European Explorations
Beginning in the 1400s, Europe entered a new era of intellectual and technological advancement known as the Renaissance.

For centuries, the Roman Empire dominated Europe, imposing a unified and stable social and political order.  By A.D.  500, however, the Roman political and economic system collapsed, disconnecting western Europe from the rest of the world.  Without a central authority, the region experienced a decline in trade, and the political system became more fragmented.  Most people lived on manors or in villages ruled by local lords, who kept the peace only in the lands they controlled.  This period, lasting from roughly A.D.  500 to 1500, is known as the Middle Ages.

Expanding Horizons

In 1095 Pope Urban II called for Christians to free their religion’s holy places in the Middle East from Muslim control.  The resulting Crusades brought western Europeans into contact with the Arab civilization of the Middle East.  The Europeans began trading with the Arabs, and in particular, began buying luxury goods that Arab traders obtained from East Asia:  spices, sugar, melons, tapestries, silk, and other items.  As demand for East Asian goods increased, Italian city-states such as Venice, Pisa, and Genoa grew wealthy moving goods between the Middle East and western Europe.  By 1200, Italian and Arab merchants controlled most of the trade in the eastern Mediterranean and charged high prices for the goods that western Europeans wanted.

By the 1300s, Europeans had a strong economic motive to begin exploring the world for a route to Asia that bypassed the Italian city-states and the Arab kingdoms.  Yet western Europe did not have the technology or wealth to begin exploring.  All that started to change in the 1400s.  The rise of towns and the merchant class provided kings and queens with a new source of wealth they could tax.  They used their armies to open up and protect trade routes and to enforce uniform trade laws and a common currency within their kingdoms.

The revenue from trade meant rulers in western Europe did not have to rely as much upon the nobility for support.  Increasingly, they unified their kingdoms and created strong central governments.  By the mid-1400s, four strong states—Portugal, Spain, England, and France—had emerged.  Starting with Portugal in the early 1400s, all four began financing exploration in the hope of expanding their trade by finding a new route to Asia.

Scientific Advances

The political and economic changes that encouraged western Europeans to explore the world would not have mattered had they not had the technology necessary to launch their expeditions.  In order to find a water route to Asia, western Europeans needed navigational instruments and ships capable of long-distance travel.  Fortunately, at about the same time that the new, unified kingdoms were emerging in western Europe, an intellectual revolution known as the Renaissance began as well.  It quickly led to new scientific and technological advances.

Lasting from about 1350 to 1600, the Renaissance marked an artistic flowering and a rebirth of interest in ancient Greece and Rome.  European scholars rediscovered the works of ancient poets, philosophers, geographers, and mathematicians.  In their quest for learning, they also read the teachings of Arab scholars.

The Renaissance started with a renewed interest in the past, but it quickly led to a renewed commitment to reason, which later helped trigger a scientific revolution.

By studying Arab texts, western Europeans acquired the knowledge of a key navigational instrument, the astrolabe—a device invented by the ancient Greeks and refined by Arab navigators.  An astrolabe uses the position of the sun to determine direction, latitude, and local time.  Europeans also acquired the compass from Arab traders.  Invented in China, the compass reliably shows the direction of magnetic north.

Navigational tools were vital to exploration, but the most important requirement was a ship capable of long-distance travel.  Late in the 1400s, European shipwrights began to outfit ships with triangular-shaped lateen sails perfected by Arab traders.  These sails made it possible for ships to sail against the wind.  Shipwrights also began using multiple masts with several smaller sails hoisted one above the other, which made the ships travel much faster.  They also moved the rudder from the side to the stern, making ships easier to steer.

In the 1400s a Portuguese ship called the caravel incorporated all of these improvements.  A caravel was a small vessel capable of carrying about 130 tons (118 t) of cargo.  A caravel needed little water to sail, so it allowed explorers to venture up shallow inlets and to beach their ships to make repairs.

Portuguese Exploration

Sailing their caravels, Portuguese explorers became the first Europeans to search for a sea route to Asia.  In 1419 Prince Henry of Portugal, known as Henry the Navigator, set up a center for astronomical and geographical studies at Sagres on Portugal’s southwestern tip.  He invited map-makers, astronomers, and ship-builders from throughout the Mediterranean world to come there to study and plan voyages of exploration.

In 1420 Portuguese explorers began mapping Africa’s west coast.  In 1488 a Portuguese ship commanded by Bartholomeu Dias reached the southern tip of Africa.  A decade later, four ships commanded by Vasco da Gama sailed from Portugal, rounded Africa, and reached the southwest coast of India.  The long-sought water route to eastern Asia had been found.

Examining
What developments made it possible for Europeans to begin exploring the world?
 

African Cultures
Three great empires arose in West Africa and prospered from the gold trade.

Three great empires arose in West Africa between the 400s and 1400s.  All three gained wealth and power by controlling the trade in gold and salt.  Between the A.D.  third and fifth centuries, Arab merchants began using camels to transport salt, gold, ivory, ostrich feathers, and furs from regions south of the Sahara to North Africa.  Around the northern and southern boundaries of the Sahara, large trading settlements developed.  Ideas, as well as goods, traveled the African trade routes.  The Muslim nomads who controlled the caravans spread Islam into West Africa as well.

The Empires of West Africa

In the A.D. 400s the empire of Ghana emerged.  Located between the salt mines of the Sahara and the gold mines to the south, Ghana prospered by taxing trade.  Ghana became a Muslim kingdom in the 1100s, but frequent wars with the Muslims of the Sahara took their toll.  Equally damaging was a decline in food production.  Intensive cultivation had left Ghana’s land exhausted and its farmers unable to feed its people.  At the same time, new gold mines opened to the east.  Trade routes to these mines bypassed Ghana and, by the early 1200s, the empire collapsed.

East of Ghana the empire of Mali arose.  Mali also built its wealth and power by controlling the salt and gold trade.  By the mid-1300s, Mali had extended eastward along the Niger River past the trading center of Timbuktu and westward to the Atlantic Ocean.  Although the rulers and merchants of Mali adopted Islam, many of the people clung to their traditional belief in “spirits of the land,” who they thought ensured the growth of their crops.

Mali reached its peak in the 1300s under the leadership of Mansa Musa.  By that time, the opening of new gold mines had shifted the trade routes farther east and helped make Timbuktu a great center of trade and Muslim scholarship.

Along the Niger River, the empire of Songhai emerged.  When Mali began to decline, the ruler of Songhai, Sonni Ali, seized Timbuktu in 1468.  He then pushed north into the Sahara and south along the Niger River.  According to legend, Sonni Ali’s army never lost a battle.  Songhai remained a powerful empire until 1591, when Moroccan troops shattered its army.

Slavery and Sugar

As in other parts of the world, slavery existed in African society.  Most of the people enslaved in African societies had been captured in war.  Most African societies would either ransom captives back to their people or absorb them into their own society.  West African slavery began to change with the arrival of Arab traders, who exchanged horses, cotton, and other goods for enslaved people.

Sugar growers from Spain and Portugal also sought enslaved Africans.  In the 1400s Spain and Portugal established sugarcane plantations on the Canary and Madeira Islands.  The climate and soil there were favorable for growing sugarcane, a crop that requires much manual labor.  Sugarcane must be chopped with heavy knives.  Sugar growers brought in enslaved Africans to do the work.

Analyzing 
Why did Europeans begin to acquire enslaved Africans?
 

Exploring America
Spain led in the early European exploration and colonization of the Americas.

By the 1400s, most educated Europeans knew that the world was round.  On European maps of the time, only the Mediterranean, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa’s northern coast were shown in any detail.  At that time, Europeans rediscovered the works of Claudius Ptolemy, written in the A.D.  100s.  His Geographybecame very influential.  His basic system of lines of latitude and longitude is still used today.

European mariners also consulted the work of a twelfth-century Arab geographer named al-Idrisi.  In 1154 al-Idrisi published a geographical survey of as much of the world as was then known to Europeans and Arabs.  By studying the maps of Ptolemy and al-Idrisi, Western mariners finally obtained a reliable idea of the geography of the eastern African coast and the Indian Ocean.

Spain Claims America

Despite its usefulness, Ptolemy’s Geographyseriously underestimated the size of the earth.  Basing his own calculations on Ptolemy’s, Italian mariner Christopher Columbus predicted with wild optimism that “the end of Spain and the beginning of India are not far apart.”

Columbus needed financial backing to make a voyage across the Atlantic to Asia.  For six years he tried to persuade various European rulers to fund his expedition.  Finally, in 1492, Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella agreed to finance his venture.

Columbus and his three ships—the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria—left Spain in August 1492.  He sailed westward across the uncharted Atlantic until he reached the Bahamas in October.  He probably landed on present-day San Salvador Island.  There, Columbus encountered the Taino people.  He called them “Indians” because he thought he had reached the fabled Indies.  He then headed farther into the Caribbean, searching for gold.  He found the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola.

In March 1493 Columbus made a triumphant return to Spain with gold, parrots, spices, and Native Americans.  Ferdinand and Isabella were pleased with Columbus’s findings and prepared to finance further expeditions.  However, they were now involved in a competition with Portugal, which had claimed control over the Atlantic route to Asia.  To resolve the rivalry, the two nations appealed to the pope.  In 1493 Pope Alexander VI established a line of demarcation, an imaginary line running down the middle of the Atlantic.  Spain would control everything west of the line; Portugal would control everything to the east.

In 1494, in the Treaty of Tordesillas, the demarcation line was approved by both countries.  The treaty confirmed Portugal’s right to control the route around Africa to India.  It also confirmed Spain’s claim to most of the Americas.

In the meantime, Columbus headed back across the Atlantic with 17 ships and over 1,200 Spanish colonists.  Later, they accused Columbus of misleading them with false promises of gold, and many of them headed back to Spain to complain.

Hoping to find more gold and save his reputation, Columbus began exploring Hispaniola.  He discovered enough loose gold to make mining worthwhile.  He then decided to enslave the local Taino people and force them to mine gold and plant crops.

In 1496 Columbus returned to Spain.  In the meantime, his brother Bartholomew founded a town named Santo Domingo on the south coast of Hispaniola, closer to the gold mines.  Santo Domingo became the first capital of Spain’s empire in America.  Columbus made two more trips to America, mapping part of the coastline of South America and Central America.  He died without obtaining the riches he had hoped to find.

Naming America
In 1499 an Italian named Amerigo Vespucci, sailing under the Spanish flag, repeated Columbus’s attempt to sail west to Asia.  Exploring the coast of South America, Vespucci, like Columbus, assumed he had reached outermost Asia.  In 1501 he made another voyage, this time for Portugal.  After sailing along the coast of South America, he realized that this landmass could not be part of Asia.  In 1507 a German mapmaker proposed that the new continent be named America for “Amerigo, the discoverer.”

Later Spanish Expeditions
In 1513 the Spanish governor of Puerto Rico, Juan Ponce de León, sailed north.  Legend has it that he was searching for a fountain that could magically restore youth.  He never found the fabled fountain, but he did discover a land full of blooming wildflowers and fragrant plants.  He claimed the area for Spain and named it Florida, which means “land of flowers.”

Spanish explorers continued to search for a passage to China and India.  In 1510 Vasco de Balboa, a planter from Hispaniola, founded a colony on the Isthmus of Panama.  After hearing tales of a “south sea” that led to an empire of gold, he hacked his way across steamy, disease-ridden jungles and swamps until he reached the opposite coast.  There, in 1513, Balboa became the first European to reach the Pacific coast of America.  In 1520 Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese mariner working for Spain, discovered the strait later named for him at the southern tip of South America.  After navigating its stormy narrows, he sailed into the ocean Balboa had seen.  Its waters seemed so calm that Magellan named it Mare Pacificum, Latin for “peaceful sea”—the Pacific Ocean.  Although Magellan was killed in the Philippine Islands, his crew continued west, arriving in Spain in 1522.  They became the first known people to circumnavigate, or sail around, the globe.

Describing
What were the results of Columbus’s voyages across the Atlantic?