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Age of Exploration
Portuguese and Spanish ships, and later Dutch, English and French ones, crossed oceans that no European had sailed before. Within two centuries they found the sea route to India, reached the Americas, sailed around the world and created the first trade network that spanned the globe - at an enormous cost to the peoples of the Americas and Africa.
Ships and instruments
THEME ONE
Portugal's Prince Henry the Navigator sponsored voyages down the African coast from the 1420s. Light caravels with triangular sails could sail close to the wind and return home against it, while larger carracks carried cargo. Sailors steered by the magnetic compass, measured latitude with the quadrant and the astrolabe, and recorded every new coast on charts.
Around Africa to India
THEME TWO
In 1488 Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and ten years later Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in India. The Portuguese did not find empty seas: the Indian Ocean was already busy with Arab, Indian and Chinese trade. They broke in with cannon and fortresses, taking Goa in 1510 and Malacca in 1511, and for a century brought pepper, cinnamon and cloves to Europe.
The Americas
THEME THREE
Sailing west for Spain, Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean in 1492, convinced he was near Asia. In 1494 the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the newly found lands between Spain and Portugal. Hernán Cortés overthrew the Aztec empire in 1521 and Francisco Pizarro the Inca empire in 1532 – 1533. Smallpox and other diseases from Europe killed a large part of the native population, and silver from Potosí and Mexico flowed to Spain.
Around the world
THEME FOUR
In 1519 Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese in Spanish service, left Seville with five ships to reach the Spice Islands by sailing west. He found a strait at the tip of South America, crossed the Pacific and was killed in the Philippines in 1521. In 1522 one ship, the Victoria, returned under Juan Sebastián Elcano with 18 of the roughly 240 men who had set out. The voyage showed that the world was far larger than Europeans had thought.
Periods
Portuguese beginnings
1450 – 1492
Step by step down the coast of Africa: trading posts, the fort of Elmina (1482) and Dias's voyage around the Cape.
Spain and Portugal divide the oceans
1492 – 1580
Columbus and da Gama, Cabral in Brazil (1500), Magellan, the conquest of Mexico and Peru, and the first Spanish settlements in the Philippines.
The Dutch, English and French
1580 – 1650
Drake sails around the world (1577 – 1580), the East India companies are founded, and Jamestown (1607), Quebec (1608) and New Amsterdam (1625) are settled.
Key dates
- 1488Bartolomeu Dias rounds the Cape of Good Hope.
- 1492Columbus reaches the Caribbean.
- 1498Vasco da Gama reaches India by sea.
- 1521Cortés takes Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital.
- 1522The Victoria completes the first voyage around the world.
- 1602The Dutch East India Company is founded.
Questions and answers
Did Columbus discover America?
He was not the first to arrive. People had lived in the Americas for at least 15 000 years, and Norse Vikings had reached Newfoundland around 1000. But his voyages of 1492 – 1504 began lasting contact between the Americas and the rest of the world.
What was the Columbian exchange?
The transfer of plants, animals, people and diseases between the Americas and the rest of the world after 1492. Potatoes, maize, tomatoes, cocoa and tobacco reached Europe, Africa and Asia, while horses, cattle, wheat, sugar cane and diseases such as smallpox reached the Americas. Millions of enslaved Africans were shipped across the Atlantic to work on plantations.