Age of Discovery

The Age of Discovery or Age of Exploration was a period from the early 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century, during which European ships travelled around the world to search for new trading routes and partners to feed burgeoning capitalism in Europe. In the process, Europeans encountered peoples and mapped lands previously unknown to them. Among the most famous explorers of the period were Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Pedro Álvares Cabral, John Cabot, Yermak, Juan Ponce de León, Ferdinand Magellan, Willem Barentsz, Abel Tasman, Jacques Cartier, Willem Jansz and Captain James Cook.

The Age of Exploration was rooted in new technologies and ideas growing out of the Renaissance. These included advances in cartography, navigation, firepower weapons and shipbuilding. Many people wanted to find a route to Asia through the west of Europe. The most important development was the invention of first the carrack and then caravel in Iberia. These vessels evolved from medieval European designs with the addition of some Arabic elements. They were the first ships that could leave the relatively passive Mediterranean and sail safely on the open Atlantic.

Exploration by land

The prelude to the Age of Exploration was a series of European expeditions crossing Eurasia by land in the late Middle Ages. While the Mongols had threatened Europe with pillage and destruction they also unified much of Eurasia creating trade routes and communication lines stretching from the Middle East to China. A series of Europeans took advantage of these to explore eastwards. These were almost all Italians as the trade between Europe and the Middle East was almost completely controlled by traders from the Italian city states. Their close links to the Levant created great curiosity and commercial interest in what lay further east. The Papacy also launched expeditions in hopes of finding converts, or the fabled Prester John.

The first of these travelers was Giovanni de Plano Carpini who journeyed to Mongolia and back from 1244–1247. The most famous voyage, however, was that of Marco Polo who traveled throughout the Orient from 1271 to 1295. His journey was written up as Travels and the work was read throughout Europe.

These voyages had little immediate effect, however, the Mongol Empire collapsed almost as quickly as it formed and soon the route to the east became far more difficult and dangerous. The Black Death of the fourteenth century also blocked travel and trade. The land route to the East was always to be too long and difficult for profitable trade and it was also controlled by Islamic empires that had long battled the Europeans. The rise of the aggressive and expansionist Ottoman Empire further limited the possibilities for Europeans.

Exploration begins in Portugal

Main article: Portugal in the Age of Discovery It was not until the carrack and then the caravel were developed in Iberia that European thoughts returned to the fabled East. These explorations have a number of causes. Monetarists believe the main reason the Age of Exploration began was because of a severe shortage in bullion in Europe. The European economy was dependent on gold and silver currency, but low domestic supplies had plunged much of Europe into a recession. Another factor was the centuries long conflict between the Iberians and the Muslims to the south. The ability to outflank the Muslim states of North Africa was seen as crucial to their survival. At the same time, the Iberians learnt much from their Arab neighbours. The carrack and caravel both incorporated the Arab lateen sail that made ships far more maneuverable. It was also through the Arabs that Ancient Greek geography was rediscovered, for the first time giving European sailors some idea of the shape of Africa and Asia.

The first great wave of expeditions was launched by Portugal under Prince Henry the Navigator. Sailing out into the open Atlantic the Madeira Islands were discovered in 1419, and in 1427 the Azores, both becoming Portuguese colonies. The main project of Henry the Navigator was exploration of the West Coast of Africa. For centuries the only trade routes linking West Africa with the Mediterranean world were over the Sahara Desert. These routes were controlled by the Muslim states of North Africa, long rivals to Portugal. It was the Portuguese hope that the Islamic nations could be bypassed by trading directly with West Africa by sea. It was also hoped that south of the Sahara the states would be Christian and potential allies against the Muslims in the Maghreb. The Portuguese navigators made slow but steady progress, each year managing to push a few miles further south, and in 1434 the obstacle of Cape Bojador was overcome. Within two decades, the barrier of the Sahara had been overcome and trade in gold and slaves began in what is today Senegal. Progress continued as trading forts were built at Elmina and São Tomé e Príncipe became the first sugar producing colony. In 1482 an expedition under Diogo Cão made contact with the Kingdom of Kongo. The crucial breakthrough was in 1487 when Bartolomeu Dias rounded (and later named) the Cape of Good Hope and proved that access to the Indian Ocean was possible. In 1498 Vasco da Gama made good on this promise by reaching India.

Discovery of America

Main article: European colonization of the Americas

Portugal's rival Castile had been somewhat slower than its neighbour to begin exploring the Atlantic, and it was not until late in the fifteenth century that Castilian sailors began to compete with their Iberian neighbours. The first contest was for control of the Canary Islands, which Castile won. It was not until the union of Aragon and Castile and the completion of the reconquista that the large nation became fully committed to looking for new trade routes and colonies overseas. In 1492 the joint rulers of the nation decided to fund Christopher Columbus' expedition that they hoped would bypass Portugal's lock on Africa and the Indian Ocean reaching Asia by travelling west.

Columbus did not reach Asia, but rather found a New World, America. In 1501, the Portuguese navigator, Pedro Álvares Cabral also discovered a new world, the land that is today called Brazil. The issue of defining areas of influence became critical, being resolved by Papal intervention in 1494 when the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the world between the two powers. The Portuguese "received" everything outside of Europe east of a line that ran 270 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands; this gave them control over Africa, Asia and eastern South America (Brazil). The Spanish received everything west of this line, territory that was still almost completely unknown, and proved to be mostly the western part of the American continent plus the Pacific Ocean islands.

Columbus and other Spanish explorers were initially disappointed with their discoveries. Unlike Africa or Asia the Caribbean islanders had little to trade with the Spanish ships. The islands thus became the focus of colonization efforts. It was not until the continent itself was explored that Spain found the wealth it had sought in the form of abundant gold. In the Americas the Spanish found a number of empires that were as large and populous as those in Europe. However, small bodies of Spanish conquistadors, with large armies of allied natives, managed to conquer them. The most notable amongst the conquered nations were the Aztec in Mexico (conquered in 1521) and the Inca empire in modern Peru and Ecuador (conquered in 1532). After the conquest, pandemics of European disease devastated the native populations. Once Spanish suveranity was established the main focus became the extraction and export of gold and silver.

In 1519, the same year that Cortez's army landed in Mexico the Spanish crown funded the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese. The goal of the mission was to find the Spice Islands by travelling west, and thus placing them in the Spanish sphere. The expedition was a success and became the first to circumnavigate the world upon its return three years later.

Decline of the Portuguese monopoly

Portuguese exploration and colonization continued despite the new rivalry with Spain. The Portuguese became the first westerners to reach and trade with Japan. Under the King Manuel I the Portuguese crown launched an audacious scheme to keep control of the lands and trade routes that had been declared theirs. The strategy was to build a series of forts that would allow them to control all the major trade routes of the east. Thus forts and colonies were established on the Gold Coast, Luanda, Mozambique, Zanzibar, Mombassa, Socotra, Ormuz, Calcutta, Goa, Bombay, Malacca, Macau, and Timor. The Portuguese also controlled Brazil, which had been discovered in 1500 by Pedro Álvares Cabral and was partly on the Portuguese side of the global "divide" set at Tordesillas.

Portugal had some trouble expanding its empire inland and concentrated mostly on the coastal areas. Over time the nation proved to be simply too small to provide the funds and manpower sufficient to manage such a massive venture. The forts spread across the world were chronically undermanned and ill-equipped. They could not compete with the larger powers that slowly encroached on their empire. The days of near monopoly of east trade were numbered. Portuguese hegemony in the east was broken by Dutch, French and British explorers, who ignored the Papal division of the world. In 1580 the Spanish King Philip II became also King of Portugal, as rightful heir to the Crown after his cousin Sebastião died without sons (Philip II of Spain was grandson of Manuel I of Portugal). The combined empires were simply too big to be kept unchallenged, and to resist those challenges some of Portuguese possessions were lost or circumscribed, particularly in the West Africa, the Middle East and the Far East that were mostly surrounded by British and Dutch colonies. Bombay was given away to the British as a marriage gift. The colonies where the Portuguese presence was effective, like Macau, East Timor, and Goa, Angola and Mozambique, as well as Brazil, remained in Portuguese possession. The Dutch attempted to conquer Brazil, and at one time controlled almost half of the nation, but were eventually rebuffed.

Northern European involvement

The nations outside of Iberia refused to acknowledge the Treaty of Tordesilhas. France, the Netherlands, and Britain each had a long maritime tradition and, despite Iberian protections, the new technologies and maps soon made their way north.

The first of these missions (1497) was that of the British funded John Cabot. It was the first of a series of French and British missions exploring North America. Spain had largely ignored the northern part of the Americas as it had few people and far fewer riches than Central America. In 1525, Giovanni da Verrazzano became the first recorded European to visit the East Coast of the present-day United States. The expeditions of Cabot, Jacques Cartier (first voyage 1534) and others were mainly hoping to find the Northwest Passage and thus a link to the riches of Asia. This was never discovered, but in their travels other possibilities were found and in the early seventeenth century colonists from a number of Northern European states began to settle on the east coast of North America.

It was the northerners who also became the great rivals to the Portuguese in Africa and around the Indian Ocean. Dutch, French, and British ships began to flout the Portuguese monopoly and found trading forts and colonies of their own. Gradually the Portuguese and Spanish market and possession share declined, the new entrants surrounding many of their most valuable possessions (like Hong Kong being next to Macau). The northerners also took the lead in exploring the last unknown regions of the Pacific Ocean and the North-American west coast, which was in the Spanish part of the Tordesilhas divide. Dutch explorers such as Willem Jansz and Abel Tasman explored the coasts of Australia while in the eighteenth century it was British explorer James Cook that mapped much of Polynesia.

Conquest of Siberia

Main article: History of Siberia

In 1552 Russian czar Ivan IV the Terrible conquered the Kazan khanate, which opened new opportunities in conquests in the East. In 1580 Yermak entered Siberia with a band of 1636 men, following the Tagil and Tura rivers. Next year they were on the Tobol, and 500 men successfully laid siege to Isker, the residence of Khan Kuchum, in the neighbourhood of what is now Tobolsk. Kuchum fled to the steppes, abandoning his domains to Yermak, who, according to tradition, purchased by the present of Siberia to tsar Ivan IV his own restoration to favour.

Yermak drowned in the Irtysh in 1584 and his Cossacks abandoned Siberia. But new bands of hunters and adventurers poured every year into the country, and were supported by Moscow. To avoid conflicts with the denser populations of the south, they preferred to advance eastwards along higher latitudes; meanwhile Moscow erected forts and settled labourers around them to supply the garrisons with food. Within eighty years the Russians had reached the Amur and the Pacific Ocean. This rapid conquest is accounted for by the circumstance that neither Tatars nor Turks were able to offer any serious resistance.

Effect on Europe

The effect of the Age of Exploration was unprecedented. For millennia it had been the Mediterranean economy that had been the continent's most vibrant and regions like Italy and Greece had thus been the wealthiest and most potent. The newly dominant Atlantic economy was controlled by the states of Western Europe, such as France, Britain, and Germany, and to the present they have been the wealthiest and most powerful on the continent.

Following the period of exploration was the Commercial Revolution when trans-oceanic trade became commonplace. The importance of trade made it so that traders and merchants, not the feudal landowners, were the most powerful class in society. In time in Britain, France and other nations thus the bourgeoisie would come to control the politics and government of the nations.

Conquest of Siberia allowed Russia to become one of the major European powers under Peter the Great with global interests. Many metallurgy and weapons plants and other industry were located in Ural Mountains, where large deposits of valuable ores and other minerals are situated.

End of the Age of Exploration

The age of exploration is generally said to have ended in the early seventeenth century. By this time European vessels were well enough built and their navigators competent enough to travel to virtually anywhere on the planet. Exploration, of course, continued. The Arctic and Antarctic seas were not explored until the nineteenth century. It also took much longer for Europeans to reach the interior of continents such as North America and Africa than it did the coasts.

References

Carlo Cipolla, European Culture and Overseas Expansion
Daniel O'Sullivan, The Age of Discovery
J.H. Parry, The Discovery of the Sea
Boies Penrose, Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance: 1420–1620
Michael Sletcher, ‘British Explorers and the Americas', in Will Kaufman and Heidi Macpherson, eds., Britain and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, (2 vols., Oxford, 2005).

External links

The Development of the Full-Rigged Ship From the Carrack to the Full-Rigger

Age of Discovery | Exploration | Historical eras

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