Download God, Glory, Gold: The Age of Exploration

God, Glory, Gold:
The Age of Exploration
After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks (1453) Europe was cut off from trade. Europe looked for an
alternative trade route by sea.
• European exploration/expansion characterized by 3 qualities
- God: Spread the Christian faith to all non-believers
- Glory: Travel the world, see exotic sites, do amazing things, be remembered
- Gold: Find and bring back the riches of the rest of the world and with it, power.
* Vasco makes a profit of several thousand percent
Portugal: Takes lead in sending out expeditions into the world beginning in 1420.
• Prince Henry the Navigator sent ships along the west coast of Africa,
discovering new GOLD sites. The Gold Coast.
• Bartholomeu Dias sails around the southern tip of Africa in 1488.
Called the Cape of Good Hope
• Vasco Da Gama sails around tip of Africa and sails to India,
landing in 1498
• Alfonso Albuquerque sails to Melaka in Southeast Asia.
Weakens Arab control of spice trade, gives Portugal more direct access
to the Spice Islands of Asia.
Spanish: Search for a western route to Asia.
• Christopher Columbus convinced queen Isabella of Spain to finance a trip West. Reaches the Americas in 1492
landing in the Caribbean islands.
• Led 3 more voyages and believes he in on the outskirts of India, calls the area West Indies and the people
Indians.
• Portuguese ask the Pope to step in, fearing that their hold over Asian spice markets is in danger from the
Spanish.
Treaty of Tordesillas – Imaginary line drawn through modern day Brazil. Portuguese get everything East of the line
and Spanish get everything West of the line. Nobody realizes that the Americas weren’t Asia yet. Treaty is largely
ignored by all other European nations.
Further Exploration
• Amerigo Vespucci explores and discovers that the land thought to be
Eastern Asia was actually the Americas. Maps of the Americas with his
name on them leads to the lands being called “America”.
• Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigated the world by sailing West
down tip of South America and up African coast. 1519-1520
Spanish turn from exploring to conquering.
• Hernando Cortes sailed to modern day Mexico and conquered the Aztec empire. Had only a small force of some
hundreds.
• Francisco Pizarro travels to modern day Peru and conquers the Inca empire with only about 200 men.
Advantages of the Spanish: * Cortes was kicked out by rebelling Aztecs led by Cuauhtémoc. Spanish returned 1 year later
- Spanish have better technology including heavy armor, firearms, horses, and economies that could support
large military campaigns
- Both Incas and Aztecs had bitter enemies that were happy to make alliances with the Spanish
- Disease: The Natives had no natural immunities to European diseases and both civilizations experienced
smallpox epidemics that weakened them.
Columbian Exchange: The Old World and the New World trade
routes that permanently connected the two.
Included the trade of animals, plants, raw and finished products