Download Zheng He (Hajji Mahmud Shamsuddin) 1371

Zheng He
(Hajji Mahmud Shamsuddin)
1371-1433
Chinese Admiral
Christophe Colomb’s and Zheng He’s Ships
A giraffe
brought from
Malindi,
Kenya, by the
fleets of
Zheng He.
Henry the
Navigator
1394-1460
Astrolabe
Portuguese caravel.
This was the
standard model
used by the
Portuguese in their
voyages of
exploration. It
could
accommodate
about 20 sailors.
Lateen Sail
Portuguese Map of Western Africa, 1502
The map shows in great detail a section of African coastline that Portuguese explorers charted and named in
the fifteenth century. The African interior is illustrated with drawings of birds and views of coastal sights:
Sierra Leone, named for a mountain shaped like a lion, and the Portuguese Castle of the Mine on the Gold
Coast.
Fernão Gomes
15th Century
Portuguese
entrepreneur who
purchased from the
king the privilege to
explore in return for
trade monopoly.
The Portuguese Fleet
Embarked for the Indies
This image shows a
Portuguese trading fleet in
the late fifteenth century,
bound for the riches of the
Indies. Between 1500 and
1635, over nine hundred
ships sailed from Portugal to
ports on the Indian Ocean,
in annual fleets composed
of five to ten ships.
Bartolomeu Dias
1451-1500
Vasco da Gama
1469-1524
Portuguese Sailor
The route followed in Vasco da Gama's first
voyage (1497–1499)
European Exploration, 1420–1542
Portuguese and Spanish explorers showed the possibility and practicality of intercontinental
maritime trade. Before 1540 European trade with Africa and Asia was much more important
than that with the Americas, but after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca Empires
transatlantic trade began to increase. Notice the Tordesillas line, which in theory separated the
Spanish and Portuguese spheres of activity.
Elmina Castle
Erected in 1482 by the Portuguese in Ghana
Portuguese Port in Muscat erected in
the 1580s
Fort Jesus, Mombasa
Still standing on the Kenyan coast today, Fort Jesus was built by the Portuguese
in 1593. The fort was built not only to protect Portuguese trade interests in
the Indian Ocean, but also to assert the Christian conquest of the Swahili
speaking Muslims of Mombasa. The Swahili word for a jail, gereza, derives
from the Portuguese word for a church, igreja, indicating how the residents of
Mombasa themselves saw Fort Jesus.
Portuguese in India
In the sixteenth century Portuguese men moved to the Indian Ocean Basin to
work as administrators and traders. This Indo-Portuguese drawing from about
1540 shows a Portuguese man speaking to an Indian woman, perhaps making
a proposal of marriage.
World Map of Diogo Ribeiro, 1529
This map integrates the wealth of new information provided by European
explorers in the decades after Columbus’s 1492 voyage. Working on
commission for the Spanish king Charles V, the mapmaker has incorporated
new details on Africa, South America, India, the Malay Archipelago, and China.
Note the inaccuracy in his placement of the Moluccas or Spice Islands, which
are much too far east. This “mistake” was intended to serve Spain’s interests in
trade negotiations with the Portuguese.
A New World Sugar Refinery, Brazil
Sugar as the most important and most profitable plantation crop in the New
World. This image shows the processing and refinement of sugar on a Brazilian
plantation. Sugar cane was grown, harvested, and processed by African slaves
who labored under ruthless conditions to generate profits for plantation
owners.
Chinese Porcelain
This porcelain from a
seventeenth-century
Chinese ship’s cargo,
recovered from the
sea, was intended for
European luxury
markets.
Hernan Cortes
1485-1547
Spanish
conquistador
Mexico and Central America
The Valley of Mexico was a populous region of scattered towns, most of which were
part of the Aztec Empire. As Cortés marched inland from Vera Cruz toward the valley,
he passed through lands that for generations had been in an almost constant state of
war with the Aztecs.
Francisco
Pizarro
1475-1541
Spanish
Conquistador