Exploration
Discovery and Expansion
Europeans had long been attracted to Asia. Many people, including Christopher Columbus, were fascinated by Marco Polo’s account of his travels to the court of Kublai Khan and the exotic East. Fourteenth-century conquests by the Ottoman Empire made traveling to the East by land difficult. Europeans wanted a route by sea. From the late fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, many Europeans nations embarked on an era of discovery and expansion that took their culture, political ideas, and religion to other parts of the world. Their ventures led to European colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. European nations established dominance over much of the globe economically and militarily, forever impacting foreign cultures.
A number of factors led to European exploration and expansion. National leaders had grown in power and wealth and could afford to finance voyages. In addition, new technologies made available the ships and means of navigation necessary to successfully travel across vast oceans. Europeans acquired much of this technology from Arabs. Arab navigators and mathematicians had drawn charts, called portolani (records) showing coastlines and distances between ports. By 1500, cartography—the art and science of map making—had developed to where Europeans had fairly accurate maps of where they wanted to explore. The compass showed the ship’s direction, and the astrolabe (also developed by Arabs) showed its latitude, information needed for such long voyages. The astrolabe allowed navigators to determine their position on the high seas using the location of the sun and stars. Europeans also were able to build ships that could sail against the wind. The European success in creating trading empires in the East and conquering the Americas owed much to the use of gunpowder and cannons. For example, the heavy cannon of the Portuguese ships made defeating the lighter Muslim fleets easy.
Finally, there were motivations that convinced monarchs to pay for such expeditions. One was economic. Countries like Spain and Portugal hoped to discover territories and trade routes that would make them rich. Merchants, adventurers, and government officials hoped to find precious metals in and expand trade with the East, especially trade in spices. There were also religious motivations. Expansion was seen as a way to spread Christianity. For many of the explorers who embarked on these journeys, there was promise of personal wealth and glory. They would be hailed at home as national heroes. God, gold, and glory served as major motivations for European expansion.
Key Explorers
The Chinese
Mongol rule in China ended in 1368 when Hongwu led a rebel army that took control of the country. He named himself the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty. His son Yonglo continued to rule increasing the amount of food and improving government. He also launched a major effort to make contact with other Asian peoples. Led by the Muslim court official Zheng He, China made seven voyages of exploration between 1405 and 1431. On the first, almost 28,000 men sailed on 62 ships. The fleet visited the western coast of India and city-states of East Africa. Wherever he went, he gave away gifts to show Chinese superiority. The voyages produced great profits, which alarmed Confucian traditionalist who thought trading was an unworthy activity. After the emperor Yong Le’s death in 1424, the voyages halted. China changed their position on foreign trade and began to isolate themselves.
The Portuguese
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to impact the age of exploration. They began venturing into Africa in search of new territories and riches. Before long, Portuguese ships were returning to Europe with resources and black Africans, many of whom were sold into slavery. Eventually, the Portuguese acquired land from local African rulers and built forts. From these locations they welcomed and loaded European ships with goods and slaves returning to Portugal. As Portugal established colonies in the Americas, these forts served as gathering points were African slaves could be bought and held until they could be loaded on ships and transported across the Atlantic. Portugal also wanted to find a sea route to Asia around the southern tip of Africa. Since the Middle Ages, Europeans had been aware of Asia’s rich markets and the raw materials it offered. They hoped to find quicker trade routes and establish their presence in coastal areas that could serve as commercial ports. In 1498, Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, successfully rounded Africa and made his way to India. The profit he made from this voyage encouraged other Portuguese sailors to follow him. Thanks to their skills as seamen and military technology, the Portuguese defeated Arab, Turkish, and Indian natives to establish their dominance over the Indian Ocean and its trade routes.
The Spanish
While da Gama opened the way east, Christopher Columbus ventured west across the Atlantic. Financed by Spain, the adventurer set sail believing that he, too, would eventually reach Asia. In October 1492, Columbus reached the Americas, exploring the coast of Cuba and landing in Hispaniola (modern day Haiti). Columbus, however, had no idea that he had “discovered” a new region, reaching several Caribbean Islands and part of Central America. Although he was wrong in his assumption that he had reached Asia, Columbus made rulers in Europe aware of a previously “unclaimed” territory (Europeans considered these lands open to colonization even though many native peoples already lived there). Eventually, other navigators realized that Columbus had discovered an entirely new continent and launched their own voyages. On one of these voyages, a man named Amerigo Vespucci wrote letters describing the new lands. The popularity of these descriptions led people in Europe to label the new territory America.
Ferdinand Magellan believed there must be a water route through the Americas. If located, he could use it to sail on to the Far East. Finally, after sailing down the entire coast of South America, Magellan found his open waterway in 1520 (today known as the Strait of Magellan). Unfortunately, however, he greatly underestimated the size of the Pacific Ocean that awaited him on the other side and man of his men grew ill or died of starvation before reaching the Philippines (they named the islands the “Philippines” after King Phillip of Spain). Natives of the island killed Magellan, but a remnant of his crew returned to Spain, making his expedition the first to officially sail around the world.
Conquistadors
The Spanish conquerors of the Americas—known as conquistadors—had incredible success due to guns and determination. By 1550, Spain controlled northern Mexico. Shortly thereafter, Francisco Pizarro took control of the Inca Empire in the Peruvian Andes. Within 30 years, the western part of Latin America, as Europeans called it, was under Spanish control. The Spanish created a system of colonial administration. Queen Isabella declared that the natives (called Indians after the Spanish word Indios, or “inhabitants of the Indies”) were her subjects. She gave the Spanish the right, called encomienda, to use the natives as laborers. The Spanish were supposed to protect Native Americans, but few of them worried about this matter. Forced labor, starvation, and disease took a huge toll on the Native Americans. European diseases ravaged the native populations, who lacked immunity to such diseases as smallpox. Haiti had a population of 100,000 when Columbus arrived. By 1570, only 300 Native Americans had survived. Mexico’s population dropped from 25 million to 3 million. Catholic missionaries converted and baptized hundreds of thousands of native peoples. They also brought parishes, schools, and hospitals. European religion, culture, language, and government replaced the native structures.
Other Explorers
The British navigator James Cook discovered and charted New Zealand and Australia's Great Barrier Reef on his ship Endeavor, and later disproved the existence of the fabled southern continent Terra Australis. His voyages provided the first accurate map of the Pacific.
France’s most successful early North American colony was established at Quebec in 1608 by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain. The colony rested on high ground along the shores of the St. Lawrence River, thereby giving the French an excellent settlement for carrying out their fur trade and establishing more colonies along the river. It also provided them with a good military position for protecting their interests from any European rivals who might try to navigate the St. Lawrence.
Columbian Exchange
When Columbus “discovered” America in 1492, he established contact between two worlds. The Columbian Exchange refers to the exchange that arose between the Western and Eastern hemispheres. It included the exchange of raw materials, people (both willing travelers and slaves), ideas, religion, products, and even diseases. The Columbian exchange drastically affected society on both sides of the Atlantic. It introduced new foods, vegetation, and forms of livestock to both Europe and the Americas. It also transformed the cultures as new commodities, like sugar, tobacco, cotton, and rice, transformed European culture and Europeans imposed new ideas on Native American societies. The Columbian Exchange had detrimental effects on native peoples who were subjected to conquest, slavery, and the devastation of diseases brought by their European invaders.
Economic Impact
European nations in the 1500s and 1600s established many colonies in the Americas and the East. A colony is a settlement of people living in a new territory, linked with the parent country by trade and governmental control. Colonies and trading posts greatly increased international trade. Colonies played an important role in the theory of mercantilism, a set of principles that dominated seventeenth-century economic thought. According to this theory, a nation’s prosperity depended on a large supply of bullion (gold and silver) because bullion gave a country a favorable balance of trade—the difference in value between what a nation imports and what it exports over time. Nations wanted a favorable balance of trade, which means that the value of exported goods is greater than the value of imported goods. Governments stimulated export industries and trade by granting subsidies to new industries, improving transportation systems, and placing high tariffs (taxes) on foreign goods to keep them out of the parent country. Colonies were important as sources of raw materials for the parent country and a market for the parent country’s finished goods.
The Slave Trade
In the fifteenth century the primary market for African slaves was Southwest Asia, where they were used principally as domestic servants. Some European countries also had slaves, used as servants for wealthy families. The demand for slaves rose dramatically with the European voyages to the Americas and the planting of sugar cane there. Plantations, large agricultural estates, were set up on the eastern coast of Brazil and on islands in the Caribbean to grow sugar cane. Growing cane is labor intensive. The small native population, much of which had died from European diseases, could not provide the labor. African slaves were imported to meet the need. A Spanish ship carried the first boatload of African slaves to the Americas in 1518. The trade grew tremendously in the next two centuries; becoming part of the New World economy’s triangular trade This pattern of triangular trade connected Europe, Africa and Asia, and the Americas.
European merchants carried goods to Africa, where they traded for slaves. The slaves were shipped to and sold in the Americas. European merchants then bought tobacco, molasses, sugar, and cotton for sale in Europe. An estimated 275,000 African slaves were exported during the sixteenth century. Over a million were shipped in the seventeenth century, and six million in the eighteenth century. Up to ten million slaves in all were shipped from Africa to the Americas. One reason for the high numbers was the death rate. Many slaves died on the Middle Passage, the journey to the Americas that was the middle leg of the triangular trade route. Many of those who survived died of diseases after arriving. Since succeeding generations developed immunities, death rates were higher for newly arrived slaves than for those who were born and raised in the Americas. Before the Europeans entered the scene, most slaves in Africa were war captives. Europeans bought slaves in return for guns, gold, and other European goods.
The slave trade depopulated areas, deprived many African communities of their youngest and strongest men and women, and increased local warfare as different traders and rulers competed with each other and raided neighbors for slaves. One Dutch slave trader remarked, “From us they have learned strife, quarreling, drunkenness, trickery, theft, unbridled desire for what is not one’s own, misdeeds unknown to them before, and the accursed lust for gold.” Some African states, such as the brilliant and creative Benin, were devastated by the slave trade. As their population declined and warfare increased, the people lost faith in their gods, their art deteriorated, and human sacrifice increased. Benin became brutal and corrupt. Later, it took years to discover the brilliance of the earlier culture destroyed by slavery.
Europeans had long been attracted to Asia. Many people, including Christopher Columbus, were fascinated by Marco Polo’s account of his travels to the court of Kublai Khan and the exotic East. Fourteenth-century conquests by the Ottoman Empire made traveling to the East by land difficult. Europeans wanted a route by sea. From the late fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, many Europeans nations embarked on an era of discovery and expansion that took their culture, political ideas, and religion to other parts of the world. Their ventures led to European colonies in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. European nations established dominance over much of the globe economically and militarily, forever impacting foreign cultures.
A number of factors led to European exploration and expansion. National leaders had grown in power and wealth and could afford to finance voyages. In addition, new technologies made available the ships and means of navigation necessary to successfully travel across vast oceans. Europeans acquired much of this technology from Arabs. Arab navigators and mathematicians had drawn charts, called portolani (records) showing coastlines and distances between ports. By 1500, cartography—the art and science of map making—had developed to where Europeans had fairly accurate maps of where they wanted to explore. The compass showed the ship’s direction, and the astrolabe (also developed by Arabs) showed its latitude, information needed for such long voyages. The astrolabe allowed navigators to determine their position on the high seas using the location of the sun and stars. Europeans also were able to build ships that could sail against the wind. The European success in creating trading empires in the East and conquering the Americas owed much to the use of gunpowder and cannons. For example, the heavy cannon of the Portuguese ships made defeating the lighter Muslim fleets easy.
Finally, there were motivations that convinced monarchs to pay for such expeditions. One was economic. Countries like Spain and Portugal hoped to discover territories and trade routes that would make them rich. Merchants, adventurers, and government officials hoped to find precious metals in and expand trade with the East, especially trade in spices. There were also religious motivations. Expansion was seen as a way to spread Christianity. For many of the explorers who embarked on these journeys, there was promise of personal wealth and glory. They would be hailed at home as national heroes. God, gold, and glory served as major motivations for European expansion.
Key Explorers
The Chinese
Mongol rule in China ended in 1368 when Hongwu led a rebel army that took control of the country. He named himself the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty. His son Yonglo continued to rule increasing the amount of food and improving government. He also launched a major effort to make contact with other Asian peoples. Led by the Muslim court official Zheng He, China made seven voyages of exploration between 1405 and 1431. On the first, almost 28,000 men sailed on 62 ships. The fleet visited the western coast of India and city-states of East Africa. Wherever he went, he gave away gifts to show Chinese superiority. The voyages produced great profits, which alarmed Confucian traditionalist who thought trading was an unworthy activity. After the emperor Yong Le’s death in 1424, the voyages halted. China changed their position on foreign trade and began to isolate themselves.
The Portuguese
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to impact the age of exploration. They began venturing into Africa in search of new territories and riches. Before long, Portuguese ships were returning to Europe with resources and black Africans, many of whom were sold into slavery. Eventually, the Portuguese acquired land from local African rulers and built forts. From these locations they welcomed and loaded European ships with goods and slaves returning to Portugal. As Portugal established colonies in the Americas, these forts served as gathering points were African slaves could be bought and held until they could be loaded on ships and transported across the Atlantic. Portugal also wanted to find a sea route to Asia around the southern tip of Africa. Since the Middle Ages, Europeans had been aware of Asia’s rich markets and the raw materials it offered. They hoped to find quicker trade routes and establish their presence in coastal areas that could serve as commercial ports. In 1498, Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, successfully rounded Africa and made his way to India. The profit he made from this voyage encouraged other Portuguese sailors to follow him. Thanks to their skills as seamen and military technology, the Portuguese defeated Arab, Turkish, and Indian natives to establish their dominance over the Indian Ocean and its trade routes.
The Spanish
While da Gama opened the way east, Christopher Columbus ventured west across the Atlantic. Financed by Spain, the adventurer set sail believing that he, too, would eventually reach Asia. In October 1492, Columbus reached the Americas, exploring the coast of Cuba and landing in Hispaniola (modern day Haiti). Columbus, however, had no idea that he had “discovered” a new region, reaching several Caribbean Islands and part of Central America. Although he was wrong in his assumption that he had reached Asia, Columbus made rulers in Europe aware of a previously “unclaimed” territory (Europeans considered these lands open to colonization even though many native peoples already lived there). Eventually, other navigators realized that Columbus had discovered an entirely new continent and launched their own voyages. On one of these voyages, a man named Amerigo Vespucci wrote letters describing the new lands. The popularity of these descriptions led people in Europe to label the new territory America.
Ferdinand Magellan believed there must be a water route through the Americas. If located, he could use it to sail on to the Far East. Finally, after sailing down the entire coast of South America, Magellan found his open waterway in 1520 (today known as the Strait of Magellan). Unfortunately, however, he greatly underestimated the size of the Pacific Ocean that awaited him on the other side and man of his men grew ill or died of starvation before reaching the Philippines (they named the islands the “Philippines” after King Phillip of Spain). Natives of the island killed Magellan, but a remnant of his crew returned to Spain, making his expedition the first to officially sail around the world.
Conquistadors
The Spanish conquerors of the Americas—known as conquistadors—had incredible success due to guns and determination. By 1550, Spain controlled northern Mexico. Shortly thereafter, Francisco Pizarro took control of the Inca Empire in the Peruvian Andes. Within 30 years, the western part of Latin America, as Europeans called it, was under Spanish control. The Spanish created a system of colonial administration. Queen Isabella declared that the natives (called Indians after the Spanish word Indios, or “inhabitants of the Indies”) were her subjects. She gave the Spanish the right, called encomienda, to use the natives as laborers. The Spanish were supposed to protect Native Americans, but few of them worried about this matter. Forced labor, starvation, and disease took a huge toll on the Native Americans. European diseases ravaged the native populations, who lacked immunity to such diseases as smallpox. Haiti had a population of 100,000 when Columbus arrived. By 1570, only 300 Native Americans had survived. Mexico’s population dropped from 25 million to 3 million. Catholic missionaries converted and baptized hundreds of thousands of native peoples. They also brought parishes, schools, and hospitals. European religion, culture, language, and government replaced the native structures.
Other Explorers
The British navigator James Cook discovered and charted New Zealand and Australia's Great Barrier Reef on his ship Endeavor, and later disproved the existence of the fabled southern continent Terra Australis. His voyages provided the first accurate map of the Pacific.
France’s most successful early North American colony was established at Quebec in 1608 by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain. The colony rested on high ground along the shores of the St. Lawrence River, thereby giving the French an excellent settlement for carrying out their fur trade and establishing more colonies along the river. It also provided them with a good military position for protecting their interests from any European rivals who might try to navigate the St. Lawrence.
Columbian Exchange
When Columbus “discovered” America in 1492, he established contact between two worlds. The Columbian Exchange refers to the exchange that arose between the Western and Eastern hemispheres. It included the exchange of raw materials, people (both willing travelers and slaves), ideas, religion, products, and even diseases. The Columbian exchange drastically affected society on both sides of the Atlantic. It introduced new foods, vegetation, and forms of livestock to both Europe and the Americas. It also transformed the cultures as new commodities, like sugar, tobacco, cotton, and rice, transformed European culture and Europeans imposed new ideas on Native American societies. The Columbian Exchange had detrimental effects on native peoples who were subjected to conquest, slavery, and the devastation of diseases brought by their European invaders.
Economic Impact
European nations in the 1500s and 1600s established many colonies in the Americas and the East. A colony is a settlement of people living in a new territory, linked with the parent country by trade and governmental control. Colonies and trading posts greatly increased international trade. Colonies played an important role in the theory of mercantilism, a set of principles that dominated seventeenth-century economic thought. According to this theory, a nation’s prosperity depended on a large supply of bullion (gold and silver) because bullion gave a country a favorable balance of trade—the difference in value between what a nation imports and what it exports over time. Nations wanted a favorable balance of trade, which means that the value of exported goods is greater than the value of imported goods. Governments stimulated export industries and trade by granting subsidies to new industries, improving transportation systems, and placing high tariffs (taxes) on foreign goods to keep them out of the parent country. Colonies were important as sources of raw materials for the parent country and a market for the parent country’s finished goods.
The Slave Trade
In the fifteenth century the primary market for African slaves was Southwest Asia, where they were used principally as domestic servants. Some European countries also had slaves, used as servants for wealthy families. The demand for slaves rose dramatically with the European voyages to the Americas and the planting of sugar cane there. Plantations, large agricultural estates, were set up on the eastern coast of Brazil and on islands in the Caribbean to grow sugar cane. Growing cane is labor intensive. The small native population, much of which had died from European diseases, could not provide the labor. African slaves were imported to meet the need. A Spanish ship carried the first boatload of African slaves to the Americas in 1518. The trade grew tremendously in the next two centuries; becoming part of the New World economy’s triangular trade This pattern of triangular trade connected Europe, Africa and Asia, and the Americas.
European merchants carried goods to Africa, where they traded for slaves. The slaves were shipped to and sold in the Americas. European merchants then bought tobacco, molasses, sugar, and cotton for sale in Europe. An estimated 275,000 African slaves were exported during the sixteenth century. Over a million were shipped in the seventeenth century, and six million in the eighteenth century. Up to ten million slaves in all were shipped from Africa to the Americas. One reason for the high numbers was the death rate. Many slaves died on the Middle Passage, the journey to the Americas that was the middle leg of the triangular trade route. Many of those who survived died of diseases after arriving. Since succeeding generations developed immunities, death rates were higher for newly arrived slaves than for those who were born and raised in the Americas. Before the Europeans entered the scene, most slaves in Africa were war captives. Europeans bought slaves in return for guns, gold, and other European goods.
The slave trade depopulated areas, deprived many African communities of their youngest and strongest men and women, and increased local warfare as different traders and rulers competed with each other and raided neighbors for slaves. One Dutch slave trader remarked, “From us they have learned strife, quarreling, drunkenness, trickery, theft, unbridled desire for what is not one’s own, misdeeds unknown to them before, and the accursed lust for gold.” Some African states, such as the brilliant and creative Benin, were devastated by the slave trade. As their population declined and warfare increased, the people lost faith in their gods, their art deteriorated, and human sacrifice increased. Benin became brutal and corrupt. Later, it took years to discover the brilliance of the earlier culture destroyed by slavery.