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Mrs. Wood
European History
European Exploration
---------------------------------------------------From ABC-CLIO's World History: The Modern Era website
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European exploration began during the Middle Ages. During the late 13th century, Italian explorer
Marco Polo went on a 25-year overland journey through Mongolia and Japan in search of a route to the
Far East for trading textiles and spices that were essential to preserving food. Polo's account of his
journey, The Travels of Marco Polo, published in 1477, was read by many future European explorers.
By the mid-14th century, the Ottoman Empire had conquered most of the area between Europe and the
Far East, and Arab traders were charging exorbitant fees for their spices. In order to counter those
obstacles, Europeans decided to establish their own trade routes over water.
Exploration brought further understanding of the world, which led to improved navigation and easier
future voyages. The increased use of the magnetic compass in the 13th century and improvements to
ships, including the use of a rudder in the rear of the boat instead of oars, allowed further exploration, as
did improvements in cartography. In 1474, Paolo Toscanelli of Florence drew one of the first theoretical
maps that showed a shorter route to China by way of the west. The same year as Christopher Columbus's
1492 voyage, German geographer Martin Behaim made one of the first globes.
The first stage of European exploration led to contact with indigenous peoples of newly discovered
lands, as well as the establishment of trade. Soon after, exploration led to colonization, as countries
competed to control land and trade routes and to convert native populations to Christianity.
"God, Glory, and Gold"
By the mid-15th century, absolutism was taking hold in Europe. Monarchs consolidated their power and
thus were able to give their attention to matters outside the state. Exploration for expanded trade looked
profitable, and Portugal became the first country to sanction aggressive exploration. In 1419, Prince
Henry the Navigator, so called by the British, established a navigation school by bringing together
cartographers, mathematicians, and astronomers. The Portuguese reached the Azores in 1432, and soon
after, Portuguese sailors explored the western coast of Africa. Those explorers discovered a wealth of
gold in what became known as the Gold Coast. In 1456, the Portuguese reached Cape Verde, and by
1470, Europe was involved in the African slave trade, as Portuguese merchants began buying slaves
from African merchants and selling them to Europeans.
Knowledge was an important exchange in the African trade. The Portuguese learned of a route to India
around the southern tip of Africa, and in 1488, Bartolomeu Dias became the first European to round the
southern tip of Africa, which was later named the Cape of Good Hope. Duarte Pacheco Pereira, who
later advised in the Treaty of Tordesillas, accompanied Dias.
Soon after Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope and established an eastward route to India, Columbus
decided to establish a westward route to India. After studying maps and reading the accounts of Polo's
journeys, Columbus theorized that the world was covered with mostly land and was much smaller than
what most believed. He also theorized that Asia was much larger than what most believed, and
therefore, he decided a western route would be best. In order to get financing for his voyage, Columbus,
an Italian, presented his idea to the king of Portugal but was rejected. His idea was finally accepted by
Isabella I of Castile, and he received financing from the recently unified Spain.
One of Spain's reasons for sponsoring exploration was religious proselytizing, as Spain had only
recently completed the expulsion of the Muslim Moors after almost 800 years of occupation. After the
1492 union of Aragon and Castile brought by the marriage of Ferdinand V and Isabella I, Spain expelled
all Sephardic Jews, as did Portugal in 1497. Thus, exploration was fueled by the desire to convert
nonbelievers, which was seen as a duty of Catholicism.
In October 1492, Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and Dominican
Republic). Columbus believed that he was in the outer islands of the Far East, and he made three more
voyages in search of a path to Asia. During the last three voyages, Columbus reached the major islands
of the Caribbean, which he named the West Indies. It was not until 1507, a year after Columbus's death,
that cartographer Amerigo Vespucci suggested that Columbus had landed on an entirely new land that
was far from Asia.
Columbus's voyages got the attention of many other European countries that soon sponsored their own
exploration of the New World. Juan de la Cosa was the chief navigator for Columbus's expedition that
reached the Americas in 1492. He participated in five more expeditions to the New World and drafted
the first map of the world, which included both Spanish and Portuguese discoveries. Vespucci, however,
wrote his name across his drawings of the New World continents, so the continents were mistakenly
named America.. Vespucci was also mistakenly given credit for being the first to reach South America.
Portugal and Spain began to compete for claims in the New World. In 1493, Pope Alexander VI divided
the Americas with a line of demarcation, an imaginary line that split the New World between Portugal
and Spain. In 1494, Portugal negotiated the Treaty of Tordesillas, which moved the line of demarcation
farther west and put everything from Brazil eastward to the East Indies in the Portuguese sphere of
influence and everything from Brazil westward in the Spanish sphere. The treaty gave Spain much of the
unexplored territory and furthered the Spanish desire to continue exploration.
In 1497, John Cabot, an Italian, made England's claim in the New World when he landed in
Newfoundland, becoming the first European to land in North America. Like Columbus, Cabot thought
that he had found a different route to Asia. More than a decade earlier, Cabot had tried unsuccessfully to
get Spanish sponsorship for a voyage to Asia, as he believed that a route in the north would bring him
there. In 1496, England's King Henry VII agreed to finance his voyage, which would provide the British
Empire its first claim in North America.
Despite the discoveries in the New World, many explorers thought their expeditions were failures, as
they did not provide a shorter route to the Far East. So in addition to western exploration, Portugal and
Spain continued exploration to the east. In 1498, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and
traveled to Mozambique and eventually to India. Da Gama encountered Muslim traders, who perceived
him as a threat to their trade, and hostilities arose. In 1500, Pedro Cabral and Dias were sent on the
second Portuguese voyage to India. As they traveled down the western coast of Africa, bad weather and
strong currents forced the expedition to go west. Cabral's expedition went so far west that they landed in
Brazil, the easternmost part of South America, before returning east and continuing around Africa to
India, where they battled with Muslim traders and established a trading post for Portugal.
The Portuguese continued trade missions to India and continued to battle the Muslims until Portugal was
able to establish a base at Goa, India, in 1510. Portugal then explored farther east, and by 1511, it
conquered the Malacca kingdom of Malaysia. The Portuguese soon took control of the Spice Islands, in
present-day Indonesia, and established trade with China. Portugal was unable to colonize those areas,
but it forced Muslim traders out of business.
In 1513, Piri Reis drew his first map of the world. Reis was a captain in the Turkish Navy, and his maps,
which were made using explorers' notes and maps captured from Portuguese and Spanish ships, helped
future explorers and were noted for their incredible accuracy. Sebastian Cabot, an explorer, also made
important contributions in cartography. Cabot was a map maker for Henry VII and Henry VIII in
England until he went to work for Ferdinand V of Spain in 1512. He then worked for Charles V of the
Holy Roman Empire and developed improved navigational charts. He is noted for implementing
longitude to improve the charts.
In September 1519, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sailor working for Charles V, left on a voyage to
explore western passages to the Spice Islands, which he believed were within Spain's sphere of
influence. Magellan reached Brazil in December 1519 and explored the South American coast in search
of a passage to the west. After not finding a westward passage, Magellan sailed south and eventually
sailed between the tip of South America and Antarctica, in what is now known as the Straight of
Magellan. Magellan reached the west coast of South America in November. The ocean was much
calmer and easier to navigate than the Straight of Magellan, so Magellan named it the Pacific, which
means peaceable. The expedition continued west, and Magellan reached the present-day Philippines in
the spring of 1521 and claimed the islands for the Spanish Empire. Magellan was killed on the island of
Cebu, but his crew continued on and returned to Spain in September 1522 as the first Europeans to
circumnavigate the globe.
Spanish Empire
Although Spain's new claims created the Spanish Empire, the extent of its lands was still unknown. The
empire depended on the success of the conquistadores, who were commissioned to explore and conquer
the newly claimed land in the Americas..
Vasco Núñez de Balboa explored the northern coast of present-day Colombia as well as the isthmus of
present-day Panama. In September 1513, he became the first European to see the eastern coast of the
Pacific Ocean, which he named the South Sea and claimed for Spain. Balboa established the first
permanent European settlement in the New World, in Panama, before Francisco Pizarro, who was part
of his expedition, arrested him on false charges of treason. In 1513, Juan Ponce de León explored
present-day Florida. Ponce landed on present-day St. Augustine, the oldest European-settled city in the
United States. Ponce made an unsuccessful trip to return and settle there in 1521, but his explorations
paved the way for future Spanish missionaries and colonizers. By 1521, Hernando Cortés had conquered
the Aztec Empire, and by 1533, Pizarro had conquered the Inca Empire of Peru. A member of Pizarro's
expedition, Hernando de Soto, explored Florida and the present-day southern United States from 1539 to
1542.
One of the most famous conquistadores was Francisco Vásquez de Coronado. From 1540 to 1542,
Coronado led an expedition through Mexico and into the present-day southwestern United States.
Coronado was looking for the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola, which were rumored to be made of gold.
His expedition was the first European expedition to reach the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River.
France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands Join the Race
During the 16th century, mercantilism became a dominant economic theory in Western Europe.
Mercantilist theory held that a country must maximize its exports and minimize its imports in order to
achieve optimum economic growth and accumulate bullion. Thus, more countries increased sponsorship
of exploration in order to find new markets for trade.
During three voyages in the 1530s, Jacques Cartier of France searched for a short, western passage to
China. Instead, he became one of the first Europeans to contact North American Indians, and he
explored the St. Lawrence River, which led to the French colonization of Canada. During the 1570s and
1580s, England's Francis Drake explored South America, the Pacific, and California. Spain sensed
competition, and in 1583, Philip II ordered the "discovery, pacification, and settlement of the province
of New Mexico.." Soon after, Juan de Oñate, often called the last conquistador, founded the province of
New Mexico and explored large parts of the area north of New Spain. He pacified the Native Americans
of the North American southwest during the 1590s, and in 1614, he was tried for, among other things,
mistreatment of his soldiers and the Native Americans.
In 1607, London merchants hired Henry Hudson to find the Northwest Passage, a mythical waterway in
North America that connected the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, by way of the North Pole.
Hudson failed to find a passage, but he determined that the North Pole was not a viable route to Asia. He
tried again in 1608, this time going east along the northern coast of Russia. In 1609, Hudson attempted
the search a third time for the Dutch East India Company. He decided to look for the passage in the
northwest instead of the northeast, and he explored northern Canada and discovered what is now the
Hudson Bay. During this time, Samuel de Champlain explored North America for France is an effort to
colonize the land.
During the 1630s and 1640s, Abel Tasman also explored and established trade for the Dutch East India
Company. In 1634, Tasman explored Seram (present-day Indonesia), which had been discovered by
Dutch traders in the early 1500s, and he went on trade voyages to Japan, Cambodia, and Sumatra in
1639. In 1642, Tasman was given command of a voyage to explore the Indian Ocean and find an eastern
sea passage to the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and South America.. Tasman's fleet sailed from
Indonesia to Mauritius, and Tasman sighted what is now Tasmania, Australia's largest island, to the
southeast. Tasman then discovered New Zealand before sailing on to discover the Tonga islands and Fiji
and explore New Guinea. On another voyage, Tasman explored the northern coast of Australia. His
voyages, however, were considered unsuccessful because they did not reach their goals of establishing
trade. Tasman and the Dutch also did not realize that the parts of Australia that they discovered were
part of a large continent.
In 1673 and 1674, Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette and fur trader Louis Jolliet explored the
Mississippi River. They were following the orders of Comte de Frontenac, the French governor-general
of New France, to establish missions and trade relations with the Native Americans. Robert La Salle
followed in the 1680s by exploring the Ohio Valley and the Mississippi basin, which he named
Louisiana after King Louis XIV. Exploration and missionary work in the North American west also
continued, and during the 1680s, Eusebio Kino explored the North American southwest and proved that
California was not an island.
In 1769, James Cook left on a voyage to explore the South Pacific in order to make scientific
observations as well as look for a large continent that many believed was yet to be discovered. On the
two-year voyage, Cook explored New Zealand and discovered western Australia, present-day New
South Wales and Queensland. On a second voyage in 1772, Cook sailed through the Antarctic Circle but
failed to discover the continent during the three-year voyage. Cook's voyages were revolutionary,
however, as they proved a way to prevent scurvy, which led to longer and more ambitious voyages. In
1776, Cook left on a voyage in search of the Northwest Passage. He sailed east from England for the
west coast of North America, and on his way, he discovered the present-day Hawaiian Islands, which he
named the Sandwich Islands. Cook also explored the northwest coast of North America and made claims
for England before returning to Hawaii, where he was killed in 1779.
During the 1790s, Mungo Park of Scotland explored the interior of western Africa in an attempt to
establish relations with African nations and to conduct botanical and zoological studies. The Travels of
Mungo Park was published in 1799 and is one of the earliest sources of African history. As the abolition
movement grew in the United Kingdom, missionaries like David Livingstone saw it as their duty to
bring Christianity to Africa. Livingstone wanted to find water trade routes that would open Africa to
trade and eventually undermine the slave trade. He became one of the first people to explore the African
interior, as he searched for the source of the Nile River. Livingstone was not heard from for many years
until journalist Henry Morton Stanley found him in 1871. Stanley's accounts of his journeys fueled
further exploration into inland Africa.
The Unexplored Continent
During the early 19th century, British and U..S. explorers explored the shores of the Antarctic peninsula,
and expeditions from Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States sighted the mainland of
Antarctica in 1820. In the early 20th century, Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton of the United
Kingdom led expeditions to explore the mainland and find the South Pole. Shackleton came within 100
miles of the pole during his 1908–1909 expedition, but Roald Amundsen of Norway became the first
person to reach the South Pole in 1911.
With the mapping of the world essentially complete, six centuries of European exploration came to a
close. The next great realm of discovery, space, has only just begun to be explored.
MLA:
"European exploration." World History: The Modern Era. ABC-CLIO, 2012. Web. 17 Dec. 2012.