European exploration – The Age of Discovery

In the 100 years from the mid-15th to the mid-16th century, a combination of circumstances stimulated men to seek fresh routes, and it was new routes preferably than newly lands that filled the minds of kings and commoners, scholars and seamen. First, toward the conclusion of the fourteenth hundred, the huge conglomerate of the Mongols was breaking up ; thus, western merchants could no long be assured of safe-conduct along the estate routes. Second, the Ottoman Turks and the Venetians controlled commercial access to the Mediterranean and the ancient sea routes from the East. Third, new nations on the Atlantic shores of Europe were nowadays fix to seek oversea trade wind and adventure .

The sea route east by south to Cathay

Henry the Navigator, prince of Portugal, initiated the first base big enterprise of the Age of Discovery—the search for a sea path east by south to Cathay. His motives were mix. He was curious about the populace ; he was interested in newly navigational aids and better ship design and was tidal bore to test them ; he was besides 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 so far another motivative ; he aimed to divert the Guinea trade in gold and ivory off from its routes across the Sahara to the Moors of Barbary ( North Africa ) and rather channel it via the sea road to Portugal.

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In the iberian Peninsula the impulse of the counteroffensive against the Moors carried the Portuguese to probe the west african coastline …
dispatch after expedition was sent away throughout the fifteenth century to explore the slide of Africa. In 1445 the Portuguese sailing master Dinís Dias reached the mouth of the Sénégal, which “ men say comes from the Nile, being one of the most brilliant rivers of Earth, flowing from the Garden of Eden and the earthly paradise. ” Once the desert seashore had been passed, the sailors pushed on : in 1455 and 1456 Alvise Ca ’ district attorney 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 ’ mho captain, Diogo Cão, discovered the Congo River in 1482. All seemed promise ; deal was good with the riverine peoples, and the slide was trending hopefully eastbound. then the disappointing fact was realized : the head of a great gulf had been reached, and, beyond, the slide seemed to stretch interminably southbound. Yet, when Columbus sought backing for his plan to sail west 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 path through Egypt and Ethiopia to the Red Sea and the amerind Ocean and, the second, a sea road around the southerly shores of Africa, the latter an act of faith, since Ptolemy ’ second map showed a landlocked indian Ocean. In 1487, a portuguese emissary, Pêro district attorney Covilhã, successfully followed the inaugural path ; but, on returning to Cairo, he reported that, in arrange to travel to India, the Portuguese “ could navigate by their coasts and the seas of Guinea. ” In the like year, another Portuguese sailing master, 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 seashore was now trending northeastward ; before turning bet on, he reached the Great Fish River, in what is now South Africa. On the come back voyage, he sighted the Cape and set up a pillar upon it to mark its discovery.

John II of Portugal John II of Portugal .Hulton Archive/Getty Images 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 cogency of Columbus ’ sulfur claim were current. sake was therefore renewed in establishing the ocean route south by east to the known riches of India. In 1497 a portuguese master, Vasco da Gama, sailed in dominate of a fleet under instructions to reach Calicut ( Kozhikode ), on India ’ s west coast. This he did after a brilliant voyage around the Cape of Storms ( which he renamed the Cape of Good Hope ) and along the strange coast of East Africa. Yet another portuguese flit set out in 1500, this one being under the command of Pedro Álvarez Cabral ; on the advice of district attorney Gama, Cabral steered southwestward to avoid the calm air of the Guinea coast ; frankincense, 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 ( immediately 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 trade port of Macau was founded at the sass of the Canton River. Europe had arrived in the East. It was in the end the Portuguese, not the Turks, who destroyed the commercial domination of the italian cities, which had been based on a monopoly of Europe ’ s trade with the East by down. But Portugal was soon overextended ; it was consequently the dutch, the English, and the French who in the long scat reaped the reap of portuguese enterprise. Some idea of the cognition that these trade explorers brought to the coarse store may be gained by a sketch of contemporary maps. The map of the german Henricus Martellus, published in 1492, shows the shores of North Africa and of the Gulf of Guinea more or less correctly and was credibly taken from numerous seamen ’ second charts. The word picture of the west seashore of southerly Africa from the Guinea Gulf to the Cape suggests a cognition of the charts of the excursion of Bartolomeu Dias. The coastlines of the indian Ocean are largely ptolemaic with two exceptions : first base, the amerind Ocean is no retentive landlocked ; and second gear, the Malay Peninsula is shown twice—once according to Ptolemy and once again, presumably, according to Marco Polo. The Contarini map of 1506 shows further advances ; the shape of Africa is generally accurate, and there is new cognition of the indian Ocean, although it is curiously treated. peninsular India ( on which Cananor and Calicut are named ) is shown ; although besides humble, it is, however, recognizable. There is even an indication to the east of it of the Bay of Bengal, with a great river running into it. Eastward of this is Ptolemy ’ south India, with the huge island of Taprobane—a muddled representation of the indian peninsula and Ceylon ( now Sri Lanka ). East again, as on the map of Henricus Martellus, the Malay Peninsula appears twice. Ptolemy ’ sulfur bonds were unvoiced to break.

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Category : Maritime