further propelling the Portuguese navy efforts.

Atlantic Exploration

In 1415, the city of Ceuta (north coast of Africa) was occupied by the Portuguese aiming to control navigation of the African coast. Young Prince Henry the Navigator was there and became aware of profit possibilities in the Saharan trade routes. He invested in sponsoring voyages down the coast of Mauritania, gathering a group of merchants, shipowners, stakeholders, and participants interested in the sea lanes.

Henry the Navigator took the lead role in encouraging Portuguese maritime exploration, until his death in 1460. At the time, Europeans did not know what lay beyond Cape Bojador on the African coast. In 1419, two of Henry’s captains, João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira, were driven by a storm to Madeira, an uninhabited island off the coast of Africa, which had probably been known to Europeans since the 14th century. In 1420, Zarco and Teixeira returned with Bartolomeu Perestrelo and began Portuguese settlement of the islands. A Portuguese attempt to capture Grand Canary, one of the nearby Canary Islands, which had been partially settled by Spaniards in 1402, was unsuccessful and met with protests from Castile. Around the same time, the Portuguese began to explore the North African coast. Diogo Silves reached the Azores island of Santa Maria in 1427, and in the following years, Portuguese discovered and settled the rest of the Azores. Within two decades of exploration, Portuguese ships bypassed the Sahara.

In 1443, Prince Pedro, Henry’s brother, granted him the monopoly of navigation, war, and trade in the lands south of Cape Bojador. Later, this monopoly would be enforced by two Papal bulls (1452 and 1455), giving Portugal the trade monopoly for the newly appropriated territories, laying the foundations for the Portuguese empire.

India and Brazil

The long-standing Portuguese goal of finding a sea route to Asia was finally achieved in a ground-breaking voyage commanded by Vasco da Gama. His squadron left Portugal in 1497, rounded the Cape and continued along the coast of East Africa, where a local pilot was brought on board who guided them across the Indian Ocean, reaching Calicut in western India in May 1498. Reaching the legendary Indian spice routes unopposed helped the Portuguese improve their economy that, until Gama, was mainly based on trades along Northern and coastal West Africa. These spices were at first mostly pepper and cinnamon, but soon included other products, all new to Europe. This led to a commercial monopoly for several decades.

The second voyage to India was dispatched in 1500 under Pedro Álvares Cabral. While following the same south-westerly route as Gama across the Atlantic Ocean, Cabral made landfall on the Brazilian coast. This was probably an accident but it has been speculated that the Portuguese knew of Brazil’s existence. Cabral recommended to the Portuguese king that the land be settled, and two follow-up voyages were sent in 1501 and 1503. The land was found to be abundant in pau-brasil , or brazilwood, from which it later inherited its name, but the failure to find gold or silver meant that for the time being Portuguese efforts were concentrated on India.

Gama’s voyage was significant and paved the way for the Portuguese to establish a long-lasting colonial empire in Asia. The route meant that the Portuguese would not need to cross the highly disputed Mediterranean, or the dangerous Arabian Peninsula, and that the entire voyage would be made by sea.

First Voyage of Vasco da Gama: The route followed in Vasco da Gama’s first voyage (1497-1499). Gama’s  squadron left Portugal in 1497, rounded the Cape and continued along the coast of East Africa. They reached Calicut in western India in May 1498.

Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia Explorations

The aim of Portugal in the Indian Ocean was to ensure the monopoly of the spice trade. Taking advantage of the rivalries that pitted Hindus against Muslims, the Portuguese established several forts and trading posts between 1500 and 1510. After the victorious sea Battle of Diu, Turks and Egyptians withdrew their navies from India, setting the Portuguese trade dominance for almost a century, and greatly contributing to the growth of the Portuguese Empire. It also marked the beginning of the European colonial dominance in Asia. A second Battle of Diu in 1538 ended Ottoman ambitions in India, and confirmed Portuguese hegemony in the Indian Ocean.

In 1511, Albuquerque sailed to Malacca in Malaysia, the most important eastern point in the trade network, where Malay met Gujarati, Chinese, Japanese, Javan, Bengali, Persian, and Arabic traders. The port of Malacca became the strategic base for Portuguese trade expansion with China and Southeast Asia. Eventually, the Portuguese Empire expanded into the Persian Gulf as Portugal contested control of the spice trade with the Ottoman Empire. In a shifting series of alliances, the Portuguese dominated much of the southern Persian Gulf for the next hundred years.

A Portuguese explorer funded by the Spanish Crown, Ferdinand Magellan, organized the Castilian (Spanish) expedition to the East Indies from 1519 to 1522. Selected by King Charles I of Spain to search for a westward route to the Maluku Islands (the “Spice Islands,” today’s Indonesia), he headed south through the Atlantic Ocean to Patagonia, passing through the Strait of Magellan into a body of water he named the “peaceful sea” (the modern Pacific Ocean). Despite a series of storms and mutinies, the expedition reached the Spice Islands in 1521, and returned home via the Indian Ocean to complete the first circuit of the globe.

In 1525, after Magellan’s expedition, Spain, under Charles V, sent an expedition to colonize the Maluku islands. García Jofre de Loaísa reached the islands and the conflict with the Portuguese was inevitable, starting nearly a decade of skirmishes. An agreement was reached only with the Treaty of Zaragoza (1529), attributing the Maluku to Portugal, and the Philippines to Spain.

Portugal established trading ports at far-flung locations like Goa, Ormuz, Malacca, Kochi, the Maluku Islands, Macau, and Nagasaki. Guarding its trade from both European and Asian competitors, it dominated not only the trade between Asia and Europe, but also much of the trade between different regions of Asia, such as India, Indonesia, China, and Japan. Jesuit missionaries followed the Portuguese to spread Roman Catholic Christianity to Asia, with mixed success.

How Portugal became the first global sea power : Pick your adjective for the monster wave McNamara rode in January just off the Portuguese coast near Nazare. The Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, came to Nazare, too, to pray before he set out in 1497—and again after a successful return from his voyage to find a sea route to India with its rich spice trade. He did what Christopher Columbus had tried to do but failed. Casimiro said that as a country, Portugal turns to the sea: “Our backs are turned to the land, and we are always looking at the sea. We have that kind of impulse to see what is after that.” Even if it’s frightening? “Yeah.” Portugal is a country where the sea is and always has been regarded as a living being—to be stared down, confronted.

Spanish Exploration

The voyages of Christopher Columbus initiated the European exploration and colonization of the American continents that eventually turned Spain into the most powerful European empire.

Outline the successes and failures of Christopher Columbus during his four voyages to the Americas

• Only late in the 15th century did an emerging modern Spain become fully committed to the search for new trade routes overseas. In 1492, Christopher Columbus ‘s expedition was funded in the hope of bypassing Portugal’s monopoly on west African sea routes, to reach “the Indies.”
• On the evening of August 3, 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera with three ships. Land was sighted on October 12, 1492 and Columbus called the island (now The Bahamas) San Salvador, in what he thought to be the “West Indies.”  Following the first American voyage, Columbus made three more.
• A division of influence became necessary to avoid conflict between the Spanish and Portuguese. An agreement was reached in 1494, with the Treaty of Tordesillas dividing the world between the two powers.
• After Columbus, the Spanish colonization of the Americas was led by a series of soldier-explorers, called conquistadors. The Spanish forces, in addition to significant armament and equestrian advantages, exploited the rivalries between competing indigenous peoples, tribes, and nations.
• One of the most accomplished conquistadors was Hernán Cortés, who achieved the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. Of equal importance was the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire under Francisco Pizarro.
• In 1565, the first permanent Spanish settlement in the Philippines was founded, which added a critical Asian post to the empire. The Manilla Galleons shipped goods from all over Asia, across the Pacific to Acapulco on the coast of Mexico.
• reconquista : A period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula, spanning approximately 770 years, between the initial Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 710s, and the fall of the Emirate of Granada, the last Islamic state on the peninsula, to expanding Christian kingdoms in 1492.
• Treaty of Zaragoza : A 1529 peace treaty between the Spanish Crown and Portugal that defined the areas of Castilian (Spanish) and Portuguese influence in Asia to resolve the “Moluccas issue,” when both kingdoms claimed the Moluccas islands for themselves, considering it within their exploration area established by the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. The conflict sprang in 1520, when the expeditions of both kingdoms reached the Pacific Ocean, since there was not a set limit to the east.
• Treaty of Tordesillas : A 1494 treaty that divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between Portugal and the Crown of Castile, along a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, off the west coast of Africa. This line of demarcation was about halfway between the Cape Verde islands (already Portuguese) and the islands entered by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage (claimed for Castile and León).
• Christopher Columbus : An Italian explorer, navigator, and colonizer who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean under the monarchy of Spain, which led to general European awareness of the American continents.

While Portugal led European explorations of non-European territories, its neighboring fellow Iberian rival, Castile, embarked upon its own mission to create an overseas empire. It began to establish its rule over the Canary Islands, located off the West African coast, in 1402, but then became distracted by internal Iberian politics and the repelling of Islamic invasion attempts and raids through most of the 15th century. Only late in the century, following the unification of the crowns of Castile and Aragon and the completion of the reconquista , did an emerging modern Spain become fully committed to the search for new trade routes overseas. In 1492, the joint rulers conquered the Moorish kingdom of Granada, which had been providing Castile with African goods through tribute, and decided to fund Christopher Columbus’s expedition in the hope of bypassing Portugal’s monopoly on west African sea routes, to reach “the Indies” (east and south Asia) by traveling west. Twice before, in 1485 and 1488, Columbus had presented the project to king John II of Portugal, who rejected it.

Columbus’s Voyages

On the evening of August 3, 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera with three ships: Santa María , Pinta ( the Painted ) and Santa Clara . Columbus first sailed to the Canary Islands, where he restocked for what turned out to be a five-week voyage across the ocean, crossing a section of the Atlantic that became known as the Sargasso Sea. Land was sighted on October 12, 1492, and Columbus called the island (now The Bahamas) San Salvador , in what he thought to be the “West Indies.” He also explored the northeast coast of Cuba and the northern coast of Hispaniola. Columbus left 39 men behind and founded the settlement of La Navidad in what is present-day Haiti.

Following the first American voyage, Columbus made three more. During the second, 1493, voyage, he enslaved 560 native Americans, in spite of the Queen’s explicit opposition to the idea. Their transfer to Spain resulted in the death and disease of hundreds of the captives. The object of the third voyage was to verify the existence of a continent that King John II of Portugal claimed was located to the southwest of the Cape Verde Islands. In 1498, Columbus left port with a fleet of six ships. He explored the Gulf of Paria, which separates Trinidad from mainland Venezuela, and then the mainland of South America. Columbus described these new lands as belonging to a previously unknown new continent, but he pictured them hanging from China. Finally, the fourth voyage, nominally in search of a westward passage to the Indian Ocean, left Spain in 1502. Columbus spent two months exploring the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, before arriving in Almirante Bay, Panama. After his ships sustained serious damage in a storm off the coast of Cuba, Columbus and his men remained stranded on Jamaica for a year. Help finally arrived and Columbus and his men arrived in Castile in November 1504.

The Treaty of Tordesillas

Shortly after Columbus’s arrival from the “West Indies,” a division of influence became necessary to avoid conflict between the Spanish and Portuguese. An agreement was reached in 1494 with the Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided the world between the two powers. In the treaty, the Portuguese received everything outside Europe east of a line that ran 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands (already Portuguese), and the islands reached by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage (claimed for Spain—Cuba, and Hispaniola). This gave them control over Africa, Asia, and eastern South America (Brazil). The Spanish (Castile) received everything west of this line, territory that was still almost completely unknown, and proved to be mostly the western part of the Americas, plus the Pacific Ocean islands.

“The First Voyage”, chromolithograph by L. Prang & Co., published by The Prang Educational Co., Boston, 1893: A scene of Christopher Columbus bidding farewell to the Queen of Spain on his departure for the New World, August 3, 1492.

Further Explorations of the Americas

After Columbus, the Spanish colonization of the Americas was led by a series of soldier-explorers, called conquistadors. The Spanish forces, in addition to significant armament and equestrian advantages, exploited the rivalries between competing indigenous peoples, tribes, and nations, some of which were willing to form alliances with the Spanish in order to defeat their more powerful enemies, such as the Aztecs or Incas—a tactic that would be extensively used by later European colonial powers. The Spanish conquest was also facilitated by the spread of diseases (e.g., smallpox), common in Europe but never present in the New World, which reduced the indigenous populations in the Americas. This caused labor shortages for plantations and public works, and so the colonists initiated the Atlantic slave trade.

One of the most accomplished conquistadors was Hernán Cortés, who led a relatively small Spanish force, but with local translators and the crucial support of thousands of native allies, achieved the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in the campaigns of 1519-1521 (present day Mexico). Of equal importance was the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. After years of preliminary exploration and military skirmishes, 168 Spanish soldiers under Francisco Pizarro, and their native allies, captured the Sapa Inca Atahualpa in the 1532 Battle of Cajamarca. It was the first step in a long campaign that took decades of fighting, but ended in Spanish victory in 1572 and colonization of the region as the Viceroyalty of Peru. The conquest of the Inca Empire led to spin-off campaigns into present-day Chile and Colombia, as well as expeditions towards the Amazon Basin.

Further Spanish settlements were progressively established in the New World: New Granada in the 1530s (later in the Viceroyalty of New Granada in 1717 and present day Colombia), Lima in 1535 as the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru, Buenos Aires in 1536 (later in the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1776), and Santiago in 1541. Florida was colonized in 1565 by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés.

The Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan died while in the Philippines commanding a Castilian expedition in 1522, which was the first to circumnavigate the globe. The Basque commander, Juan Sebastián Elcano, would lead the expedition to success. Therefore, Spain sought to enforce their rights in the Moluccan islands, which led a conflict with the Portuguese, but the issue was resolved with the Treaty of Zaragoza (1525). In 1565, the first permanent Spanish settlement in the Philippines was founded by Miguel López de Legazpi, and the service of Manila Galleons was inaugurated. The Manilla Galleons shipped goods from all over Asia across the Pacific to Acapulco on the coast of Mexico. From there, the goods were transshipped across Mexico to the Spanish treasure fleets, for shipment to Spain. The Spanish trading post of Manila was established to facilitate this trade in 1572.

England and the High Seas

Throughout the 17th century, the British established numerous successful American colonies and dominated the Atlantic slave trade, which eventually led to creating the most powerful European empire.

Explain why England was interested in establishing a maritime empire

• In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot to lead a voyage to discover a route to Asia via the North Atlantic. Cabot sailed in 1497 and he successfully made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland but did not establish a colony.
• In 1562, the English Crown encouraged the privateers John Hawkins and Francis Drake to engage in slave-raiding attacks against Spanish and Portuguese ships off the coast of West Africa, with the aim of breaking into the Atlantic trade system. Drake carried out the second circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition, from 1577 to 1580.
• In 1578, Elizabeth I granted a patent to Humphrey Gilbert for discovery and overseas exploration. In 1583, he claimed the harbor of Newfoundland for England, but no settlers were left behind. Gilbert did not survive the return journey to England, and was succeeded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, who founded the colony of Roanoke, the first but failed British settlement.
• In the first decade of the 17th century, English attention shifted from preying on other nations’ colonial infrastructures to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies. The Caribbean initially provided England’s most important and lucrative colonies.
• The introduction of the 1951 Navigation Acts led to war with the Dutch Republic, which was the first war fought largely, on the English side, by purpose-built, state-owned warships. After the English monarchy was restored in 1660, Charles II re-established the Navy, but as a national institution known, since then, as “The Royal Navy.”
• Throughout the 17th century, the British established numerous successful American colonies, all based largely on slave labor. The colonization of the Americas and the participation in the Atlantic slave trade allowed the British to gradually build the most powerful European empire.
• Jamestown : The first permanent English settlement in the Americas, established by the Virginia Company of London as “James Fort” on May 4, 1607, and considered permanent after brief abandonment in 1610. It followed several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke.
• Plymouth : An English colonial venture in North America from 1620 to 1691, first surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement served as the capital of the colony and at its height, it occupied most of the southeastern portion of the modern state of Massachusetts.
• Roanoke : Also known as the Lost Colony; a late 16th-century attempt by Queen Elizabeth I to establish a permanent English settlement in the Americas. The colony was founded by Sir Walter Raleigh. The colonists disappeared during the Anglo-Spanish War, three years after the last shipment of supplies from England.
• Navigation Acts : A series of English laws that restricted the use of foreign ships for trade between every country except England. They were first enacted in 1651, and were repealed nearly 200 years later in 1849. They reflected the policy of mercantilism, which sought to keep all the benefits of trade inside the empire, and minimize the loss of gold and silver to foreigners.
• First Anglo-Dutch War : A 1652-1654 conflict fought entirely at sea between the navies of the Commonwealth of England and the United Provinces of the Netherlands. Caused by disputes over trade, the war began with English attacks on Dutch merchant shipping, but expanded to vast fleet actions. Ultimately, it resulted in the English Navy gaining control of the seas around England, and forced the Dutch to accept an English monopoly on trade with England and her colonies.

The foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot (Venetian born as Giovanni Caboto) to lead a voyage to discover a route to Asia via the North Atlantic. Spain put limited efforts into exploring the northern part of the Americas, as its resources were concentrated in Central and South America where more wealth had been found. Cabot sailed in 1497, five years after Europeans reached America, and although he successfully made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland (mistakenly believing, like Christopher Columbus, that he had reached Asia), there was no attempt to found a colony. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year, but nothing was heard of his ships again.

The Early Empire

No further attempts to establish English colonies in the Americas were made until well into the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, during the last decades of the 16th century. In the meantime, the Protestant Reformation had turned England and Catholic Spain into implacable enemies. In 1562, the English Crown encouraged the privateers John Hawkins and Francis Drake to engage in slave-raiding attacks against Spanish and Portuguese ships off the coast of West Africa, with the aim of breaking into the Atlantic trade system. Drake carried out the second circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition, from 1577 to 1580, and was the first to complete the voyage as captain while leading the expedition throughout the entire circumnavigation. With his incursion into the Pacific, he inaugurated an era of privateering and piracy in the western coast of the Americas—an area that had previously been free of piracy.

In 1578, Elizabeth I granted a patent to Humphrey Gilbert for discovery and overseas exploration. That year, Gilbert sailed for the West Indies with the intention of engaging in piracy and establishing a colony in North America, but the expedition was aborted before it had crossed the Atlantic. In 1583, he embarked on a second attempt, on this occasion to the island of Newfoundland whose harbor he formally claimed for England, although no settlers were left behind. Gilbert did not survive the return journey to England, and was succeeded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, who was granted his own patent by Elizabeth in 1584. Later that year, Raleigh founded the colony of Roanoke on the coast of present-day North Carolina, but lack of supplies caused the colony to fail.

Empire in the Americas

In 1603, James VI, King of Scots, ascended (as James I) to the English throne, and in 1604 negotiated the Treaty of London, ending hostilities with Spain. Now at peace with its main rival, English attention shifted from preying on other nations’ colonial infrastructures, to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies. The Caribbean initially provided England’s most important and lucrative colonies. Colonies in Guiana, St Lucia, and Grenada failed but settlements were successfully established in St. Kitts (1624), Barbados (1627), and Nevis (1628). The colonies soon adopted the system of sugar plantations, successfully used by the Portuguese in Brazil, which depended on slave labor, and—at first—Dutch ships, to sell the slaves and buy the sugar. To ensure that the increasingly healthy profits of this trade remained in English hands, Parliament decreed in the 1651 Navigation Acts that only English ships would be able to ply their trade in English colonies. In 1655, England annexed the island of Jamaica from the Spanish, and in 1666 succeeded in colonizing the Bahamas.

African slaves working in 17th-century Virginia (tobacco cultivation), by an unknown artist, 1670

In 1672, the Royal African Company was inaugurated, receiving from King Charles a monopoly of the trade to supply slaves to the British colonies of the Caribbean. From the outset, slavery was the basis of the British Empire in the West Indies and later in North America. Until the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, Britain was responsible for the transportation of 3.5 million African slaves to the Americas, a third of all slaves transported across the Atlantic.

The introduction of the Navigation Acts led to war with the Dutch Republic. In the early stages of this First Anglo-Dutch War (1652-1654), the superiority of the large, heavily armed English ships was offset by superior Dutch tactical organization. English tactical improvements resulted in a series of crushing victories in 1653, bringing peace on favorable terms. This was the first war fought largely, on the English side, by purpose-built, state-owned warships. After the English monarchy was restored in 1660, Charles II re-established the navy, but from this point on, it ceased to be the personal possession of the reigning monarch, and instead became a national institution, with the title of “The Royal Navy.”

England’s first permanent settlement in the Americas was founded in 1607 in Jamestown, led by Captain John Smith and managed by the Virginia Company. Bermuda was settled and claimed by England as a result of the 1609 shipwreck there of the Virginia Company’s flagship. The Virginia Company’s charter was revoked in 1624 and direct control of Virginia was assumed by the crown, thereby founding the Colony of Virginia. In 1620, Plymouth was founded as a haven for puritan religious separatists, later known as the Pilgrims. Fleeing from religious persecution would become the motive of many English would-be colonists to risk the arduous trans-Atlantic voyage; Maryland was founded as a haven for Roman Catholics (1634), Rhode Island (1636) as a colony tolerant of all religions, and Connecticut (1639) for Congregationalists. The Province of Carolina was founded in 1663. With the surrender of Fort Amsterdam in 1664, England gained control of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, renaming it New York. In 1681, the colony of Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn. The American colonies were less financially successful than those of the Caribbean, but had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far larger numbers of English emigrants who preferred their temperate climates.

From the outset, slavery was the basis of the British Empire in the West Indies. Until the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, Britain was responsible for the transportation of 3.5 million African slaves to the Americas, a third of all slaves transported across the Atlantic. In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population of African descent rose from 25% in 1650 to around 80% in 1780, and in the 13 Colonies from 10% to 40% over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies). For the slave traders, the trade was extremely profitable, and became a major economic mainstay.

Map of the British colonies in North America, 1763 to 1775. First published in: Shepherd, William Robert (1911) “The British Colonies in North America, 1763–1765” in Historical Atlas, New York, United States: Henry Holt and Company, p. 194.

Although Britain was relatively late in its efforts to explore and colonize the New World, lagging behind Spain and Portugal, it eventually gained significant territories in North America and the Caribbean.

French Explorers

France established colonies in North America, the Caribbean, and India in the 17th century, and while it lost most of its American holdings to Spain and Great Britain before the end of the 18th century, it eventually expanded its Asian and African territories in the 19th century.

Describe some of the discoveries made by French explorers

• Competing with Spain, Portugal, the Dutch Republic, and later Britain, France began to establish colonies in North America, the Caribbean, and India in the 17th century. Major French exploration of North America began under the rule of Francis I of France. In 1524, he sent Italian-born Giovanni da Verrazzano to explore the region between Florida and Newfoundland for a route to the Pacific Ocean.
• In 1534, Francis sent Jacques Cartier on the first of three voyages to explore the coast of Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence River. Cartier founded New France and was the first European to travel inland in North America.
• Cartier attempted to create the first permanent European settlement in North America at Cap-Rouge (Quebec City) in 1541,  but the settlement was abandoned the next year. A number of other failed attempts to establish French settlements in North America followed throughout the rest of the 16th century.
• Prior to the establishment of the 1663 Sovereign Council, the territories of New France were developed as mercantile colonies. It was only after 1665 that France gave its American colonies the proper means to develop population colonies comparable to that of the British. By the first decades of the 18th century, the French created and controlled a number of settlement colonies in North America.
• As the French empire in North America grew, the French also began to build a smaller but more profitable empire in the West Indies.
• While the French quite rapidly lost nearly all of its colonial gains in the Americas, their colonial expansion also covered territories in Africa and Asia where France grew to be a major colonial power in the 19th century.
• Sovereign Council : A governing body in New France. It acted as both Supreme Court for the colony of New France and as a policy making body, although, its policy role diminished over time. Though officially established in 1663 by King Louis XIV, it was not created whole cloth, but rather evolved from earlier governing bodies.
• mercantile colonies : Colonies that sought to derive the maximum material benefit from the colony, for the homeland, with a minimum of imperial investment in the colony itself. The mercantilist ideology at its foundations was embodied in New France through the establishment under Royal Charter of a number of corporate trading monopolies.
• New France : The area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River by Jacques Cartier in 1534, and ending with the cession of New France to Spain and Great Britain in 1763. At its peak in 1712, the territory extended from Newfoundland to the Rocky Mountains, and from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, including all the Great Lakes of North America.
• Carib Expulsion : The French-led ethnic cleansing that terminated most of the Carib population in 1660 from present-day Martinique. This followed the French invasion in 1635 and its conquest of the people on the Caribbean island, which made it part of the French colonial empire.

The French in the New World: New France

Competing with Spain, Portugal, the United Provinces (the Dutch Republic), and later Britain, France began to establish colonies in North America, the Caribbean, and India in the 17th century. The French first came to the New World as explorers, seeking a route to the Pacific Ocean and wealth. Major French exploration of North America began under the rule of Francis I of France. In 1524, Francis sent Italian-born Giovanni da Verrazzano to explore the region between Florida and Newfoundland for a route to the Pacific Ocean. Verrazzano gave the names Francesca  and Nova Gallia  to the land between New Spain and English Newfoundland, thus promoting French interests.

In 1534, Francis sent Jacques Cartier on the first of three voyages to explore the coast of Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence River. Cartier founded New France by planting a cross on the shore of the Gaspé Peninsula. He is believed to have accompanied Verrazzano to Nova Scotia and Brazil, and was the first European to travel inland in North America, describing the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, which he named “The Country of Canadas” after Iroquois names, and claiming what is now Canada for France. He attempted to create the first permanent European settlement in North America at Cap-Rouge (Quebec City) in 1541 with 400 settlers, but the settlement was abandoned the next year. A number of other failed attempts to establish French settlement in North America followed throughout the rest of the 16th century.

Portrait of Jacques Cartier by Théophile Hamel (1844), Library and Archives Canada (there are no known paintings of Cartier that were created during his lifetime): In 1534, Jacques Cartier planted a cross in the Gaspé Peninsula and claimed the land in the name of King Francis I. It was the first province of New France. However, initial French attempts at settling the region met with failure.

Although, through alliances with various Native American tribes, the French were able to exert a loose control over much of the North American continent, areas of French settlement were generally limited to the St. Lawrence River Valley. Prior to the establishment of the 1663 Sovereign Council, the territories of New France were developed as mercantile colonies. It was only after 1665 that France gave its American colonies the proper means to develop population colonies comparable to that of the British. By the first decades of the 18th century, the French created and controlled such colonies as Quebec, La Baye des Puants  (present-day Green Bay), Ville-Marie (Montreal), Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit  (modern-day Detroit), or La Nouvelle Orléans  (New Orleans) and Baton Rouge. However, there was relatively little interest in colonialism in France, which concentrated on dominance within Europe, and for most of its history, New France was far behind the British North American colonies in both population and economic development. Acadia itself was lost to the British in 1713.

In 1699, French territorial claims in North America expanded still further, with the foundation of Louisiana in the basin of the Mississippi River. The extensive trading network throughout the region connected to Canada through the Great Lakes, was maintained through a vast system of fortifications, many of them centered in the Illinois Country and in present-day Arkansas.

Map of North America (1750): France (blue), Britain (pink), and Spain (orange)

New France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River by Jacques Cartier in 1534, and ending with the cession of New France to Spain and Great Britain in 1763. At its peak in 1712, the territory of New France extended from Newfoundland to the Rocky Mountains, and from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, including all the Great Lakes of North America.

The West Indies

As the French empire in North America grew, the French also began to build a smaller but more profitable empire in the West Indies. Settlement along the South American coast in what is today French Guiana began in 1624, and a colony was founded on Saint Kitts in 1625. Colonies in Guadeloupe and Martinique were founded in 1635 and on Saint Lucia in 1650. The food-producing plantations of these colonies were built and sustained through slavery, with the supply of slaves dependent on the African slave trade. Local resistance by the indigenous peoples resulted in the Carib Expulsion of 1660.

France’s most important Caribbean colonial possession was established in 1664, when the colony of Saint-Domingue (today’s Haiti) was founded on the western half of the Spanish island of Hispaniola. In the 18th century, Saint-Domingue grew to be the richest sugar colony in the Caribbean. The eastern half of Hispaniola (today’s Dominican Republic) also came under French rule for a short period, after being given to France by Spain in 1795.

In the middle of the 18th century, a series of colonial conflicts began between France and Britain, which ultimately resulted in the destruction of most of the first French colonial empire and the near complete expulsion of France from the Americas.

Africa and Asia

French colonial expansion wasn’t limited to the New World. In Senegal in West Africa, the French began to establish trading posts along the coast in 1624. In 1664, the French East India Company was established to compete for trade in the east. With the decay of the Ottoman Empire, in 1830 the French seized Algiers, thus beginning the colonization of French North Africa. Colonies were also established in India in Chandernagore (1673) and Pondichéry in the south east (1674), and later at Yanam (1723), Mahe (1725), and Karikal (1739). Finally, colonies were founded in the Indian Ocean, on the Île de Bourbon (Réunion, 1664), Isle de France (Mauritius, 1718), and the Seychelles (1756).

While the French never rebuilt its American gains, their influence in Africa and Asia expanded significantly over the course of the 19th century.

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Europe and the age of exploration.

Salvator Mundi

Albrecht Dürer

The Celestial Map- Northern Hemisphere

Astronomical table clock

Astronomicum Caesareum

Michael Ostendorfer

Mirror clock

Movement attributed to Master CR

Portable diptych sundial

Hans Tröschel the Elder

Celestial globe with clockwork

Gerhard Emmoser

The Celestial Globe-Southern Hemisphere

James Voorhies Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2002

Artistic Encounters between Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas The great period of discovery from the latter half of the fifteenth through the sixteenth century is generally referred to as the Age of Exploration. It is exemplified by the Genoese navigator, Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), who undertook a voyage to the New World under the auspices of the Spanish monarchs, Isabella I of Castile (r. 1474–1504) and Ferdinand II of Aragon (r. 1479–1516). The Museum’s jerkin ( 26.196 ) and helmet ( 32.132 ) beautifully represent the type of clothing worn by the people of Spain during this period. The age is also recognized for the first English voyage around the world by Sir Francis Drake (ca. 1540–1596), who claimed the San Francisco Bay for Queen Elizabeth ; Vasco da Gama’s (ca. 1460–1524) voyage to India , making the Portuguese the first Europeans to sail to that country and leading to the exploration of the west coast of Africa; Bartolomeu Dias’ (ca. 1450–1500) discovery of the Cape of Good Hope; and Ferdinand Magellan’s (1480–1521) determined voyage to find a route through the Americas to the east, which ultimately led to discovery of the passage known today as the Strait of Magellan.

To learn more about the impact on the arts of contact between Europeans, Africans, and Indians, see  The Portuguese in Africa, 1415–1600 ,  Afro-Portuguese Ivories , African Christianity in Kongo , African Christianity in Ethiopia ,  The Art of the Mughals before 1600 , and the Visual Culture of the Atlantic World .

Scientific Advancements and the Arts in Europe In addition to the discovery and colonization of far off lands, these years were filled with major advances in cartography and navigational instruments, as well as in the study of anatomy and optics. The visual arts responded to scientific and technological developments with new ideas about the representation of man and his place in the world. For example, the formulation of the laws governing linear perspective by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) in the early fifteenth century, along with theories about idealized proportions of the human form, influenced artists such as Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). Masters of illusionistic technique, Leonardo and Dürer created powerfully realistic images of corporeal forms by delicately rendering tendons, skin tissues, muscles, and bones, all of which demonstrate expertly refined anatomical understanding. Dürer’s unfinished Salvator Mundi ( 32.100.64 ), begun about 1505, provides a unique opportunity to see the artist’s underdrawing and, in the beautifully rendered sphere of the earth in Christ’s left hand, metaphorically suggests the connection of sacred art and the realms of science and geography.

Although the Museum does not have objects from this period specifically made for navigational purposes, its collection of superb instruments and clocks reflects the advancements in technology and interest in astronomy of the time, for instance Petrus Apianus’ Astronomicum Caesareum ( 25.17 ). This extraordinary Renaissance book contains equatoria supplied with paper volvelles, or rotating dials, that can be used for calculating positions of the planets on any given date as seen from a given terrestrial location. The celestial globe with clockwork ( 17.190.636 ) is another magnificent example of an aid for predicting astronomical events, in this case the location of stars as seen from a given place on earth at a given time and date. The globe also illustrates the sun’s apparent movement through the constellations of the zodiac.

Portable devices were also made for determining the time in a specific latitude. During the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the combination of compass and sundial became an aid for travelers. The ivory diptych sundial was a specialty of manufacturers in Nuremberg. The Museum’s example ( 03.21.38 ) features a multiplicity of functions that include giving the time in several systems of counting daylight hours, converting hours read by moonlight into sundial hours, predicting the nights that would be illuminated by the moon, and determining the dates of the movable feasts. It also has a small opening for inserting a weather vane in order to determine the direction of the wind, a feature useful for navigators. However, its primary use would have been meteorological.

Voorhies, James. “Europe and the Age of Exploration.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/expl/hd_expl.htm (October 2002)

Further Reading

Levenson, Jay A., ed. Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration . Exhibition catalogue. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1991.

Vezzosi, Alessandro. Leonardo da Vinci: The Mind of the Renaissance . New York: Abrams, 1997.

Additional Essays by James Voorhies

• Voorhies, James. “ Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) .” (October 2004)
• Voorhies, James. “ Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) and the Spanish Enlightenment .” (October 2003)
• Voorhies, James. “ Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) .” (October 2004)
• Voorhies, James. “ School of Paris .” (October 2004)
• Voorhies, James. “ Art of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Naples .” (October 2003)
• Voorhies, James. “ Elizabethan England .” (October 2002)
• Voorhies, James. “ Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) and His Circle .” (October 2004)
• Voorhies, James. “ Fontainebleau .” (October 2002)
• Voorhies, James. “ Post-Impressionism .” (October 2004)
• Voorhies, James. “ Domestic Art in Renaissance Italy .” (October 2002)
• Voorhies, James. “ Surrealism .” (October 2004)

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The Age of Discovery: A New World Dawns

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The Age of Discovery (also known as the Age of Exploration) refers to an exciting era in European history when a number of extensive overseas voyages took place. This period lasted roughly from the beginning of the 15th century until the middle of the 17th century and is most famously associated with Portugal and Spain, though many other regions were just as curious and set out on their own journeys of discovery around the world.

The Age of Discovery is also said to have ‘spread’ to Northern Europe and Russia, since these countries conducted their own explorations as well, though they set out much later than the Spanish and Portuguese. The Age of Discovery was brought about by a combination of several factors and had an impact not only on the history of Europe, but on the whole world.

Major Factors Behind the Age of Discovery

Trade was an important factor that led to the Age of Discovery. Around the beginning of the 13th century, the Mongol Empire was established by Genghis Khan. This was the largest contiguous land empire in history and stretched from China in the east to Central Europe in the west. Thanks to the Mongol Empire, trade flowed between the East and West via the Silk Road .

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A foreigner depicted as a camel driver; Chinese terracotta sculpture from the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534 AD). Cernuschi Museum, Paris, France. (Guillaume Jacquet/ CC BY SA 3.0 )

During the 14th century, the Mongol Empire was disintegrating, making travel along the Silk Road more dangerous. Although trade could be conducted via a maritime route there was a problem - the Mediterranean was dominated by the Venetians and the Red Sea, which gave access to the Indian Ocean, was blocked by the Ottoman Turks. Nations on the western end of the continent were certainly the biggest losers in such an arrangement.

Politics also contributed significantly to the Age of Discovery. In the Iberian Peninsula, the Reconquista had been going on since the 8th century AD and was nearing its end during the 15th century. Although the fall of Granada in 1492 marks the completion of the Reconquista , by the middle of the 13th century all of the Iberian Peninsula, apart from the Emirate of Granada, was in Christian hands.

The Reconquista gave rise to new European kingdoms, namely Portugal and Spain, whose rulers encouraged and funded the overseas voyages. In addition, the Age of Discovery was made possible by the development of ships that could travel across open waters.

Finally, the role of religion should not be overlooked. For instance, one of the motivations behind Portuguese exploration was the legend of Prester John. The Portuguese hoped to find this legendary king who was rumored to rule over a Christian kingdom in the East and form an alliance with him against the Muslims.

Prester John of the Indies. Close-up from a portolan chart. (The Bodleian Libraries, Oxford/ CC BY 4.0 )

Early Explorations

It should be mentioned briefly that travel and exploration were already happening in the centuries prior to the Age of Discovery. For instance, during the Middle Ages, Italian traders (the most famous being Marco Polo ), as well as Christian missionaries (such as the Franciscan Odoric of Pordenone) were already traveling to the East. Other civilizations were also conducting their own travels.

The Maritime Silk Road, for instance, facilitated the movement of traders from China, Southeast Asia, India, and the Arabian Peninsula; while the famous Moroccan scholar and explorer, Ibn Battuta, traveled extensively during the 14th century - visiting not only much of the Islamic world, but also areas not under Muslim rule , including Central Asia, Southeast Asia, India, and China.

Ibn Battuta in Egypt. ( Public Domain )

Voyages to Unknown Lands

One of the differences between European exploration during the Medieval period and the Age of Discovery is that during the latter the explorers began their journeys from the western end of the continent and were sailing into uncharted waters.

As mentioned earlier, the passage to the Indian Ocean through the Red Sea was blocked to the Europeans by the Turks . Therefore, the alternative route to the East for the Europeans was to go to the southern end of Africa before turning eastwards. At that point of time, the continent of Africa had not been fully explored, and it was not possible for the Europeans to travel inland, since North Africa was also under Muslim rule. Therefore, the Europeans were forced to sail along the western coast of Africa, seek its southern end, and then sail onwards to the East.

Major Finds by Portuguese Explorers

The Portuguese explorers are credited with making the first discoveries of this period. 1415 is regarded as the foundation of the Portuguese Colonial Empire, as the Portuguese crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and conquered the Moorish city of Ceuta in that year. The Portuguese discovered Madeira by chance.

In 1419, two Portuguese captains in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator were driven by a storm to an island which they named Porto Santo. In the following year, the captains returned to claim the island for Portugal and discovered a larger island (Madeira) to its southwest. In 1427, the Azores were discovered, and in the following decades the Portuguese continued their exploration along the west coast of Africa.

Cape Bojador (on the northern coast of Western Sahara) was crossed in 1434, while Senegal and Cape Verde were reached in 1445. In the following year, the Portuguese had made it as far south as what is currently Sierra Leone . Subsequently the Portuguese explored the Gulf of Guinea, and they discovered the Congo in 1482. Four years later, they were at Cape Cross, in modern day Namibia.

In 1488, Batolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope. This was a significant event, as it meant that the Portuguese had finally reached the southern end of Africa and could now sail eastwards into the Indian Ocean. Nevertheless, it would take the Portuguese some time before they arrived in India. In 1498, Vasco da Gama landed in Calicut, in southwestern India, making him the first European to arrive in India by an oceanic route.

Vasco da Gama. ( Public Domain )

For much of the 15th century the Portuguese were free to explore the oceans without any opposition from other European states. Spain (at that time the Crowns of Castile and Aragon), which would have been the main rivals of the Portuguese, was occupied with other matters during that century. As previously mentioned, the Reconquista only ended in 1492 after the fall of Granada. Additionally, the Spanish were more concerned at that time with the Mediterranean, as a number of areas outside Spain, including southern Italy, Sardinia, and Sicily, were under the Crown of Aragon.

The Spanish and Portuguese Compete to Reach the East

Nevertheless, the Spanish had no intention of losing out to the Portuguese and the two powers were locked in competition, each wanting to be the first to reach the East by sea. In January 1492, shortly after the conquest of Granada, a Genoese explorer by the name of Christopher Columbus finally succeeded in obtaining the sponsorship of Ferdinand II and Isabella I to voyage across the Atlantic. Columbus presented a radical proposal to the Spanish monarchs – he believed that it was possible to reach Asia by sailing westwards. Earlier on, Columbus had presented his project to the Portuguese king, John II, but was rejected. Columbus was rejected by Ferdinand and Isabella as well, at least twice, before securing their patronage in 1492.

‘Columbus before the Queen’ (1843) by Emanuel Leutze. ( Public Domain )

Contrary to popular belief, Columbus was not denied sponsorship because of the belief that the earth was flat, but rather because the experts at the Portuguese and Spanish courts believed that Columbus had grossly underestimated the distance between Europe and Asia. In this matter, the Portuguese and Spanish experts were right. Columbus, however, was extremely lucky, as there was a previously unknown land mass, i.e. the Americas, on the western route between Europe and Asia.

As a result, Columbus is remembered in the West as the man who discovered the New World. Had the Americas not existed, Columbus might have been relegated to a footnote in history and perhaps remembered as the ‘man who sailed west and never returned’. In the years following the discovery of the New World, Columbus maintained that he had found the western route to Asia, and may have genuinely held that belief, despite the increasing evidence that the land he had discovered was not Asia, but another continent.

Columbus aside, the discovery of lands to the west of Europe (be it Asia or another continent) escalated the conflict between Portugal and Spain. When Columbus returned from his first voyage in 1493 Spain claimed the new lands he ‘discovered.’ This was disputed by the Portuguese, who referred to the papal bulls of 1455, 1456, and 1479 to stake their claim on the new territories.

In response, the Spanish simply obtained new papal bulls to counter the old ones. Conveniently for them, the pope at the time was Alexander VI, a native of Valencia and a friend of the Spanish king. Therefore, papal bulls that favored the Spanish were easily obtained. One of these bulls, Inter caetera , stated that all lands to the west and south of a pole-to-pole line of 100 leagues west and south of any of the islands of the Azores or the Cape Verde islands would belong to Spain, apart from any lands ruled by Christians, which would be left untouched. Another bull, Dudum siquidem , entitled  Extension of the Apostolic Grant and Donation of the Indies , gave Spain all the mainlands and islands of ‘India’ to Spain, even if they were situated east of the line.

Pope Alexander VI. Detail from a fresco of the resurrection, painted in 1492 - 1495 by Pinturicchio. ( Public Domain )

The Treaty of Tordesillas

The Portuguese were not at all pleased with this arrangement and they began negotiations with the Spanish. As a result, the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed on June 7, 1494, and later sanctioned by the pope, Julius II, in 1506. According to this treaty, the world was to be divided into two hemispheres between the Spanish and the Portuguese.

Although the Portuguese accepted the line set by the pope in the Inter caetera , they requested the Spanish have it moved 270 leagues to the west. Therefore, a north-south meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, roughly halfway between those islands and the ones newly discovered by Columbus, was established.

The treaty allowed Spain and Portugal to conquer any new lands they were the first to discover (except those ruled by Christians) - the former to the west, and the latter to the east, even if they passed each other on the other side of the globe. Consequently, the Spanish colonized much of South America in the decades that followed, while the Portuguese continued their exploration of the East. Incidentally, the coast of Brazil fell within the east half of the meridian, and therefore could be claimed by the Portuguese when it was discovered in 1500.

Other Explorers Join in

A problem with the Treaty of Tordesillas became apparent in 1512 when the Moluccas were discovered by the Portuguese. Although the islands were claimed by Portugal, a counterclaim was made by Spain in 1521, as they are said to be in the western hemisphere. A solution was reached in 1529 when the Treaty of Zaragoza was signed. Another line, the anti-meridian, was fixed at 297.5 leagues to the east of the Moluccas.

Although the two treaties pleased the Spanish and Portuguese, they excluded other European powers, who in turn did not recognize the validity of the texts. Thus, these treaties did not stop them from conducting their own voyages of exploration when the time came. The English and the Dutch who inhabited the northern part of Europe were entertaining the idea of a northern sea passage to the East.

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These explorers were much less successful than Columbus . Beginning in the middle of the 16th century, a number of voyages were launched in order to seek the Northeast Passage. The passage, however, eluded the explorers, and was only found during the second half of the 19th century.

Expeditions were also conducted to find the Northwest Passage, which linked Asia to America via the sea. Like its northeastern counterpart, the quest for the Northwest Passage began as early as the 16th century. Nevertheless, it was only at the beginning of the 20th century that the passage was found.

1765 globe by Guillaume Delisle, showing a fictional Northwest Passage. (Minnesota Historical Society/ CC BY SA 3.0 )

Finally, while the Age of Discovery is regarded as a glorious era by Europeans, it was a very different story for the peoples they encountered during their voyages. Many of these civilizations ended up being colonized by the Europeans, sometimes through brutal conquest. This is most visible in the Aztec and Inca Empires, both of which were highly advanced civilizations at the time of Spain’s arrival in the New World. Nevertheless, they were destroyed in a short period of time by a small number of Spanish conquistadors.

One of the factors that aided the conquistadors in their conquest of these civilizations was the spread of diseases, such as smallpox , which was common in Europe but unheard of in the Americas. These diseases decimated the indigenous peoples of the New World - causing labor shortages, sadness, and pain. In turn this had a hugely negative impact on another continent; African slaves were forcibly brought to the New World to work on plantations.

Top image: The Age of Discovery was a time when European explorers journeyed across the world. Source: oleskalashnik /Adobe Stock

By Wu Mingren                            

Briney, A., 2019. A Brief History of the Age of Exploration. [Online] Available at: https://www.thoughtco.com/age-of-exploration-1435006

Flint, V. I., 2019. Christopher Columbus. [Online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Christopher-Columbus

McClure, J., 2018. Did the Age of Exploration bring more harm than good?. [Online] Available at: https://www.historyextra.com/period/modern/age-of-exploration-bring-more...

Mitchell, J. B., 2020. The Age Of Discovery. [Online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/European-exploration/The-Age-of-Discovery

National Geographic, 2020. Jun 7, 1494 CE: Treaty of Tordesillas. [Online] Available at: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/jun7/treaty-tordesillas/

New World Encyclopedia, 2015. Treaty of Tordesillas. [Online] Available at: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Treaty_of_Tordesillas

New World Encyclopedia, 2017. Christopher Columbus. [Online] Available at: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Christopher_Columbus

New World Encyclopedia, 2018. Mongol Empire. [Online] Available at: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Mongol_Empire

New World Encyclopedia, 2019. Portuguese Empire. [Online] Available at: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Portuguese_Empire

New World Encyclopedia, 2019. Spanish Empire. [Online] Available at: https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Spanish_Empire

Pariona, A., 2017. What Was The Age Of Exploration Or The Age Of Discovery?. [Online] Available at: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-was-the-age-of-exploration-or-t...

The Mariners' Museum & Park, 2020. Age Of Discovery. [Online] Available at: https://exploration.marinersmuseum.org/age-of-discovery/

Voorhies, J., 2002. Europe and the Age of Exploration. [Online] Available at: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/expl/hd_expl.htm

www.historycrunch.com , 2020. Causes of the Age of Exploration. [Online] Available at: https://www.historycrunch.com/causes-of-the-age-of-exploration.html#/

Wu Mingren (‘Dhwty’) has a Bachelor of Arts in Ancient History and Archaeology. Although his primary interest is in the ancient civilizations of the Near East, he is also interested in other geographical regions, as well as other time periods.... Read More

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Causes and Impacts of the European Age of Exploration

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A time when Europe was swept up in the Renaissance and the Reformation, other major changes were taking place in the world.

Introduction

With today’s global positioning satellites, Internet maps, cell phones, and superfast travel, it is hard to imagine exactly how it might have felt to embark on a voyage across an unknown ocean. What lay across the ocean? In the early 1400s in Europe, few people knew. How long would it take to get there? That depended on the wind, the weather, and the distance. Days would have run together, with no sounds but the voices of the captain and the crew, the creaking of the sails, the blowing wind, and the splash of waves against the ship’s hull.

Would you be willing to undertake such a voyage? Only those most adventurous, most daring, and most confident in their abilities to sail in any weather, manage any crew, and meet any circumstance dared do so. They sailed west from England, Spain, and Portugal to North America. They sailed south from Portugal and Spain to South America, to lands where the Incas lived. They traveled to Africa, past the kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai. The crew of one Portuguese expedition even sailed completely around the world.

European explorers changed the world in many dramatic ways. Because of them, cultures divided by 3,000 miles or more of water began interacting. European countries claimed large parts of the world. As nations competed for territory, Europe had an enormous impact on people living in distant lands.

The Americas, in turn, made important contributions to Europe and the rest of the world. For example, from the Americas came crops such as corn and potatoes, which grew well in Europe. By increasing Europe’s food supply, these crops helped create population growth.

Another great change during the early modern age was the Scientific Revolution. Between 1500 and 1700, scientists used observation and experiments to make dramatic discoveries. For example, Isaac Newton formulated the laws of gravity. The Scientific Revolution also led to the invention of new tools, such as the microscope and the thermometer.

Advances in science helped pave the way for a period called the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment began in the late 1600s. Enlightenment thinkers used observation and reason to try to solve problems in society. Their work led to new ideas about government, human nature, and human rights.

The Age of Exploration, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment helped to shape the world we live in today.

The Causes of European Exploration

Why did European exploration begin to flourish in the 1400s? Two main reasons stand out. First, Europeans of this time had several motives for exploring the world. Second, advances in knowledge and technology helped to make the Age of Exploration possible.

Motives for Exploration

For early explorers, one of the main motives for exploration was the desire to find new trade routes to Asia. By the 1400s, merchants and Crusaders had brought many goods to Europe from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Demand for these goods increased the desire for trade.

Europeans were especially interested in spices from Asia. They had learned to use spices to help preserve food during winter and to cover up the taste of food that was no longer fresh.

Trade with the East, however, was difficult and very expensive. Muslims and Italians controlled the flow of goods. Muslim traders carried goods to the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Italian merchants then brought the goods into Europe. Problems arose when Muslim rulers sometimes closed the trade routes from Asia to Europe. Also, the goods went through many hands, and each trading party raised the price.

European monarchs and merchants wanted to break the hold that Muslims and Italians had on trade. One way to do so was to find a sea route to Asia. Portuguese sailors looked for a route that went around Africa. Christopher Columbus tried to reach Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic.

Other motives also came into play. Many people were excited by the opportunity for new knowledge. Explorers saw the chance to earn fame and glory, as well as wealth. As new lands were discovered, nations wanted to claim the lands’ riches for themselves.

A final motive for exploration was the desire to spread Christianity beyond Europe. Both Protestant and Catholic nations were eager to make new converts. Missionaries of both faiths followed the paths blazed by explorers.

Advances in Knowledge and Technology  

The Age of Exploration began during the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a time of new learning. A number of advances during that time made it easier for explorers to venture into the unknown.

One key advance was in cartography, the art and science of mapmaking. In the early 1400s, an Italian scholar translated an ancient book called Guide to Geography from Greek into Latin. The book was written by the thinker Ptolemy (TOL-eh-mee) in the 2nd century C.E. Printed copies of the book inspired new interest in cartography. European mapmakers used Ptolemy’s work as a basis for drawing more accurate maps.

Discoveries by explorers gave mapmakers new information with which to work. The result was a dramatic change in Europeans’ view of the world. By the 1500s, Europeans made globes, showing Earth as a sphere. In 1507, a German cartographer made the first map that clearly showed North and South America as separate from Asia.

In turn, better maps made navigation easier. The most important Renaissance geographer, Gerardus Mercator (mer-KAY-tur), created maps using improved lines of longitude and latitude. Mercator’s mapmaking technique was a great help to navigators.

An improved ship design also helped explorers. By the 1400s, Portuguese and Spanish shipbuilders were making a new type of ship called a caravel. These ships were small, fast, and easy to maneuver. Their special bottoms made it easier for explorers to travel along coastlines where the water was not deep. Caravels also used lateen sails, a triangular style adapted from Muslim ships. These sails could be positioned to take advantage of the wind no matter which way it blew.

Along with better ships, new navigational tools helped sailors travel more safely on the open seas. By the end of the 1400s, the compass was much improved. Sailors used compasses to find their bearing, or direction of travel. The astrolabe helped sailors determine their distance north or south from the equator.

Finally, improved weapons gave Europeans a huge advantage over the people they met in their explorations. Sailors could fire their cannons at targets near the shore without leaving their ships. On land, the weapons of native peoples often were no match for European guns, armor, and horses.

Portugal Begins the Age of Exploration

The Age of Exploration began in Portugal. This small country is located on the Iberian Peninsula. Its rulers sent explorers first to nearby Africa and then around the world.

Key Portuguese Explorers

The major figure in early Portuguese exploration was Prince Henry, the son of King John I of Portugal. Nicknamed “the Navigator,” Prince Henry was not an explorer himself. Instead, he encouraged exploration and planned and directed many important expeditions.

Beginning in about 1418, Henry sent explorers to sea almost every year. He also started a school of navigation where sailors and mapmakers could learn their trades. His cartographers made new maps based on the information ship captains brought back.

Henry’s early expeditions focused on the west coast of Africa. He wanted to continue the Crusades against the Muslims, find gold, and take part in Asian trade.

Gradually, Portuguese explorers made their way farther and farther south. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias became the first European to sail around the southern tip of Africa.

In July 1497, Vasco da Gama set sail with four ships to chart a sea route to India. Da Gama’s ships rounded Africa’s southern tip and then sailed up the east coast of the continent. With the help of a sailor who knew the route to India from there, they were able to across the Indian Ocean.

Da Gama arrived in the port of Calicut, India, in May 1498. There he obtained a load of cinnamon and pepper. On the return trip to Portugal, da Gama lost half of his ships. Still, the valuable cargo he brought back paid for the voyage many times over. His trip made the Portuguese even more eager to trade directly with Indian merchants.

In 1500, Pedro Cabral (kah-BRAHL) set sail for India with a fleet of 13 ships. Cabral first sailed southwest to avoid areas where there are no winds to fill sails. But he sailed so far west that he reached the east coast of present-day Brazil. After claiming this land for Portugal, he sailed back to the east and rounded Africa. Arriving in Calicut, he established a trading post and signed trade treaties. He returned to Portugal in June 1501.

The Impact of Portuguese Exploration  

Portugal’s explorers changed Europeans’ understanding of the world in several ways. They explored the coasts of Africa and brought back gold and enslaved Africans. They also found a sea route to India. From India, explorers brought back spices, such as cinnamon and pepper, and other goods, such as porcelain, incense, jewels, and silk.

After Cabral’s voyage, the Portuguese took control of the eastern sea routes to Asia. They seized the seaport of Goa (GOH-uh) in India and built forts there. They attacked towns on the east coast of Africa. They also set their sights on the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, in what is now Indonesia. In 1511, they attacked the main port of the islands and killed the Muslim defenders. The captain of this expedition explained what was at stake. If Portugal could take the spice trade away from Muslim traders, he wrote, then Cairo and Makkah “will be ruined.” As for Italian merchants, “Venice will receive no spices unless her merchants go to buy them in Portugal.”

Portugal’s control of the Indian Ocean broke the hold Muslims and Italians had on Asian trade. With the increased competition, prices of Asian goods—such as spices and fabrics—dropped, and more people in Europe could afford to buy them.

During the 1500s, Portugal also began to establish colonies in Brazil. The native people of Brazil suffered greatly as a result. The Portuguese forced them to work on sugar plantations, or large farms. They also tried to get them to give up their religion and convert to Christianity. Missionaries sometimes tried to protect them from abuse, but countless numbers of native peoples died from overwork and from European diseases. Others fled into the interior of Brazil.

The colonization of Brazil also had a negative impact on Africa. As the native population of Brazil decreased, the Portuguese needed more laborers. Starting in the mid–1500s, they turned to Africa. Over the next 300 years, ships brought millions of enslaved West Africans to Brazil.

Later Spanish Exploration and Conquest

After Columbus’s voyages, Spain was eager to claim even more lands in the New World. To explore and conquer “New Spain,” the Spanish turned to adventurers called conquistadors , or conquerors. The conquistadors were allowed to establish settlements and seize the wealth of natives. In return, the Spanish government claimed some of the treasures they found.

Key Explorers

In 1519, Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés (er–NAHN koor–TEZ), with and a band of fellow conquistadors, set out to explore present-day Mexico. Native people in Mexico told Cortés about the Aztecs. The Aztecs had built a large and wealthy empire in Mexico.

With the help of a native woman named Malinche (mah–LIN–chay), Cortés and his men reached the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán (tay–nawh–tee–TLAHN). The Aztec ruler, Moctezuma II, welcomed the Spanish with great honors. Determined to break the power of the Aztecs, Cortés took Moctezuma hostage.

Cortés now controlled the Aztec capital. In 1520, he left the city of Tenochtitlán to battle a rival Spanish force. While he was away, a group of conquistadors attacked the Aztecs in the middle of a religious celebration. In response, the Aztecs rose up against the Spanish. The soldiers had to fight their way out of the city. Many of them were killed during the escape.

The following year, Cortés mounted a siege of the city, aided by thousands of native allies who resented Aztec rule. The Aztecs ran out of food and water, yet they fought desperately. After several months, the Spanish captured the Aztec leader, and Aztec resistance collapsed. The city was in ruins. The mighty Aztec Empire was no more.

Four factors contributed to the defeat of the Aztec Empire. First, Aztec legend had predicted the arrival of a white-skinned god. When Cortés appeared, the Aztecs welcomed him because they thought he might be this god, Quetzalcoatl. Second, Cortés was able to make allies of the Aztecs’ enemies. Third, their horses, armor, and superior weapons gave the Spanish an advantage in battle. Fourth, the Spanish carried diseases that caused deadly epidemics among the Aztecs.

Aztec riches inspired Spanish conquistadors to continue their search for gold. In the 1520s, Francisco Pizarro received permission from Spain to conquer the Inca Empire in South America. The Incas ruled an empire that extended throughout most of the Andes Mountains. By the time Pizarro arrived, however, a civil war had weakened that empire.

In April 1532, the Incan emperor, Atahualpa (ah–tuh–WAHL–puh), greeted the Spanish as guests. Following Cortés’s example, Pizarro launched a surprise attack and kidnapped the emperor. Although the Incas paid a roomful of gold and silver in ransom, the Spanish killed Atahualpa. Without their leader, the Inca Empire quickly fell apart.

The Impact of Later Spanish Exploration and Conquest  

The explorations and conquests of the conquistadors transformed Spain. The Spanish rapidly expanded foreign trade and overseas colonization. For a time, wealth from the Americas made Spain one of the world’s richest and most powerful countries.

Besides gold and silver, ships from the Americas brought corn and potatoes to Spain. These crops grew well in Europe. The increased food supply helped spur a population boom. Conquistadors also introduced Europeans to new luxury items, such as chocolate.

In the long run, however, gold and silver from the Americas hurt Spain’s economy. Inflation, or an increase in the supply of money, led to a loss of its value. It now cost people a great deal more to buy goods with the devalued money. Additionally, monarchs and the wealthy spent their riches on luxuries, instead of building Spain’s industries.

The Spanish conquests had a major impact on the New World. The Spanish introduced new animals to the Americas, such as horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs. But they destroyed two advanced civilizations. The Aztecs and Incas lost much of their culture along with their wealth. Many became laborers for the Spanish. Millions died from disease. In Mexico, for example, there were about twenty-five million native people in 1519. By 1605, this number had dwindled to one million.

Other European Explorations

Spain and Portugal dominated the early years of exploration. But rulers in rival nations wanted their own share of trade and new lands in the Americas. Soon England, France, and the Netherlands all sent expeditions to North America.

Key Explorers  

Explorers often sailed for any country that would pay for their voyages. The Italian sailor John Cabot made England’s first voyage of discovery. Cabot believed he could reach the Indies by sailing northwest across the Atlantic. In 1497, he landed in what is now Canada. Believing he had reached the northeast coast of Asia, he claimed the region for England.

Another Italian, Giovanni da Verrazano, sailed under the French flag. In 1524, Verrazano explored the Atlantic coast from present-day North Carolina to Canada. His voyage gave France its first claims in the Americas. Unfortunately, on a later trip to the West Indies, he was killed by native people.

Sailing on behalf of the Netherlands, English explorer Henry Hudson journeyed to North America in 1609. Hudson wanted to find a northwest passage through North America to the Pacific Ocean. Such a water route would allow ships to sail from Europe to Asia without entering waters controlled by Spain.

Hudson did not find a northwest passage, but he did explore what is now called the Hudson River in present-day New York State. His explorations were the basis of the Dutch claim to the area. Dutch settlers established the colony of New Amsterdam on Manhattan in 1625.

In 1610, Hudson tried again, this time under the flag of his native England. Searching farther north, he sailed into a large bay in Canada that is now called Hudson Bay. He spent three months looking for an outlet to the Pacific, but there was none.

After a hard winter in the icy bay, some of Hudson’s crew rebelled. They set him, his son, and seven loyal followers adrift in a small boat. Hudson and the other castaways were never seen again. Hudson’s voyage, however, laid the basis for later English claims in Canada.

The Impact of European Exploration of North America  

Unlike the conquistadors in the south, northern explorers did not find gold and other treasure. As a result, there was less interest, at first, in starting colonies in that region.

Canada’s shores did offer rich resources of cod and other fish. Within a few years of Cabot’s trip, fishing boats regularly visited the region. Europeans were also interested in trading with Native Americans for whale oil and otter, beaver, and fox furs. By the early 1600s, Europeans had set up a number of trading posts in North America.

English exploration also contributed to a war between England and Spain. As English ships roamed the seas, some captains, nicknamed “sea dogs,” began raiding Spanish ports and ships to take their gold. Between 1577 and 1580, sea dog Francis Drake sailed around the world. He also claimed part of what is now California for England, ignoring Spain’s claims to the area.

The English raids added to other tensions between England and Spain. In 1588, King Philip II of Spain sent an armada, or fleet of ships, to invade England. With 130 heavily armed vessels and about thirty thousand men, the Spanish Armada seemed an unbeatable force. But the smaller English fleet was fast and well armed. Their guns had a longer range, so they could attack from a safe distance. After several battles, a number of the armada’s ships had been sunk or driven ashore. The rest turned around but faced terrible storms on the way home. Fewer than half of the ships made it back to Spain.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada marked the start of a shift in power in Europe. By 1630, Spain no longer dominated the continent. With Spain’s decline, other countries—particularly England and the Netherlands—took a more active role in trade and colonization around the world.

Bartolomé de Las Casas: From Conquistador to Protector of the Indians

Bartolomé de las Casas experienced a remarkable change of heart during his lifetime. At first, he participated in Spain’s conquest and settlement of the Americas. Later in life, he criticized and condemned it. For more than fifty years, he fought for the rights of the defeated and enslaved peoples of Latin America. How did this conquistador become known as “the Protector of the Indians?”

Bartolomé de las Casas (bahr–taw–law–MEY day las KAH-sahs) ran through the streets of Seville, Spain, on March 31, 1493. He was just nine years old and on his way to see Christopher Columbus, who had just returned from his first voyage to the Americas. Bartolomé wanted to see him and the “Indians,” as they were called, as they paraded to the church.

Bartolomé’s father and uncles were looking forward to seeing Columbus, as well. Like many other people in Europe during the late 1400s, they saw the Americas as a place of opportunity. They signed up to join Columbus on his second voyage. Two years after that, Bartolomé followed in his father’s footsteps and voyaged to the Americas himself. He sailed to the island of Hispaniola, the present-day nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Las Casas as Conquistador and Priest

One historian wrote that when Las Casas first arrived in the Americas, he was “not much better than the rest of the gentlemen-adventurers who rushed to the New World, bent on speedily acquiring fortunes.” He supported the Spanish conquest of the Americas and was a loyal servant of Spain’s king and queen, Ferdinand and Isabella. Once in Hispaniola, Las Casas helped to manage his father’s farms and businesses. Enslaved Indians worked in the family’s fields and mines.

Spanish conquistadors wanted to gain wealth and glory in the Americas. They had another goal, as well—to convert Indians to Christianity. Las Casas shared this goal. So, the young conquistador went back to Europe to become a priest. He returned to Hispaniola sometime in 1509 or 1510. There he began to teach and baptize the Indians. At the same time, he continued to manage Indian slaves.

On a Path to Change

History often seems to be made up of moments when someone has a change of heart. The path that he or she has been traveling takes a dramatic turn. It often appears to others that this change is sudden. In reality, a series of events usually causes a person to make the decision to change. One such event happened to Las Casas in 1511.

Roman Catholics in Hispaniola witnessed horrible acts of cruelty and injustice against the native peoples of the West Indies at the hands of the Spanish conquistadors. One of the priests there, Father Antonio de Montesinos, spoke out against the harsh treatment of the Indians in a sermon delivered to a Spanish congregation in Hispaniola in 1511. De Montesinos said:

You are in mortal sin . . . for the cruelty and tyranny you use in dealing with these innocent people . . . by what right or justice do you keep these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude? . . . Why do you keep them so oppressed? . . . Are not these people also human beings?

One historian called this sermon “the first cry for justice in America” on behalf of the Indians. Las Casas recorded the sermon in one of his books, History of the Indies . No one is sure if he was present at the sermon or heard about it later. But one thing seems certain; even though he must have seen some of the same injustices described by de Montesinos, Las Casas continued to support the Spanish conquest and the goals of conquering new lands, earning wealth, and converting Indians to Christianity.

However, in 1513, something happened that changed Las Casas’s life. He took part in the conquest of Cuba. As a reward, he received more Indian slaves and an encomienda , or land grant. But he also witnessed a massacre. The Spanish killed thousands of innocent Indians, including women and children, who had welcomed the Spanish into their town. In his book The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account , he wrote, “I saw here cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see.”

A Turning Point

The Cuban massacre in 1513 and other scenes of violence against Indians Las Casas witnessed finally pushed him to a turning point. He could no longer believe that the Spanish conquest was right. Before, he had thought that only some individuals acted cruelly and inhumanely. Now he saw that the whole Spanish system of conquest brought only death and suffering to the people of the West Indies.

On August 15, 1514, when he was about thirty years old, Las Casas gave a startling sermon. He asked his congregation to free their enslaved Indians. He also said that they had to return or pay for everything they had taken away from the Indians. He refused to forgive the colonists’ sins in confession if they used Indians as forced labor. Then he announced that he would give up his ownership of Indians and the business he had inherited from his father.

Protector of the Indians

For the rest of his life, Las Casas fought for the rights of the Indians in the Americas. He traveled back and forth to Europe working on their behalf. He talked with popes and kings, debated enemies, and wrote letters and books on the subject.

Las Casas influenced both a pope and a king. In 1537, Pope Paul III wrote that Indians were free human beings, not slaves, and that anyone who enslaved them could be thrown out of the Catholic Church. In 1542, Holy Roman emperor Charles V, who ruled Spain, issued the New Laws, banning slavery in Spanish America.

In 1550 and 1551, Las Casas also took part in a famous debate against Juan Ginés Sepúlveda in Spain. Sepúlveda tried to prove that Indians were “natural slaves.” Many Spanish, especially those hungry for wealth and glory, shared this belief. Las Casas passionately argued against Sepúlveda with the same message he would deliver over and over throughout his life. Las Casas argued that:

• Indians, like all human beings, have rights to life and liberty. • The Spanish stole Indian land through bloody and unjust wars. • There is no such thing as a good encomienda. • Indians have the right to make war against the Spanish.

Las Casas died in 1566. The voices and the deeds of the conquistadors slowly eroded the memory of his words. But in other European countries, people began to read The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account . As time passed, more of Las Casas’s works were published. In the centuries to follow, fighters for justice took up his name as a symbol for their own struggles for human rights.

The Legacy of Las Casas

Today, historians remember Las Casas as the first person to actively oppose the oppression of Indians and to call for an end to Indian slavery. Later, in the 19th century, Las Casas inspired both Father Hidalgo, the father of Mexican independence, and Simón Bolívar, the liberator of South America.

In the 1960s, Mexican American César Chávez learned about injustice at an early age. His family worked as migrants, moving from place to place to pick crops. With barely an eighth-grade education, Chávez organized workers, formed a union, and won better pay and better working and living conditions. Speaking for the powerless, he rallied people to his side with his cry, “Sí, Se Puede!” (“Yes, We Can!”) Just as the name “Chávez” will always be connected to the struggles of the farm workers, the name “Las Casas” will forever be connected to any fight for human rights and dignity for the native people of the Americas.

The Impact of Exploration on Europe

The voyages of explorers had a dramatic impact on European commerce and economies. As a result of exploration, more goods, raw materials, and precious metals entered Europe. Mapmakers carefully charted trade routes and the locations of newly discovered lands. By the 1700s, European ships traveled trade routes that spanned the globe. New centers of commerce developed in the port cities of the Netherlands and England.

Exploration and trade contributed to the growth of capitalism. This economic system is based on investing money for profit. Merchants gained great wealth by trading and selling goods from around the world. Many of them used their profits to finance still more voyages and to start trading companies. Other people began investing money in these companies and shared in the profits. Soon, this type of shared ownership was applied to other kinds of businesses.

Another aspect of the capitalist economy concerned the way people exchanged goods and services. Money became more important as precious metals flowed into Europe. Instead of having a fixed price, items were sold for prices that were set by the open market. This meant that the price of an item depended on how much of the item was available and how many people wanted to buy it. Sellers could charge high prices for scarce items that many people wanted. If the supply of an item was large and few people wanted it, sellers lowered the price. This kind of system, based on supply and demand, is called a market economy.

Labor, too, was given a money value. Increasingly, people began working for hire instead of directly providing for their own needs. Merchants hired people to work from their own cottages, turning raw materials from overseas into finished products. This growing cottage industry was especially important in the manufacture of textiles. Often, entire families worked at home, spinning wool into thread or weaving thread into cloth. Cottage industry was a step toward the system of factories operated by capitalists in later centuries.

A final result of exploration was a new economic policy called mercantilism. European rulers believed that building up wealth was the best way to increase a nation’s power. For this reason, they tried to reduce the products they bought from other countries and to increase the items they sold.

Having colonies was a key part of this policy. Nations looked to their colonies to supply raw materials for their industries at home. These industries turned the raw materials into finished goods that they could sell back to their colonies, as well as to other countries. To protect this valuable trade with their colonies, rulers often forbade colonists from trading with other nations.

Originally published by Flores World History , free and open access, republished for educational, non-commercial purposes.

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Christopher Columbus

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 11, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

The explorer Christopher Columbus made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain: in 1492, 1493, 1498 and 1502. He was determined to find a direct water route west from Europe to Asia, but he never did. Instead, he stumbled upon the Americas. Though he did not “discover” the so-called New World—millions of people already lived there—his journeys marked the beginning of centuries of exploration and colonization of North and South America.

Christopher Columbus and the Age of Discovery

During the 15th and 16th centuries, leaders of several European nations sponsored expeditions abroad in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast undiscovered lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in this “ Age of Discovery ,” also known as “ Age of Exploration .”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods as well as enslaved people from Asia and Africa to Europe.

Did you know? Christopher Columbus was not the first person to propose that a person could reach Asia by sailing west from Europe. In fact, scholars argue that the idea is almost as old as the idea that the Earth is round. (That is, it dates back to early Rome.)

Other European nations, particularly Spain, were eager to share in the seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of the 15th century, Spain’s “ Reconquista ”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom after centuries of war—was complete, and the nation turned its attention to exploration and conquest in other areas of the world.

The Voyages of Christopher Columbus: Timeline

• 1451 Columbus is born
• 1492–1493 Columbus sails to the Americas
• 1493–1496 Columbus returns to Hispaniola
• 1498–1500 Columbus seeks a strait to India
• 1502–1504 Columbus's last voyage
• 1506 Columbus dies

Christopher Columbus is born in the Republic of Genoa. He begins sailing in his teens and survives a shipwreck off the coast of Portugal in 1476. In 1484, he seeks aid from Portugal’s King John II for a voyage to cross the Atlantic Ocean and reach Asia from the east, but the king declines to fund it.

After securing funding from Spain’s King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella, Columbus makes his first voyage to the Americas with three ships—the Niña , the Pinta and the Santa Maria . In October 1492, his expedition makes landfall in the modern-day country of The Bahamas. Columbus establishes a settlement on the island of Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic).

In November 1943, Columbus returns to the settlement on Hispaniola to find the Europeans he left there dead. During this second voyage, which lasts over two years, Columbus’ expedition establishes an “encomienda” system. Under this system, Spanish subjects seize land and force Native people to work on it. More

In the summer of 1498, Columbus—still believing he’s reached Asia from the east—sets out on this third voyage with the goal of finding a strait from present-day Cuba to India. He makes his first landfall in South America and plants a Spanish flag in present-day Venezuela. After failing to find the strait, he returns to Hispaniola, where Spanish authorities arrest him for the brutal way he runs the colony there. In 1500, Columbus returns to Spain in chains. More

The Spanish government strips Columbus of his titles but still frees him and finances one last voyage , although it forbids him return to Hispaniola. Still in search of a strait to India, Columbus makes it as far as modern-day Panama, which straddles the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In his return journey, his ships become beached in present-day Jamaica and he and his crew live as castaways for a year before rescue. More

On May 20, 1506, Columbus dies in Valladolid, Spain at age 54, still asserting that he reached the eastern part of Asia by sailing across the Atlantic. Despite the fact that the Spanish government pays him a tenth of the gold he looted in the Americas, Columbus spends the last part of his life petitioning the crown for more recognition.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son of a wool merchant, is believed to have been born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451. When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a merchant ship. He remained at sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap of wood and made his way to Lisbon, where he eventually studied mathematics, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He also began to hatch the plan that would change the world forever.

Columbus’ Quest for Gold

On Christopher Columbus’s second voyage to the Americas, he enslaved the Indigenous people and forced them to mine for gold.

Columbus’ Mutinous Crew

After 60 days and no sign of their destination, Columbus’ doubtful crew wanted to turn back.

How Early Humans First Reached the Americas: 3 Theories

How and when did humans first set foot in North America? Here are three theories.

Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the 15th century, it was nearly impossible to reach Asia from Europe by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking to the sea: They sailed south along the West African coast and around the Cape of Good Hope.

But Columbus had a different idea: Why not sail west across the Atlantic instead of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was sound, but his math was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of the Earth was much smaller than his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that the journey by boat from Europe to Asia should be not only possible, but comparatively easy via an as-yet undiscovered Northwest Passage . 

He presented his plan to officials in Portugal and England, but it was not until 1492 that he found a sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile .

Columbus wanted fame and fortune. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the same, along with the opportunity to export Catholicism to lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was equally enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could keep 10 percent of whatever riches he found, along with a noble title and the governorship of any lands he should encounter.

Exploration of North America

The Vikings Discover the New World The first attempt by Europeans to colonize the New World occurred around 1000 A.D. when the Vikings sailed from the British Isles to Greenland, established a colony and then moved on to Labrador, the Baffin Islands and finally Newfoundland. There they established a colony named Vineland (meaning fertile region) […]

The Viking Explorer Who Beat Columbus to America

Leif Eriksson Day commemorates the Norse explorer believed to have led the first European expedition to North America.

Christopher Columbus Never Set Out to Prove the Earth was Round

Humans have known the earth is round for thousands of years.

Where Did Columbus' Ships, Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria, Land?

On August 3, 1492, Columbus and his crew set sail from Spain in three ships: the Niña , the Pinta and the Santa Maria . On October 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, as Columbus assumed, but on one of the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from island to island in what we now know as the Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and merchandise whatsoever” that he had promised to his Spanish patrons, but he did not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind in a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he left for Spain.

He kept a detailed diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, it also recorded his initial impressions of the local people and his argument for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features… They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal to Isabella upon his return.

10 Things You May Not Know About Christopher Columbus

Check out 10 things you may not know about the Genoese explorer who sailed the ocean blue in 1492.

The Ships of Christopher Columbus Were Sleek, Fast—and Cramped

Two of Christopher Columbus’ ships were so small that men had no refuge to sleep and poor food storage led to wormy meals.

Christopher Columbus: How The Explorer’s Legend Grew—and Then Drew Fire

Columbus's famed voyage to the New World was celebrated by Italian‑Americans, in particular, as a pathway to their own acceptance in America.

Christopher Columbus's Later Voyages

About six months later, in September 1493, Columbus returned to the Americas. He found the Hispaniola settlement destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved indigenous people.

Then he headed west to continue his mostly fruitless search for gold and other goods. His group now included a large number of indigenous people the Europeans had enslaved. In lieu of the material riches he had promised the Spanish monarchs, he sent some 500 enslaved people to Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic for the third time. He visited Trinidad and the South American mainland before returning to the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, where the colonists had staged a bloody revolt against the Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities had to send a new governor to take over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search for gold and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus landed, only a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and returned to Spain in chains. 

In 1502, cleared of the most serious charges but stripped of his noble titles, the aging Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown to pay for one last trip across the Atlantic. This time, Columbus made it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where he had to abandon two of his four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the explorer returned to Spain, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus did not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland and Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation on the American continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an American food staple. African coffee and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin America, while American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy —he is remembered as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually devastate the native populations he and his fellow explorers encountered.

HISTORY Vault: Columbus the Lost Voyage

Ten years after his 1492 voyage, Columbus, awaiting the gallows on criminal charges in a Caribbean prison, plotted a treacherous final voyage to restore his reputation.

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Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities

The Age of Exploration

The Age of Exploration began in earnest with the first voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492 and ended, at least where present-day Virginians are concerned, with the founding of Jamestown in 1607. When Columbus stumbled into two unknown continents, he had been looking for a quick route to the Far East, and, for decades to come, explorers focused on discovering that passage almost as much as they did on exploiting the New World. Early in the sixteenth century, the Spaniards conquered three major civilizations in Central and South America, and in the process unleashed a devastating biological exchange that killed an estimated 95 percent of the area’s inhabitants between 1492 and 1650. The Spanish then turned their sights north, planting short-lived colonies on the shores of present-day Georgia and South Carolina and pursuing what came to be known as the Chicora Legend: the belief that the best land, as well as a passage to China, could be found in the area of the Chesapeake Bay. While the French and later the English explored the far northern latitudes of the Atlantic Ocean, the Spanish slowly worked their way up the coast from present-day Florida, a quest that ended only when a Virginia Indian called Don Luís (Paquiquineo) led a fatal attack on a group of Jesuit missionaries in 1571. This defeat helped make room for the English, whose failed colonies at Roanoke in 1585 and 1587 led, finally, to the permanent settlement at Jamestown.

For Europeans of the Late Middle Ages, the known world was relatively small, mysterious, and imbued with Christian symbols. A popular kind of map, the T-O map, divided the world into three regions—Asia, Europe, and Africa—separated by the T-shaped intersection of the Mediterranean Sea and the Don and Nile rivers. All of this was contained within a large circle with Jerusalem at its center. For some mapmakers, the T shape called to mind the cross on which Jesus had died, and they seized on this image to incorporate Christ into the geography of the world.

These maps were oriented with the east at the top, privileging where Christians believed life had begun. Many Europeans thought the history of civilization would follow the same path as the sun: rising (Latin oriens ) in the east and falling ( occidens ) in the west. In the twelfth century, the German bishop Otto of Freising wrote “that because all human learning began in the Orient and will end in the Occident, the mutability and disappearance of all things is demonstrated.” In other words, the apocalypse would happen somewhere in the West, and it was important to many Christians that nonbelievers be baptized before the end came. Although this helped motivate the explorations that led Europeans to America, it does not explain them.

When the Age of Exploration began, the Far East was more advanced than Europe in terms of technology, economy, and culture. Still, the Mediterranean Sea was already a zone of thriving trade and those who did business there, including the Chinese, had little motivation to seek out other lands. Western Europe, by comparison, was poor in wealth and resources. Although western Europeans had benefited from thousands of years of Eastern innovations in farming, mining, language, and religion, they lived far from economic and cultural centers and, for that reason, had an interest in finding new connections.

Geography aided this search. Although early in the 1400s western Europeans were far behind the Chinese in their understanding of navigation, they took advantage of their Atlantic coastlines and used the century to catch up. First, European explorers claimed many of the Atlantic’s nearby islands. In 1402 soldiers from the kingdom of Castile landed on the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa, near present-day Morocco and Western Sahara, and conquered the natives who lived there. Portugal then claimed the island of Madeira, just north of the Canaries, in 1418; the Azores, farther out in the Atlantic, in 1431; and Cape Verde, off the coast of present-day Mauritania and Senegal, in 1456.

They used these new lands to establish sugar plantations run on enslaved labor and as outposts for explorations farther west into the open Atlantic and farther south along the coast of Africa. These conquests also helped to demonstrate how western Europeans might fund their new empires: loans by Genoese merchants funded ships and crews, and were repaid through the profits reaped from slave sales and sugar production.

The First Voyages West

Some historians have suggested that one key distinction between the Europeans and their Far East counterparts was the European idealization of the adventurer. Certainly the 1490s proved to be a golden age for adventurers. In 1492, the Genoese captain Christopher Columbus convinced the king and queen of Spain to sponsor his exploration west across the Atlantic Ocean. He mistakenly believed the world to be much smaller than geographers had previously estimated, and for this reason he argued that by sailing west he could find a quick route to the (East) Indies, still a lucrative trade zone.

Columbus assumed he had found the Indies. It took him and his fellow Europeans a while to understand that he had, in fact, come across two previously unknown continents: North and South America. Even then they assumed that the land mass must be narrow enough to provide easy passage to China. So while Columbus established a colony on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), navigated the coast of Cuba, and touched the tip of South America, another Italian, John Cabot (Zuan Chabotto), set off from England. Cabot went in search of the so-called Northwest Passage to China, hoping to connect Bristol to that region’s spice trade. Like Columbus, he failed. (He did, however, discover Newfoundland.) Not until Vasco da Gama sailed around the southern tip of Africa and arrived near Calicut, India, in 1498, did Europeans navigate by sea to the actual Indies—a place, as it happens, where their trade goods were of only mediocre value.

These western voyages, especially the four led by Columbus, were important for several reasons. One was Columbus’s discovery of a reliable sailing route west using the Atlantic system of trade winds. By following the northeasterly trade winds south and then west, and the westerly trade winds back east, Columbus demonstrated how others might make the round trip in the future. Another was the discovery, by Juan Ponce de León in 1513, of the Gulf Stream off the coast of what he named La Florida. This strong ocean current, caused by the sinking of cold water and the rising of hot, allowed Spanish captains an even quicker route to the westerly trade winds and back home.

A third, more critical result of Columbus’s voyages was their effect on the indigenous populations of America. Prior to Columbus, there had been virtually no biological interaction between Europe and Asia on the one hand and North and South America on the other. With Columbus and his followers arrived new people, new plants and animals, and new diseases in what the scholar A. W. Crosby has dubbed the Columbian Exchange. The exchange went both ways, of course, but for various reasons Europeans were much less vulnerable. Scholars estimate, for instance, that between 1492 and 1650, 95 percent of all the inhabitants of the Neotropic ecozone, an area covering Central and South America, died of disease. This massive depopulation resulted in significant changes in the environment and may even have led, according to at least one scientist, to a cooling of worldwide temperatures .

The World Divided in Two

Columbus’s voyages sparked intense competition between Spain and Portugal. On May 4, 1493, Pope Alexander VI, a Spaniard, issued a bull, Inter caetera , that attempted to ease tensions. He decreed that all newly discovered lands west of a line of longitude running through the eastern part of present-day Brazil belonged to Spain, and everything east to Portugal. The two nations confirmed the ruling at the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed the next year.

On their side of the line, the Spaniards conquered the Aztecs, Mayas, and Incas. Those American Indians they did not kill, they enslaved and attempted to convert to Christianity. In 1545, the Spanish founded Potosí, a mining town in present-day Bolivia. Within the decade they were unearthing hundreds of metric tons of pure silver annually and transporting it in galleons back to Europe, where King Charles V and later his son, King Philip II, used it to pay for Spanish wars against Muslims and Protestants.

In the meantime, exploration continued. Amerigo Vespucci sailed down the coast of South America in 1499, and in 1500, the Portuguese mariner Pedro Alvares Cabral, looking to follow Vasco da Gama’s lead and navigate around Africa, instead was blown west and into Brazil. He claimed it for Portugal. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese captain sailing for Spain, led a crew that circumnavigated the globe in a voyage that lasted from 1519 until 1522. As Columbus did with the Atlantic, Magellan showed the way across the Pacific Ocean before being killed in the island group now known as the Philippines. By the 1570s the Spanish had claimed these islands, named them for their king, and established ports connecting the spice trade of the East with the resources extracted from the New World. Western Europeans were finally at the hub of a new and fully global economy.

The Spanish Move Toward Virginia

Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press, invented about 1450, made possible the kind of publicity that became a driving force in the Age of Exploration. In 1503, for instance, printers in Venice, Paris, and Antwerp all published Mundus novus , a Latin pamphlet that served as a highly exaggerated, some have argued even fictionalized, version of several genuine letters written by Amerigo Vespucci after his voyages to the New World. Within just a few years, the popularity of Mundus novus led to at least one profound consequence: in 1507 the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller published Universalis Cosmographia , the first world map to use the name “America.”

In 1530, another Latin book was published, this time posthumously: De Orbe Novo by Peter Martyr d’Anghiera. In it, the Italian-born historian provided a comprehensive account of Spanish exploration and conquest, including the story of Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón , under whose partial auspices two ships in search of people to enslave sailed up the Atlantic coast of North America in July and August 1521. The ships likely anchored off the coasts of present-day Georgia and South Carolina, but the captains and then later Ayllón exaggerated how far north they had sailed. They told the king they had visited the area now known as the Chesapeake Bay because its latitude is roughly the same as Andalucía, a Spanish region rich with pearls, gold and silver, grapes, and olives. (By the logic of the age, lands on the same latitude should have similar climates and produce similar natural resources.)

In what has come to be known as the Chicora Legend, this bit of deception found a home in De Orbe Novo . And despite Ayllón’s failed colony, established in 1526 at Sapelo Sound in present-day McIntosh County, Georgia, it fueled interest in the land that would later become Virginia. In 1529, for instance, the Portuguese cartographer Diogo de Ribeiro created a padrón general , or master map, for the House of Trade in Seville, Spain. It described the area of Ayllón’s settlement as “well suited to yield breadstuff, wine and all things of Spain.”

Meanwhile, in 1524 Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine working for France, sailed along the Atlantic coast but apparently did not notice the Chesapeake Bay. In the Outer Banks region of present-day North Carolina, however, he claimed to have seen the Pacific Ocean in the distance. In 1525, the Spaniard Esteban Gómez, who had sailed with Magellan, also explored up the coast. And then, in the spring of 1528, Pánfilo de Narváez landed near present-day Tampa Bay, Florida, and initiated what amounted to a decades-long Spanish march north and west along the Gulf coast. It began in unpromising fashion, however. Narváez died later that year, and only after an epic, eight-year journey did a handful of survivors finally reach Mexico. One of those, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, authored a popular account of his adventure .

In 1537, even before Narváez’s fate was known for sure, the Spanish king granted Hernando de Soto the right to explore the newly created province of La Florida, an area that stretched from the Delaware Bay in the north to Mexico’s Pánuco River in the south, and included much of the present-day American Southeast, Texas, and parts of northern Mexico. Soto landed near Tampa Bay in 1539 and traveled north to the abandoned site of Ayllón’s 1526 settlement. From there he marched west instead of north, and by the spring of 1541 he had reached the Mississippi River.

Despite that achievement, or rather because Soto had found nothing to rival the silver of Potosí, the Spanish king seemed to lose interest in Florida. True, he guarded America jealously, even making plans to wipe out a French colony that was planted near present-day Quebec during explorations by the French captains Jacques Cartier and Jean-François de La Roque de Roberval. (The colony failed before an attack could be made.) But there were no major expeditions until, as it happens, the French spurred Philip II to action. Worried that his European rival planned to stake a claim in La Florida, he ordered that a settlement be established at the Point of Santa Elena, near present-day Parris Island, South Carolina.

What followed was a bloody test of wills between Spanish Catholics and French Protestants, with the Spaniards’ designs on present-day Virginia ending only when a baptized Indian killed three Spanish Jesuits in 1571.

From Saint Augustine to Ajacán

From the Inter caetera bull in 1493 to a more detailed arrangement made in 1508, the pope demanded that his servants in the New World “instruct” the Indians they encountered in Christian teachings. In 1513, the Spaniards introduced el Requerimiento , a document to be read to Indians in Spanish introducing them to church doctrine. Indians were not compelled to convert, but if they did not, they were immediately subject to Spanish invasion. Of course, if they did convert, they were also subject to the Spaniards, who were the pope’s official representatives in the New World.

The Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas recalled that when he first read the document he did not know “whether to laugh or cry,” and he eventually became a fierce opponent of what he perceived to be Spanish abuses in America. His book, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias , published in 1552, was enormously influential, so that by 1565, the governor of La Florida, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, declined to punish Indians who chose not to convert.

Menéndez de Avilés was less forgiving when it came to European Protestants. In 1562, the Huguenot Jean Ribault established a short-lived garrison at Charlesfort, near what the Spanish called Santa Elena. And then, two years later, René Goulaine de Laudonnière landed French troops at Fort Caroline, near present-day Jacksonville, Florida. With King Philip’s blessing, Menéndez de Avilés first founded his own settlement, Saint Augustine, and then, in September 1565, attacked and destroyed Fort Caroline, killing about 140 Frenchmen and capturing 70 women and children. He then set his sights to the north.

It is possible Menéndez de Avilés was influenced by Historia general de las Indias by Francisco Lopez de Gómara, a book published in 1552 that renewed interest in Ayllón’s vision of a New Andalucía at the Chesapeake Bay. By 1570 he had approved a Jesuit mission to the Chesapeake led by Father Juan Baptista de Segura and a baptized Virginia Indian, Don Luís de Velasco, who called his land Ajacán. The Spanish had always been interested in finding the Northwest Passage for commercial reasons, but by this time, the Jesuits were interested in it, too. They had largely written off La Florida as a place to evangelize and hoped that such a passage could quickly take their priests to the more promising land of China.

Segura and his compatriots reached present-day Virginia on September 10, 1570, finishing what Pánfilo de Narváez had begun in 1528. It ended no better for Segura than it did for Narváez, however. In February 1571, Don Luís (also known as Paquiquineo) led a group of Indians that wiped out the mission and for all intents and purposes ended Spanish designs on the Chesapeake Bay.

The English Step In

After the Spanish presence in the Chesapeake Bay had been eliminated, the English moved in. They had been bit players in the New World up to that point, unsuccessfully attempting to save the French settlement at Charlesfort in 1563 and looting the Spanish galleons transporting gold and silver back to Spain. England’s most accomplished pirate, Sir Francis Drake, even circumnavigated the globe from 1577 to 1580. In three voyages from 1576 to 1578, Martin Frobisher explored the icy waters between Greenland and Canada, searching for that ever-elusive passage to China. And with a patent from Queen Elizabeth I , Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed to Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island in present-day Nova Scotia in 1583 with the goal of establishing colonies there. After he was lost at sea, Gilbert’s cousin, Walter Raleigh , took over the patent.

Raleigh assembled an elite group of would-be colonizers. These included the brilliant mathematician Thomas Hariot , who instructed sailors on the art of open-sea navigation, and Richard Hakluyt (the younger) , an Anglican minister and enthusiastic geographer, who provided compelling arguments in favor of the English settlement of America. In 1585, Raleigh funded an English colony at Roanoke in the same Outer Banks region where the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano had claimed to have seen the Pacific Ocean more than a half century earlier. Although this and a subsequent colony both failed , the colonization attempts included a visit to the Chesapeake Bay during the winter of 1585–1586. There the Englishmen found the ports to be deeper and safer and the Indians friendlier.

Although the Spaniards had largely given up their attempts to settle in this area, they still resisted English incursions. They quite reasonably feared that the English would use ports at Roanoke or in the Chesapeake as safe havens for pirates such as Sir Francis Drake and Christopher Newport . Their protection of this coastline, in other words, was a means of protecting Spanish shipping in the Caribbean. Despite their efforts, though, they did not discover the location of the Roanoke colony in time to destroy it, and although they considered an attack against the Jamestown settlement, founded in 1607 , the king refused to give the order.

So ended more than a century of feverish competition over control of the Atlantic coast and the area of present-day Virginia. Although the Spanish had long dreamed of a New Andalucía on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay, what resulted instead was a small, unlikely, and persistent English colony.

• Colonial History (ca. 1560–1763)
• Exploration
• Crosby, A. W. The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2003.
• Cushner, Nicholas P. Why Have You Come Here? The Jesuits and the First Evangelization of North America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration . New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2006.
• Hoffman, Paul E. A New Andalucia and a Way to the Orient: The American Southeast during the Sixteenth Century. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990.
• Hoffman, Paul E. Spain and the Roanoke Voyages. Raleigh: Division of Archives and History, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1987.
• Lester, Toby. The Fourth Part of the World: An Astonishing Epic of Global Discovery, Imperial Ambition, and the Birth of America . New York: Free Press, 2009.
• Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Great Explorers: The European Discovery of America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
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Voyages of Discovery – Elizabethan Explorers

Voyages of discovery.

The Elizabethan period was one in which the major European powers were engaged in many voyages of discovery. The discovery of the Americas had opened up new lands to explore. There was a desire to find faster, more economical, routes to the far east. Explorers became famous and their work has had a lasting legacy.

The Elizabethan period came as exploration of the seas and New World was emerging as one of great importance. For centuries Europe had traded with the far east, though through middle-men. The discovery of the Americas and then the first circumnavigation of the globe made exploration of economic importance. Now it was known that ships could travel around the globe, the race was on to find the fastest routes and discover new lands.

The Spanish and Portuguese empires were the first to colonise the New World of the Americas. Following this the Dutch, French and English sought to explore themselves. North America offered the Elizabethans several things. First, it was unsettled land. No Europeans had colonised it as yet. Elizabeth’s court granted Sir Walter Raleigh the rights to colonise. This attempt at a first North American Colony can be read here .

North America also offered hope. If it was possible to sail around the toe of South America, was the same true of the North? Could shipping make its way through river systems and emerge on the other side of the New World? If either of these were possible, it would speed up trade with Asia.

Searches for the Northern Passages

1497 John Cabot discovered Newfoundland

1553 Sir Henry Willoughby sets sail with 3 ships in search of a Northeast Passage. Only one ship survives, making contact with the Muscovite court of Ivan the Terrible having reached the port of Archangel.

1555 Richard Chancellor, who had sailed under Willoughby, returns to Russia and establishes the Muscovy Company.

1576 Sir Martin Frobisher sets sail in search of a Northwest passage. He fails to find one, landing instead in Greenland and Canada.

1585 John Davies uses Greenland as a stepping stone into the Northern seas. He fails to find a passage through but sails further north than any other Englishman had done previously.

At the same time as these men were sailing in search of a Northern Passage, people continued to seek out new lands. In 1577, Sir Francis Drake set sail. He was searching for new lands in the Southern Oceans. On his voyage he plundered gold from the Spanish. His voyage led him to becoming the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe. He returned to England and fame in 1580.

North America

1583 Newfoundland was claimed for England by Gilbert.

Raleigh was commissioned to establish a colony in North America. This was attempted by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, on Raleigh’s behalf, at Roanoke Island . The first colony was started in 1585. This was abandoned the following year. In 1587 a further 117 colonists were sent to reestablish the colony. Among these settlers was Elizabeth Dare, who gave birth to the first English child born in the Americas. This colony vanished without trace though, an English ship visited in 1591 and found the site abandoned.

Colonisation of the Americas was delayed due to the Spanish Armada . It resumed following the English victory.

Africa and the Slave Trade

In 1562 John Hawkins began a trade that is now thought of as horrific and inhumane. Hawkins realised that he could profit from triangular trading. He bought or captured native Africans. Then he sailed to Spanish colonies and sold them as slaves. The Spanish needed workers, Hawkins could provide them. From the New World he could return to England with goods that would reach a high price. With the three stopping points this became known as triangular trade and continued until the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1807. The trade did cause some friction with the Spanish and was sometimes linked with the privateers.

Northern Europe

In 1598 the Baltic Sea became open to British shipping. Prior to this a monopoly on trade had existed with only the Hanseatic League able to trade there. With the league losing their monopoly, the ships of British merchats could enter the Baltic and trade.

Principles of Colonisation

Richard Hakluyt wrote several pieces on the principles of colonisation. These were presented to influential people such as Sir Walter Raleigh. His work spanned the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. It was his book, The Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589), that influenced the development of Virginia.

British History – Elizabethan Era – Tudors (KS2)

British Library – Exploration and Trade in Elizabethan England

BBC – Revision guide, explorers

Encyclopedia.com – Elizabethan explorers and colonisers

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Renaissance

Age of exploration and discovery.

• During the Age of Exploration Europeans referred to the entire area of Southeast Asia and India as the "East Indies".
• The first expedition to circle the globe was led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan . Unfortunately, Magellan was killed during the expedition and did not complete the voyage.
• Some areas of the world were not fully mapped or discovered until well after the Age of Exploration including Eastern Australia , the interior of Africa, the Arctic, and the Antarctic.
• Many explorers such as Captain James Cook and Sir Francis Drake searched for a Northwest Passage to East Asia, but it wasn't until 1906 that explorer Roald Amundsen completed the journey.
• Listen to a recorded reading of this page:

Scientific Exploration During Voyages of Discovery

• First Online: 05 August 2021

Cite this chapter

• Joel Schwartz 4  

Part of the book series: Memoirs of The New York Botanical Garden ((MNYBG,volume 122))

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The age of exploration developed from scientific discoveries that took place in England’s two great universities, Cambridge and Oxford. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the study of geography helped generate the growth of new ideas. Advances in mathematical geography and cartography fed the scientific revolution and spurred naturalists to take part in voyages of discovery, allowing them to collect many species of flora and fauna hitherto unknown in the developed world. The work of England’s foremost mathematical geographer, Edward Wright (1561–1615), and the contributions of mathematician, astronomer, and physicist, Thomas Harriot (1560–1621), aided nautical exploration by putting the theoretical information they learned to practical use in navigation. Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820) stood out among naturalist-voyagers. He made several important voyages on his own before his presence as naturalist on Cook’s first epic journey; his travels on H.M.S. Endeavour (1768–71) helped prepare several young naturalists in botanical exploration. Banks helped shape the development of botany, earth science, art, horticulture, and other aspects of English science and culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries after his voyage on the Endeavour . His experience on the Endeavour , particularly the botanical investigations and the information spawned by the naturalists, artists, draftsmen, and collectors serving under him, the herbarium and library he assembled upon his return, and his relationship with Kew Gardens (“the King’s Garden”), the first botanic garden in Europe, were some of the gains realized by this and other voyages of exploration.

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Most of Harriot’s original work was lost, but some of it was reproduced in Richard Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations 3 vols. (London 1598 – 1600). This work incorporates an account of the Virginia expedition, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (London, 1588).

Tony Rice discusses these explorations in his Voyages of Discovery: Three Centuries of Natural History Exploration (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1999 [For the Natural History Museum of London]. Also see Diane Welebit’s note, “The ‘Wondrous Transformations’ of Maria Sibylla Merian,” for Garden [Publication of the New York Botanical Gardens], March/April 1988, 11–13.

Tony Rice. Voyages of Discovery , p. 14. Also a brief but useful discussion of this aspect of Linnaeus’s character is in Bil Gilbert’s “The Obscure Fame of Carl Linnaeus,” Audubon 86 (September 1984), 102–114.

Londa L. Schiebinger indicates that “Sir Hans Sloane at one end of the eighteenth century [chocolate trade] and Sir Joseph Banks at the other joined economic ventures to botanical exploration.” She describes what she calls “applied botany” as “an essential part of the projection of military might into the resource-rich East and West Indies,” crucial in “colonizing efforts in tropical climates,” Plants and Empire. Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge Mass. and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 5. Toby and Will Musgrave indicate that Banks understood the economic importance of collecting and studying “the flora of Britain’s colonial heritage,” but it “was mixed with a desire to preserve the ecosystems in which they flourished,” An Empire of Plants: People and Plants that Changed the World (London: Cassell & Co., 2000) . Banks was particularly concerned about the wholesale “felling of the cinchona trees for their valuable bark,” p. 7. Nigel Rigby reviews how Banks as a young naturalist on the Endeavour was not so much “fascinated” by the “domestication of the wilderness, nor its benefits to the Tahitians, nor even the extension of England’s imperium, but whether the planting would succeed.” Later on, “as the effective director of Kew Gardens Botanic Gardens, Banks would later become deeply involved in the global transportation of live plants and seed, and a powerful supporter of using botanical science within an imperial context, but at this point in his career he is posing purely practical questions: whether the seeds have survived the ocean voyage.” It could be argued that Brown was very much like the young Banks and would remain so, particularly later on when he was deeply concerned about the safe transport of what he collected back to Britain. “The Politics and Pragmatics of Seaborne Plant Transportation, 1769 – 1805,” pp. 81 – 100, in Science and Exploration in the Pacific European Voyages to the Southern Oceans in the Eighteenth Century Margarette Lincoln, ed. (Woodbridge, Suffolk and Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press in Association with the National Maritime Museum, 1998), p. 84.

Patrick O’Brian. Joseph Banks, A Life (Boston: David R. Godine, 1993), p. 65.

Lucile L. Brockway refers to Banks as the “unofficial founding father of Kew Gardens” in her comprehensive study of Kew, Science and Colonial Expansion. The Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens (New York: Academic Press, 1979), p. 64. Brockway indicates that “the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, directed and staffed by eminent figures in the British scientific establishment, served as a control center which regulated the flow of botanical information.” She indicates, “This botanic information was of great commercial importance, especially in regard to the tropical plantation crops, one of the sources of wealth of the Empire,” p. 7. Toby and Will Musgrave in An Empire of Plants also refer to Banks as the “unofficial director of the Royal Gardens.” They explain that because King George III and Banks shared a passion for plants, Banks was able to convince the King to have a place to research and record the entire flora of Britain’s colonies, i.e., Kew Gardens, p. 149.

Joseph Dalton Hooker, Journal of the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Banks made during Captain Cook’s First Voyage on H.M.S. Endeavour in 1768–71 to Terra del Fuego, Otahite, New Zealand, Australia, the Dutch East Indies (London and New York: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1896).

The only twentieth-century printing, done in black ink, used 30 of the original plates and was published in a limited edition of 100 copies, in 1973. In the 1970s, the British firm Alecto decided to take on the task of printing from the surviving 738 original plates, the collection named Banks’ Florilegium . The New York Botanical Garden has a set as well (set # 3). In addition to the vast botanical material—Banks and Solander had brought back over a thousand different species of plants unknown in Europe at the time, including 17,000 different individual plants—Banks gathered a wealth of information on animals. His lists of the arthropod species he collected while on the Endeavour were useful to early investigators. The botanical illustrations drawn by Parkinson supplemented the living material. Jonas Dryander’s catalogue of drawings in Banks’s library and Solander’s notes on the voyage were additional help in sorting through the collections Banks brought back. Ann Botshon’s brief summary of the fate of Banks’s project is in her note, “Banks’ Florilegium,” Garden , November/December 1981, 14 – 17.

Published in Edward Smith’s The Life of Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society with some notices of his friends and contemporaries (London and New York: John Lane Company, 1911), pp. 25 – 26, f.n. 1. When Banks gave up the opportunity of serving as a naturalist on another voyage for Cook, he was a very arrogant and difficult young man Andrea Wulf observes in her study of the early pioneers of exploration in natural history, The Brother Gardeners, Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009). She indicates that Banks over time mellowed and learned to curb his temper and be more diplomatic.

Alexander von Humboldt. Cosmos. A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe . Translated by Elise C. Otte, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). Andrea Wulf indicates in The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015) that Humboldt was a product of the German Enlightenment and investigated every natural component of the New World.

Charles H. Smith indicates that Humboldt’s written work not only inspired Alfred Russel Wallace to conduct voyages of exploration in natural history but also allowed him to embrace Humboldt’s methods of carefully examining scientific phenomena in developing scientific laws. “Alfred Russel Wallace note 8: Wallace’s earliest exposures to the writings of Alexander von Humboldt,” Archives of Natural History 45(2) (2018): 366 – 369, 366.

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Professor (emeritus) of Biology and the History of Science, College of Staten Island of the City University of New York, Swampscott, MA, USA

Joel Schwartz

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Schwartz, J. (2021). Scientific Exploration During Voyages of Discovery. In: Robert Brown and Mungo Park. Memoirs of The New York Botanical Garden, vol 122. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74859-3_2

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Co 2 in earth’s ice age cycles.

• Mathis P. Hain Mathis P. Hain University of California
• , and  Daniel M. Sigman Daniel M. Sigman Princeton University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.879
• Published online: 18 September 2024

Earth's history is marked by episodes of large-scale continental glaciation. Most recently, beginning 3 million years ago, northern hemispheric glaciation expanded and developed cyclic variations known as the ice age cycles . With the 19th-century discovery of these cycles in ice extent and climate, changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) concentration were proposed as a possible cause. Since the 1980s, scientists have produced detailed reconstructions revealing that, during ice ages, atmospheric CO 2 was as much as a third lower than its preindustrial concentration—enough to explain almost half of the approximately 5 °C ice age cooling by weakening the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect. The consensus is that the ice age climate cycles result from cyclic changes in Earth’s orbit, which redistribute sunlight between regions and seasons but do not in themselves significantly heat or cool the globe on an annual-average basis. If so, the regional and seasonal effects of orbital change must cause changes in aspects of the Earth system that then induce changes in global annual-average climate. Changes in the reflection of sunlight by the ice sheets are widely believed to have played such a role. Atmospheric CO 2 appears to be a second key Earth system property, and one that caused the ice age cycles to be global rather than simply regional phenomena. The ocean was likely the dominant driver of atmospheric CO 2 change between warm “interglacial” and cold “glacial” periods, through multiple aspects of its behavior. First, ice age cooling and other changes allowed bulk global seawater to absorb additional CO 2 from the atmosphere. Second, during ice ages, the ocean’s “biological carbon pump” was stronger: Ocean plankton and their sinking debris more effectively removed CO 2 from surface waters and the atmosphere, sequestering it in the ocean interior. Polar ocean changes were key to this stronger biological pump, involving some combination of changes in biological productivity, ocean circulation, and air–sea gas exchange. Third, the net effect of these ocean changes was to enhance deep ocean CO 2 storage and thus to dissolve calcium carbonate sediment off the seafloor, changing the ocean’s acid/base chemistry so that it absorbed additional CO 2 from the atmosphere. The specific polar ocean changes that drove the strengthening of the biological carbon pump and the ensuing seafloor calcium carbonate response are a topic of ongoing debate.

• carbon cycle
• carbon dioxide
• ocean chemistry
• Southern Ocean
• biological productivity
• biological pump

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How one family's tragedies helped unlock a cause of sudden cardiac arrest

Some 60,000 canadians suffer sudden cardiac arrest out of hospital per year. it's often unexplained, and fatal.

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Sudden cardiac arrest hits some 60,000 Canadians out of hospital each year. The heart abruptly stops beating, blood circulation and breathing halts, and when it happens outside a hospital, it's fatal in about 90 per cent of those cases.

While there are sometimes prior warning signs, such as fainting when exercising, in many cases sudden cardiac arrest is completely unexpected. Tests on survivors often don't reveal an explanation, leaving people searching for answers. 

That was the case for nearly three decades for Lauren Philion and her family in southwestern Ontario.

In the early 1990s, after collapsing on three previous occasions, her sister Jennifer died of a sudden cardiac arrest at the age of 18. In 2016, her brother Peter collapsed and died while playing baseball. He was 34 and recently married. 

In between those two tragedies, Philion herself survived a sudden cardiac arrest, collapsing at an aerobics class when she was in her early 30s.   

Cardiologists ran all the available screening such as electrocardiograms and cardiac stress tests on Philion and her siblings — including on Jennifer and Peter before their deaths — yet couldn't pinpoint a heart problem. 

"Nothing showed up on any of the tests," Philion said in an interview at her home near London, Ont. "All came back fine. All came back negative."

How one family's fatal history of sudden cardiac arrest could help save others

But now, the family's genetic history has helped lead a team of Canadian researchers to uncover a previously unknown syndrome that causes sudden cardiac arrest, and a way of testing for it.

It's called calcium release deficiency syndrome. It's linked to a variation in one gene, known as RYR2, which causes a buildup of calcium in heart cells that can eventually burst, releasing a large amount of calcium all at once, triggering a cardiac arrest.

The syndrome had until now been undetectable, with patients often showing no apparent symptoms before their first sudden cardiac arrest. 

'We had no answers for them'

The discovery is the result of collaboration by Dr. Jason Roberts, a cardiologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., and Wayne Chen, a professor and microbiologist at the University of Calgary. 

Roberts, who specializes in genetic arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats) started working on the case of Philion and her siblings nearly a decade ago. 

"We had no answers for them," Roberts said. "We had no idea whether or not we'd wake up the next day and we'd hear that a brother or sister had had a similarly tragic fate."

He said he suspected that a single gene was behind the siblings' cardiac arrests. But the challenge turned out to be bigger than just finding that gene. 

DNA analysis had shown the siblings all had a variation in the coding of the RYR2 gene. Changes to that gene have long been known to cause overactive heartbeats that can trigger cardiac arrest. However, that wasn't what was showing on Philion's or her brother's electrocardiograms (ECGs).  

As a precaution following her cardiac arrest, Philion had been given an implanted defibrillator. While she strived to go on with her life and live it fully, fear lurked in the background. 

"Every time I would exercise and get that heart rate up, I would panic and think something bad was going to happen," Philion said. "I would think, 'Oh my God, this is it, I'm done.'"   

Bronny James among those who suffered sudden cardiac arrest

Sudden cardiac arrest can strike athletic, otherwise healthy people, such as teenage basketball star Bronny James and Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin , both of whom survived. 

Cardiologists explain that it's not the same as a heart attack, which is when a blocked artery reduces the oxygen supply and damages the muscle of the heart. Sudden cardiac arrest stems from problems with the heart's electrical system.

While heart ultrasounds, ECGs and scans of the coronary arteries can reveal the cause of many cardiac arrests, researchers worldwide are trying to find the reasons behind those that remain unexplained. Now this Canadian collaboration has uncovered one such cause. 

"A cardiac arrest is a huge deal," said Roberts. "It's so important to do exhaustive workups to try to figure out what the underlying cause was." 

Roberts — who is also a scientist at the Population Health Research Institute, jointly run by McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences — sent DNA samples from Philion and her two deceased siblings to Calgary, where Chen was searching for new genetic links to sudden cardiac arrest. 

Syndrome was 'basically undetectable'

Once the researchers discovered calcium release deficiency syndrome   (CRDS), they needed to find out how to detect it on a clinical test, rather than through costly and time-consuming genetic analysis. 

"We needed to come up with a diagnostic test for this syndrome that was basically undetectable," said Chen. 

Building from work Chen had done on mice, the team found strong evidence that the heart of a human CRDS patient exhibits a particular pattern on an ECG after being stimulated to 150 beats per minute for a short period of time, then resting. 

It's a test that has never before been part of the cardiologist's standard arsenal. 

"I'm so gratified and so thrilled that the first test was working in humans," said Chen. "I'm really happy that the work that we have done can be of benefit so quickly."  

Their work was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, along with a note from the journal's editors saying there was an urgent need to publish even though it examined only 10 people with the genetic syndrome. 

• The Dose If you witness a cardiac arrest, your actions could save a life. Here's what to do

Chen and Roberts are now in the process of trying to replicate their findings on a far larger sample size, in the hope that it will lead to worldwide testing for CRDS. 

"It's really quite impressive what they've done," said Dr. Mali Worme, a cardiologist at Toronto's University Health Network who was not involved in Chen and Roberts's research. 

"I think it can add potentially to the future diagnostic tools we have for what would otherwise be an unexplained cardiac arrest," said Worme. 

Their work has provided some answers for Philion about what happened to her and her siblings, and why no one could explain it at the time. 

"It's kind of bittersweet," she said. "I'm ecstatic that somebody else isn't going to lose a brother or sister or mom or dad or a child. Obviously it hurts that it came at the cost of my brother and sister."

The discovery also provides Philion some huge relief about the future. Her three children and her two surviving brothers have all been tested for the genetic variation that causes CRDS. None of them have it. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Senior reporter

Mike Crawley covers health for CBC News. He began his career as a newspaper reporter in B.C., filed stories from 19 countries in Africa as a freelance journalist, then joined the CBC in 2005. Mike was born and raised in Saint John, N.B.

• Follow Mike Crawley on Twitter

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