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Jul 7, 2016 · Explore the key events that shaped the Age of Discovery, from Columbus's voyages to the founding of New Orleans. Learn about the explorers, the colonists, the conflicts, and the discoveries that changed the world.
The Age of Discovery was a transformative period in world history when previously isolated parts of the world became connected to form the world system and laid the groundwork for globalization.
- Overview
- The Age of Discovery
- The sea route east by south to Cathay
In the 100 years from the mid-15th to the mid-16th century, a combination of circumstances stimulated men to seek new routes, and it was new routes rather than new lands that filled the minds of kings and commoners, scholars and seamen. First, toward the end of the 14th century, the vast empire of the Mongols was breaking up; thus, Western merchant...
In the 100 years from the mid-15th to the mid-16th century, a combination of circumstances stimulated men to seek new routes, and it was new routes rather than new lands that filled the minds of kings and commoners, scholars and seamen. First, toward the end of the 14th century, the vast empire of the Mongols was breaking up; thus, Western merchant...
Henry the Navigator, prince of Portugal, initiated the first great enterprise of the Age of Discovery—the search for a sea route east by south to Cathay. His motives were mixed. He was curious about the world; he was interested in new navigational aids and better ship design and was eager to test them; he was also a Crusader and hoped that, by sailing south and then east along the coast of Africa, Arab power in North Africa could be attacked from the rear. The promotion of profitable trade was yet another motive; he aimed to divert the Guinea trade in gold and ivory away from its routes across the Sahara to the Moors of Barbary (North Africa) and instead channel it via the sea route to Portugal.
Expedition after expedition was sent forth throughout the 15th century to explore the coast of Africa. In 1445 the Portuguese navigator Dinís Dias reached the mouth of the Sénégal, which “men say comes from the Nile, being one of the most glorious rivers of Earth, flowing from the Garden of Eden and the earthly paradise.” Once the desert coast had been passed, the sailors pushed on: in 1455 and 1456 Alvise Ca’ da Mosto made voyages to Gambia and the Cape Verde Islands. Prince Henry died in 1460 after a career that had brought the colonization of the Madeira Islands and the Azores and the traversal of the African coast to Sierra Leone. Henry’s captain, Diogo Cão, discovered the Congo River in 1482. All seemed promising; trade was good with the riverine peoples, and the coast was trending hopefully eastward. Then the disappointing fact was realized: the head of a great gulf had been reached, and, beyond, the coast seemed to stretch endlessly southward. Yet, when Columbus sought backing for his plan to sail westward across the Atlantic to the Indies, he was refused—“seeing that King John II [of Portugal] ordered the coast of Africa to be explored with the intention of going by that route to India.”
King John II sought to establish two routes: the first, a land and sea route through Egypt and Ethiopia to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean and, the second, a sea route around the southern shores of Africa, the latter an act of faith, since Ptolemy’s map showed a landlocked Indian Ocean. In 1487, a Portuguese emissary, Pêro da Covilhã, successfully followed the first route; but, on returning to Cairo, he reported that, in order to travel to India, the Portuguese “could navigate by their coasts and the seas of Guinea.” In the same year, another Portuguese navigator, Bartolomeu Dias, found encouraging evidence that this was so. In 1487 he rounded the Cape of Storms in such bad weather that he did not see it, but he satisfied himself that the coast was now trending northeastward; before turning back, he reached the Great Fish River, in what is now South Africa. On the return voyage, he sighted the Cape and set up a pillar upon it to mark its discovery.
The seaway was now open, but eight years were to elapse before it was exploited. In 1492 Columbus had apparently reached the East by a much easier route. By the end of the decade, however, doubts of the validity of Columbus’s claim were current. Interest was therefore renewed in establishing the sea route south by east to the known riches of India. In 1497 a Portuguese captain, Vasco da Gama, sailed in command of a fleet under instructions to reach Calicut (Kozhikode), on India’s west coast. This he did after a magnificent voyage around the Cape of Storms (which he renamed the Cape of Good Hope) and along the unknown coast of East Africa. Yet another Portuguese fleet set out in 1500, this one being under the command of Pedro Álvarez Cabral; on the advice of da Gama, Cabral steered southwestward to avoid the calms of the Guinea coast; thus, en route for Calicut, Brazil was discovered. Soon trading depots, known as factories, were built along the African coast, at the strategic entrances to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and along the shores of the Indian peninsula. In 1511 the Portuguese established a base at Malacca (now Melaka, Malaysia), commanding the straits into the China Sea; in 1511 and 1512, the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, and Java were reached; in 1557 the trading port of Macau was founded at the mouth of the Canton River. Europe had arrived in the East. It was in the end the Portuguese, not the Turks, who destroyed the commercial supremacy of the Italian cities, which had been based on a monopoly of Europe’s trade with the East by land. But Portugal was soon overextended; it was therefore the Dutch, the English, and the French who in the long run reaped the harvest of Portuguese enterprise.
The Age of Exploration, which lasted roughly between 1450 and 1600, is a term given to the period of European exploration in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
DateEvent1415The Portuguese seize Ceuta, sparking ...October 12, 1492Christopher Columbus lands in the ...May 4, 1493The Line of Demarcation divides the world ...June 7, 1494Portugal claims Brazil. Although Spain ...May 5, 2024 · Learn about the era of European exploration by sea from the 15th to the 17th century, when they discovered new lands, trade routes, and wealth. Find out how the Age of Exploration changed the world and its geography, and what were its consequences for the people and cultures involved.
- Amanda Briney
This timeline of European exploration lists major geographic discoveries and other firsts credited to or involving Europeans during the Age of Discovery and the following centuries, between the years AD 1418 and 1957.
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Jan 27, 2020 · 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.
