Age of exploration HW#4

People staying at home

They had a powerful impact on the process. Royal ministers and factions at court influenced monarchs to provide or deny support for exploration. People who could read served as a rapt audience for tales of fantastic places and unknown peoples. Cosmography, natural history and geography aroused enormous interest among educated people in the 15th and 16th century. Most popular was the text :The travels of Sir John Mandeville" which described his travels in the Holy Land, Egypt, Ethiopia, the Middle East and India and his service to the Mamluk sultan of Egypt and the Mongol Great Khan of China.

Treaty of Tordesillas

To settle competing claims to the Atlantic discoveries, Spain and Portugal turned to Pope Alexander VI. This treaty in 1494 gave Spain everything to the west of an imaginary line drawn down the Atlantic and Portugal everything to the east. This arbitration favored Portugal. In 1500 an expedition led by Pedro Alvares Cabral en route to India, landed on the coast of Brazil which Cabral claimed as Portuguese territory.

Ptolemy's geography

Around 1410 Arab scholars reintroduced Europeans to Ptolemy's geography. The work synthesized the geographical knowledge of the classical world. He clearly depicted the world as round and introducing the idea of latitude and longitude to plot position accurately. Only problem was that he did not know about America so his world was much smaller than it actually is.

Amerigo Vespucci

Florentine navigator realized that Columbus has discovered a new world. He was the first to describe America as a continent separate from Asia.

Causes of European expansion

1. after the Black Plague, Europe was experiencing a revival of population and economic activity. This revival created demand for luxuries, especially spices from the East. 2. Fall of Constantinople and subsequent ottoman control of trade routes created obstacles to fulfilling these demands. Europeans needed to find new sources of precious metal to trade with the Ottomans or trade routes that bypassed the Ottomans. 3. Spices (nutmeg, pepper, ginger, cinnamon an cloves) added flavor to monotonous European diet. Spices were used for anointing oil and as incense for religious rituals and as perfumes, medicines and dyes in daily life. Example Cloves: used for medicine to stimulate appetite and clear the intestines and bladder. Salted and pickled, cloves became a flavoring for vinegar. Cloves sweetened the breath. Crushed and powdered, they could be rubbed on the forehead to relieve head colds and applied to the eyes to strengthen vision. 4. Religious fervor was another important reason for expansion. Christian Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula encouraged the Portuguese and Spanish to continue the Christian crusade. Overseas exploration was a way of transfer of the crusading spirit to new non-Christian territories. 5. The European discoveries of the new world as a manifestation of Renaissance curiosity about the physical universe- the desire to know more about the geography and peoples of the world. 6. Eagerness for exploration was heightened b a lack of opportunity at home. After the Reconquista, young men of the Spanish upper classes found their economic and political opportunities greatly limited. The ambitious turned to the sea to seek their fortunes. 7. Their voyages were made possible by the growth of government power. The Spanish monarchy was stronger than before and could support foreign ventures. In Portugal explorers also looked for support from Prince Henry the Navigator. Monarchs shared a mix of motivations from the desire to please God to the desire to win glory and profit from trade. 8. Competition among European monarchs and between Protestant and Catholic states was an important factor in encouraging the steady stream of expedition.

Christopher Columbus

A devout Christian. He became increasingly haunted by messianic obsessions in the last years of his life. Like other explores, Bartholomew Diaz, his motivation for exploration is to serve God and His Majesty to give light to those who were in darkness and to grow rich as all men desire to do. He was very knowledgeable about the sea. He worked as a mapmaker and he was familiar with 15th Century Portuguese navigational development and the use of the compass as a nautical instrument. He was also a deeply religious man. He understood Christianity as a missionary religion that should be carried to all places of the earth. What was the object of this first voyage? He wanted to find a direct ocean trading route to Asia. The project finally found support by the Spanish monarchy (Isabella and Ferdinand) in 1492. He thought that by going west, he would pass the islands of Japan and then land on the east coast of China.

Caravel

A small, maneuverable, three-mast sailing ship developed by the Portuguese in the 15th century that gave the Portuguese a distinct advantage in exploration and trade. Though it was slower than the galley the caravel held more cargo. It was also more maneuverable vessel. When fitted with cannon it could dominate larger vessels.

Spain exploration

Christopher Columbus lead the exploration. He wanted a westward passage to the Indies. He set sail from Spain on August 3, 1492 and he landed in the Bahamas which he named san Salvador on October 1492. Columbus thought he was on some small islands off the east coast of Japan. when he encountered the natives of the island he gave them beads and other trifles to small value. natives were eager to trade. He called the natives Indians because he believed he was in the Indies. He concluded that natives would make good slaves and could easily be converted to Christianity. He sailed southwest next believing that this course would take him to japan or the coast of China. He landed on Cuba instead. He sent landing party to locate the grand city. Columbus thought he was near the coastal city of Quinsay (now Hangzhou) in China. His landing party only found small villages. Disappointed Columbus focused on trying to find gold or other valuables. He saw Taino people wearing gold ornaments on Hispaniola ( current day Haiti) seemed likely that gold was available. Columbus thus headed back to Spain to report on his discovery. Over the next decade, the Spanish would follow a policy of conquest and colonization in the New World rather than one of exchange with equals. On his second voyage, Columbus forcibly subjugated he island of Hispaniola and enslaved its indigenous peoples. He brought with him settlers for the new Spanish territories along with agricultural seed and livestock. Columbus did not have the skill to govern so soon revolt broke out against him and his brother on Hispaniola. Royal expedition sent to investigate and returned the brothers back to Spain in chain. Columbus never realized the great discovery he made of the vast new continent unknown to the Europeans.

Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521)

He was sent by King Charles V of Spain to find a sea route to the spices of the Moluccas off the southeast coast of Asia. He sailed southwest across the Atlantic to Brazil and then he found a treacherous straits that now bears his name. The new ocean he sailed into after a rough passage through the straits seemed so calm that Magellan dubbed it the Pacific, Latin for peace. He soon realized his mistake. His fleet sailed north up the west coast to South America and then headed west into the immense expanse of the Pacific toward the Malay Archipelago. Terrible storms, disease, starvation and violence devastated the expedition. Magellan started with 5 ships and 270 men. Sailors on two of the ships attempted mutiny on the South American coast; one ship was lost and another ship deserted and returned to Spain before even traversing the straits. Magellan died in a skirmish in the islands known today as the Philippines. Only one ship with 18 men returned to Spain from the east by way of the Indian ocean, the Cape of Good Hope and the Atlantic in 1522. This voyage revolutionized Europeans' understanding of the world by showing the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. This trip also showed that it was too long and treacherous to reach Indies via westward.

Exploration overseas

Ordinary sailors were ill paid and life at sea meant danger, overcrowding and hunger. But men chose to join these miserable crews to escape poverty at home, to continue a family trade or to find better lives as illegal immigrants in the colonies. Many orphans and poor boys were placed on board as young pages and had little say in the decision. Women also paid a price for the voyages of exploration. Left alone for months or years at a time and frequently widowed, sailors' wives struggled to feed their families. The widows of a sailor lost on a voyage in 1519 had to wait 30 years to collect her husband's salary from the Spanish crown.

The Portuguese overseas Empire

Portuguese was a small, poor nation. Principal activities were fishing and subsistence farming. They were blocked from access to western Europe by Spain, and thus they turned to the Atlantic and North Africa. Nature favored the Portuguese: wind blowing along their coast offered passage to Africa, its Atlantic islands and ultimately, Brazil. In the early phase of Portuguese exploration, Prince Henry supported the exploration. He was nicknamed Henry the Navigator though he never participated in voyages of exploration. Objective of Exploration: Military glory, the conversion of Muslims; a quest to find gold, slaves and an overseas route to the spice markets of India. Portugal conquered Ceuta and Arab city in northern Morocco in 1415 marked the beginning of European overseas expansion. Under the direction of Prince Henry, Portuguese began to settle the Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Azores. In 1443, they founded their first African commercial settlement at Arguin in North Africa. By the time of Henry's death, they had a thriving sugar plantations on the Atlantic islands and first arrival of enslaved Africans in Portugal and new access to African gold. They next established trading posts and forts on the gold-rich Guinea coast and penetrated into the African continent all the way to Timbuktu. By 1500 Portugal controlled the flow of African gold to Europe. They pushed farther south down the west coast of Africa. Vasco da Gama succeeded in rounding the Cape . with the help of an Indian guide, da Gama reached the port of Calicut in India. Overcoming local hostility, he returned to Lisbon loaded with spices and samples of Indian cloth. However, he failed to forge any trading alliances with local powers. Muslims still dominated the trading system. da Gama did prove the possibility of lucrative trade with the East via the Cape. Every March, Portuguese convoy set out for passage around the Cape. Lisbon became the entrance port for Asian goods into Europe. But Muslim-controlled port city-states had long controlled the rich spice trade of the Indian ocean and they would not surrender their dominance willingly. From 1500 to 1511, the Portuguese used a combination of bombardment and diplomatic treaties to establish trading forts at Calicut, Malacca, Hormuz and Goa.

Conquistador

Spanish for "conqueror"" Spanish soldier-explorers, such as Hernando Cortes and Francisco Pizarro who sought to conquer the New World for the Spanish crown.

Technology and the rise of exploration

Technological developments in shipbuilding, weaponry and navigation also paved the way for European expansion. 1. For the rough winds and uncharted shoals of the Atlantic ocean, they needed sturdier craft as well as population losses caused by the Black Death forced the development of a new style of ship that would not require much manpower to sail. Portuguese developed the Caravel, a small, light, here-mast sailing ship. 2. magnetic compass enabled sailors to determine their direction and position at sea. 3. Astrolabe, an instrument invented by the ancient Greeks and perfected by Muslin navigators was used to determine the altitude of the sun and other celestial bodies. It allowed mariners to plot their latitude, their precise position north or south of the equator. Europeans used technology from the East. From China they learned about gunpowder, the compass and the sternpost rudder on the ship. Indian Ocean trade world, Europeans learned about the lateen sail which allowed ships to tack against the wind. Advances in cartography drew on the rich tradition of Judeo-Arabic mathematical and astronomical learning in Iberia.