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Chapter 3 Outline – Europeans Reach Outward (400 – 1522)
I.
Awakening Europe
A. Western Europe Declines
1. The Middle Ages or medieval period in Europe separates ancient times from modern times, and runs from about 400
CE to the 1400’s CE. This period began with a collapse of trade in Europe, as well as a series of savage invaders.
2. The fall of the Roman Empire contributed to these changes. For roughly 500 years Rome had maintained a tenuous
hold on much of Europe, but in 410 CE, a Germanic people, the Goths swept down from the north and attacked
Rome. The last Roman Emperor was deposed by a German warlord named “Odoacer” in 476 CE. By 500 CE they
had successfully toppled the western half of the Roman Empire. The eastern Roman Empire (the “Byzantine
Empire) continued on a separate course until they were later destroyed by Ottoman Turks in 1453.
3. Among the Germanic peoples there were many tribes: Angles, Franks, Jutes, Ostrogoths, Saxons, Vandals, Vikings,
and Visigoths, who built a kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula. Clovis, united the Franks in 485, and converted to
Christianity. He ruled the European plain from the North Sea to the Iberian Peninsula. Then Pepin, another King of the
Franks, got the Pope’s blessing in 751. In 768, Pepin’s son Charles became the Emperor Charlemagne, a well known
ruler of the Franks, who established the largest empire in Europe since Rome. Britain, who had been ruled by the Celts
since 500 BCE, was conquered by Romans in 43 CE. However, in the 400’s Germanic tribes consisting of Angles, Jutes
and Saxons invaded Britain and the Anglo-Saxons came to power. The land itself became “Angle land” (England).
4. With these Germanic invasions, new languages and ways took hold in Europe. One major difference was in who
controlled trade. The invaders who came to Europe were not sea traders. Thus, as Islam began to spread in the 600’s, it
was the Muslims who were able to take control of much of the trade in the Mediterranean Sea. By 711, they had
conquered the Iberian Peninsula as well.
5. Under the rule of the Germanic invaders, trade became less important in Europe, whereas agriculture became more
important. As a result, Europe began to experience turmoil and hard times. The decreased trade meant less money,
and without money (and taxes) many existing kingdoms simply fell apart.
B. The Dreaded Norsemen
1. In the 800’s still other Germanic invaders began to attack from the north. These were Norsemen or Vikings, who
came from Scandinavia (the lands of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway).
2. Vikings were notorious for hit and run raids that devastated the land and people. They were excellent sailors and
fierce warriors. Attacks were swift, sudden and terrible. All were either killed or sold as slaves. Viking attacks reached
as far as the Black Sea and Constantinople. Vikings had perhaps turned to the sea due to the inhospitable rocky soil and
cold climate of their homelands. In 866 Viking Danes invaded England. In 870 Vikings discovered Iceland. “Eric the
Red” discovered Greenland. His son, Leif Erickson, discovered Vineland (Newfoundland – off the coast of Canada)
having reached the Americas almost 500 years before Columbus.
C. The Rise of Feudalism
1. The need for security from invaders, as well as a means of survival after the collapse of trade in Europe led to
the rise of the Feudal System. Feudalism was a social, political and economic arrangement that enabled people to
live off the land. Land was divided into large “manors” or estates (including one or more villages, a manor house, fields,
and woods. The manors were owned by “Lords” who were members of the noble class. Those who worked the land
were called “serfs.” Serfs were not allowed to leave the property of the manor. Lords often gave lesser members of the
nobility known as “Vassals” a section of land to use. Such tracts of land included all of the towns and villages on the
land, and were known as “Fiefs.”
2. Because there was so little trade in Europe at this time, manors were forced to become self-sufficient,
self-contained places capable of producing everything that they needed on their own.
3. Under the feudal system there were three social classes: the Noble Class, headed by the King, consisted of Lords
and Knights. Nobles were followed by a second class that included Priests and Bishops and other church officials.
Finally, the lowest class was made up of the various town’s people and peasants.
4. The Feudal system bound everyone according to specific duties and rights: Lords had power over their serfs, but
also had an obligation to provide them with protection, and often built castles as refuges for serfs during attacks. In
return, Lords collected taxes from those on their lands. Often Lords passed on the stewardship of their lands to
warriors who were willing to fight for them when necessary. The most important of these warriors were known as
“Knights.” Armored knights who fought on horseback were an extraordinary military advancement in the 900s—
horses had to be specially bred to be able to carry the added weight of the their own armor as well as the knight’s.
Related technological advancements in the late 700’s such as use of stirrups in the cavalry (warriors on horseback)
increased the rider’s ability to remain seated in the heat of battle.
D. Influence of the Church
1. The Roman Catholic Church grew steadily in power during the middle ages in Europe because it functioned as a
Unifying force during a time of significant disunity.
2. The Church had grown more and more powerful as it steadily took over jobs that had once been carried out by the
governments of Europe, jobs that were one by one abandoned as the various kingdoms crumbled due to the lack of
trade.
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3.During this period, the Church also became the largest landholder in Western Europe because Kings and Lords gave land
to the Church in exchange for its services.
4. The Church became so powerful that Lords had to obey their Bishop (the Church) or risk being thrown out of the Church.
For example: in 1075 there was a dispute between King Henry IV of Germany, and Pope Gregory VII -- Henry had been
appointing Bishops and other high Church officials, but the Pope announced that only the Church could make these
appointments. When Henry refused to obey, the Pope excommunicated him. Henry begged forgiveness for 3 years before
he got permission to return.
5. Two important roles in the Church were those of Nuns (living in convents) and Monks (living in monasteries) who helped
to continue the work of learning and the arts during this period. They also often provided the only aide available to the poor,
sick, or homeless.
E. Revival of Trade and Towns
1. The years during the 800s and 900s were extremely chaotic and marked by almost constant warfare.
2. The average lifespan tended to be no more than 30 years. 1 in 4 children died in the 1st year of life.
3. Because life was so harsh and dangerous, medieval towns tended to have stonewalls around them
and have guarded watchtowers to help give warning of attackers.
4. During the 1,000s (11th century) life began to get significantly better.
a. Norsemen (Vikings) were no longer as threatening because the reciprocal threat of armored knights had begun to
deter them and they turned to trade instead of raiding and pillaging.
b. Some Vikings settled in Iceland and Greenland. Leif Ericson set up an outpost in North America. Remaining
Vikings settled in Europe and eventually became Christians.
5. Another cause for improvement in the quality of life was that new farming methods were developed.
a. Water mills, iron plows, harnesses for oxen and horses, and systems of crop rotation greatly increased
productivity.
6. The increased productivity of food led to a food surplus, which invariably led to a population boom.
a. the population in Europe tripled between 1000 and 1300.
7. The result was that old towns were revived and new towns sprang up.
a. However, life in these towns was much freer than life on a manor. Townspeople were free to travel, as well as
make their own laws. The people worked as merchants and artisans for themselves not for a Lord, and practiced a
variety of trades including shoemaking and metalwork.
8. Eventually, this group of self-employed merchants and artisans in the towns evolved into a new social class in Europe, the
middle class. They had more wealth than the serfs on manors, but less than most Lords.
9. During this time Europe’s townspeople, tired of the centuries of warfare and destruction, built many beautiful churches
with great Gothic cathedrals, whose tall spires literally reached towards the heavens. This architecture reflected the people’s
faith in Christianity, and the emphasis in their particular lives on a hope that the next life (in heaven) would be much better
than the present one.
F. Trade with the East
1. As the trade inside of Europe increased, trade with places outside of Europe also increased. The city that led this
expansion of Europe’s external trade was the Italian city of Venice. Venice had always been a city of shipping and
commerce, but had throughout the Middle Ages maintained contact with Constantinople, the city that was at the time the
greatest city in the Mediterranean world.
2. When the Crusades started in 1096, Venice was in a position to profit from them. The Crusades were a series of wars
begun by Pope Urban II when he asked the Byzantine Emperor for help in 1095 for help in stopping the Turks. He then
called for a series of “crusades,” or military expeditions to recover Christian Holy Land from the Muslims because, “Deus lo
volt,” (God wills it). Crusade: Sp. Cruzada altered after Fr. Croisade, both ML cruciata past participle of Cruciare - to
mark with a cross. (Note: For Islam, a Holy War is a “Jihad” a war in the name of Islam, to protect Islam—not unlike the
principles and purposes underlying the Crusades.)
3. Christian Knights from all over Europe converged in Venice to ship out to the Holy Land and fight in the Crusades.
(Christian Holy Land was the area of the Middle East where Jesus had lived).
a. Children’s Crusade - 1212 - thousands of children involved, most died or were sold into
slavery. None reached Palestine.
4. While the Crusades failed to reclaim the Holy Land itself, they did serve to increase contact between East and West, and
Crusaders brought home knowledge of the advanced way of life in the East.
5. As Europeans became aware of the luxury goods in the East, Europe’s appetite and demand for these goods increased.
a. People now wanted good “china,” as well as silks and dyes that came from China. In greatest demand were the
spices that came from the East, like nutmeg, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, and ginger. Spices made aging meat and
foods not only last longer, but also taste much better.
6. Europeans traded such things as leather, tin, swords, and woolen cloth to get the goods from the East.
7. One of Italy’s most famous merchants (“The Merchant of Venice”) was Marco Polo. At age 17, his father and uncle had
taken him overland to China, where he lived and traveled for 24 years. Then he came home and had his story of those travels
written in a book: The Travels of Marco Polo. Polo’s book introduced Europeans to lots of things they had never heard of,
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such as precious stones and splendid carpets—he even described coal, but many people did not quite believe that the fantastic
things like parades of 5,000 elephants draped in silk and gold, or a “black stone that burned” really existed.
G. The Decline of Feudalism
1. The Growth of towns and trade actually weakened the feudal system because:
a. Serfs ran away to live in towns where they could have a better life with paying jobs and freedom.
b. Lords began to have to actually hire serfs for pay in order to keep them working on the
manors.
c. Lords themselves began to trade more with towns to get the wider variety, and often better quality goods that the
towns had. This slowly began to make the manors less self-sufficient. As a result, the nobility slowly began to loose
power.
d. Strong rulers began to emerge in Europe. These kingdoms were the beginnings of the modern nations in
present-day Europe.
2. The first kingdom to unite under a strong monarchy was England. The Kings of Wessex began this work. Wessex being
the only holdout under Alfred the Great in 878 who did not succumb to the Danes/Vikings (thus preserving Anglo Saxon way
of life from destruction). Also, Alfred’s grandson Athelstan, became the ruler of all of England in 928 by driving out the
Danes.
a. 1066 William the Conqueror of Normandy, France became the King of England when he asserted his claim to
England’s throne in the Battle of Hastings.
b. Henry II in 1154 was the most powerful of these kings. He set up the Great Council (a group of advisors) and
established England’s “Common Law” and trial by jury.
c. In 1199 King John (Henry’s son) was an unpopular King because he taxed too heavily, and he
lost his lands to the French.
d. In 1215, English nobles rebelled against King John and forced him to sign the Great Charter or “Magna Carta”
making it necessary for a special council within the kingdom to have to “agree” to all taxes before they could be
implemented, and also guaranteeing a fair trial.
3. France and Portugal also built strong governments and they were able to gain the support of the townspeople because they
were able to raise a large enough armies to enforce order.
a. In 1143 Portugal became an independent nation.
b. In 843 the Treaty of Verdun had divided up Charlemagne’s Empire, one part of which became France. One part
also became Germany. In 963 Otto I became the King of Germany and in 951 Otto conquered part of Italy through
his ties with the Catholic Church in Rome.
4. Order was extremely important to the people because it brought greater security. With increased security, travel happened
more often. With more travel came increased trade.
5. As trade flourished for the first time in European history people experienced a feeling of nationalism (pride of nation and
loyalty to that particular nation/country).
H. A New Spirit of Curiosity
1. Once peace and prosperity was under way in Europe, a new sense of curiosity and interest in new technologies began to
develop. The years from the 1300s to the 1500s in Europe are called the Renaissance (the French word for rebirth) because
of this new thirst for knowledge. For historians, the Renaissance marks the beginnings of the Modern Age.
2. The Renaissance started in Italy and spread throughout Europe. Scholars began to return to “classical learning” by
reading the ancient writings of Greece and Rome. These works had once been commonly read in Europe, but during the
Dark Ages, the knowledge of them had been long lost. Fortunately, such texts had been preserved in great Muslim libraries
at Alexandria (Egypt) and Baghdad (now Iraq), and during the Crusades, Europe became exposed to these texts again, and
wanted to study them.
3. During the Renaissance scientific knowledge, as well as philosophy and medicine increased with European contact with
the Islamic culture in Spain.
4. In art, literature and philosophy, the Renaissance celebrated human possibility. Whereas the Gothic style of medieval
cathedrals were soaring forms to take human thoughts heavenward, Renaissance styles gave way to architectural styles
borrowed from Greece and Rome aimed at encouraging rational reflection.
5. In 1454 Gutenberg, a German goldsmith, invented printing press that used movable metal type. This invention radically
increased the ability to reproduce texts with speed (much faster than having scribes copy by hand.) The greater availability of
books helped new ideas to spread much more rapidly. The knowledge that common people had increased. Marco Polo’s
book was one of those that gained popularity, because by now Europeans were very interested in travel to faraway places.
II. The Search for New Sea Routes
A.
New Forms of Finance
1. In the 1400’s the cities of Genoa and Venice were both self-governing cities, or “city-states.” They had both started out
as small fishing villages and grown into major sea powers. They were among the richest and most powerful cities in
Europe, because the Mediterranean Sea was at this point, the crossroads of the western world.
2. Italian merchants needed ever increasing amounts of available money or “capital” to finance their growing trade. This
need led to a revolution in how business was done. Italian bankers created what were known as “joint-stock
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companies.” A joint-stock company was an organization in which a number of people pooled their financial resources.
These were people who wanted to increase their earnings, but who did not have enough money to make that happen with
their own limited funds. However, once several people pooled their money, the Joint-stock company could invest that
larger sum of money in some venture that would offer a good return on the investment, and everyone who contributed
money would share in the profit.
3. By the mid-1400s Genoa’s Bank of St. George had branches throughout Europe.
4. These developments meant that both the commercial networks and the private fortunes that would be necessary to
sustain the overseas trade and settlement (that was soon to come) were in place in Europe by 1492.
B. Rivalry over Trade
1. Because Italy had maintained its trade relations during the Middle Ages, and had therefore long had a presence in
Muslim cities on the Mediterranean, they enjoyed good trade relations with Muslim traders and were able to share in
their monopoly on Asian trade.
2. Muslim traders who brought goods from China, India, and elsewhere sold these goods to the Italians in Genoa and
Venice. These cities then turned around and resold the goods at a huge profit to the rest of Europe.
3. This angered the rest of Europe and they began to actively ponder ways to get around the Italians and buy the goods
directly. Thus they began to search for alternate routes to Asia. (Many Europeans had long been afraid to cross the
equator at sea because they believed that the sea boiled in that location. They also thought that the sea was filled with
sea monsters.)
C. Portuguese Discoveries
1. When other powerful locations in Europe began to seek ways to get around the Italian/Muslim trade monopoly on goods
from the east, Portugal led the way.
2. The King of Portugal had grown stronger with the decline of feudalism. In the early 1400s “Prince Henry the
Navigator” had begun to actively seek 4 things:
a. He wanted to find an all water route to Asia (travel over land to Asia was already controlled by the powerful
Italian monopoly.)
b. Henry also wanted to build a powerful navy so that he could defeat Muslim forces in North Africa
c. In addition, Henry wanted to spread Christianity to other parts of the world.
d. Finally, He wanted to learn more (he was a Renaissance child) about the ocean and beyond.
3. Therefore, Henry established an Institute of Sea men at Sagres Point on the southern tip of Portugal.
a. To do so, he hired the best sailors, cartographers (map makers), navigational instrument makers, and ship
builders, all so that he could create state-of-the-art sailing vessels and technologies.
b. The Institute created a new double-rigged ship called a “caravel” with both triangular and square sails. The
triangular sails enabled the new ship to sail directly into the wind (instead of being limited to having to tack back
and forth across the wind as ships had always done in the past. Square sails, on the other hand, allowed the ship to
get the maximum forward progress from having the wind at its back. The new ship gave sailors the confidence to
attempt trips of greater distance than they had before, because they weren’t as worried that they wouldn’t make it
back home if the wind failed to blow in the right direction.
c. The Sagres Point Institute should also be credited with the fact that most educated Europeans already knew that
the earth was round, not flat, by the time Christopher Columbus sailed (although credit for this discovery is often
attributed mistakenly to the findings of the Columbus voyages.)
4. As the Institute grew, Henry began sending ships south from Portugal down the west coast of Africa. He began to trade
with West Africans, (who’d been trading with the North African Muslims for centuries) and were very willing to trade.
a. At first, the Portuguese traded mostly for gold and ivory. By the early 1440s they began to also trade for slaves.
D. The Changing Slave Trade
1. Slavery was not new. It had existed in Africa (and all over the world) from earliest times.
2. Slave (from the word “Slav” – a term that refers to Eastern Europe’s largest ethnic group—Slavic peoples.) Slaves had
been taken from Eastern Europe as a large and routine part of trade in the Mediterranean region for a long time. Slavery
was no longer common in Western Europe by the 1400s, but it still existed in Eastern Europe, as well as the Middle East,
and Africa.
3. Remember, this was a different sense of slavery than what comes to mind when we think of the slavery practiced in the
US and South America beginning in Colonial Times and through the Civil War. Slaves in Africa were not seen as
inferior, but rather, just as “unlucky” people. They often performed highly skilled tasks and were treated with great
respect.
i. Slaves could marry.
ii. Children of slaves were born as free people.
4. Slavery changed as there was a rising demand for (unskilled field workers on Portuguese sugar plantations.
i. The Portuguese had begun raising sugarcane on the Cape Verde Islands off of West Africa.
Growing sugar cane was very labor intensive (a lot of hard work) especially in the hot
climate.
ii. The Portuguese began to use slaves to do the sugar cane labor. Because they needed masses
of workers, and had no intention of using any of their skills, but rather, only their brute labor,
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the traditional idea of slaves developing their talents and being treated with respect began to
be discouraged.
5. This change in the way that African slaves were treated and viewed and discouraged, was the foundation for tying a new
blanket of disrespect to a whole racial group, which equals RACISM.
E. A Water Route to Asia
1. Portugal’s progress at see was substantial as a result of Prince Henry’s commitment an the Institute at
Sagres Point:
a. Portuguese were the first to cross the equator in 1473 (remember this was considered a dangerous zone at
sea by Europeans.)
b. In 1487 Bartolomeu Dias sailed around the tip of Africa hoping for a route to India, and the King of
Portugal named it the Cape of Good Hope.
c. In 1497 Vasco da Gama sailed for Portugal, and followed the Dias route, making it all the way to a town
on the eastern coast of Africa to Malindi (in present-day Kenya.) There he hired a very experienced Muslim
pilot, Abu Majid, and made it all the way to Calicut, India (thereby establishing the much sought after allwater-route-to-Asia.)
2. Consequences reverberated throughout Europe as a result of Portugal’s all-water-route discovery:
a. Costs of goods/trading were lowered (cheaper to transport by sea than overland)
b. Lisbon (in Portugal) became a rich port—the richest in Europe.
c. The Mediterranean ceased to be the center of commerce between Asia and Europe.
d. The Italian monopoly on trade was destroyed.
e. Competition in trade was created because other European nations began to challenge
Portugal’s all-water trade route, seeking their own routes
III. The Voyages of Christopher Columbus
Columbus grew up in the Italian city-state of Genoa. He was the son of a weaver, and by age 14, had begun to go on trading
voyages from Genoa’s port. When he was 25 years old (in 1476) he was on a ship that was sunk by a hostile fleet off of the
coast of Portugal. Columbus swam to shore at Sagres Point, and made his way to where his brother lived, in Lisbon.
A. Columbus’s Education
1. The shipwreck changed Columbus’ life because in Lisbon, he learned map-making from his bother.
a. Columbus was self-taught in Spanish and Latin, and had read Marco Polo. He was excited by Polo’s
description of Japan (which was only based on rumor) of the furniture made of pure gold in many of the
Japanese homes, as well as the ruler’s palace—supposedly covered in gold.
b. Columbus read the works of Ptolemy, a mathematician and geographer who worked in ancient Egypt.
Ptolemy had calculated the length of Eurasia to be 177 degrees of longitude.
c. Columbus also relied on the work of Marinus of Tyre, another classical scholar who estimated that Eurasia
was 225 degrees long (note: the actual distance between the western tip of Spain and the coast of China, or
Eurasia, was only 130 degrees.) Columbus clearly hoped that the larger estimate was correct, because a
larger land mass meant that the remaining part that was ocean would be smaller—and, therefore shorter to
cross!
2. For 10 years Columbus worked as a merchant seaman in Portugal. By sailing with the Portuguese fleet, he learned deep
sea navigation skills, sailing to Guinea, on Africa’s gold coast. He also learned how to sail a caravel.
a. During these years Columbus observed that the winter winds off of North Africa blew from the east. This
would be important knowledge for future voyages.
3. Columbus married a Portuguese sea Captain’s daughter. As a result, he was able to work in her father’s map rooms and
gain access to closely guarded “secret” knowledge that the Portuguese had gained that put them ahead of other countries
in terms of their navigation skills. Columbus studied his father-in-law’s maps and charts, settling with his new wife on
the Portuguese island colony of Madeira.
B. Columbus’s Vision
1. In 1484 Columbus had presented the King of Portugal with his plan to sail west to Asia, and was laughed at. He was
told that his calculated distance to Asia was too short. (It was true that his calculations were wrong, but his error turned out
to provide him with an amazing stroke of good luck.)
a. By the 1400s most educated Europeans understood theoretically that by sailing west, a ship would eventually
circle the globe and arrive in the east. However, most believed it was too far for anyone to actually be able to
sail it. They no longer remembered that sailors had already made the trip (Vikings.)
b. Columbus read Biblical descriptions that said that the world was made up of six parts land and one part water
(Book of Esdras – part of the Apocrypha in the Bible.) Using this information, and combining it with what
he knew of Ptolemy and Marinus, as well as info from his father-in-law’s maps, Columbus came up with a
theory that the ocean was not as wide as most people at the time were saying it was. (Note – the actual waterto-land ration is about 3:1)
C. Help from Spain
1. Columbus was denied support by the monarchy in Portugal, so he took his son, Diego, and went to Spain. There he
made a similar appeal to be financed by the King and Queen for his proposed voyage west to Asia.
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Columbus had to wait 6 years for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella’s answer because their attentions were, at the time,
devoted to finishing the Reconquista (part of the Crusades, in which Spain reclaimed its’ homeland from the occupying
Moors--North African Muslims, who had conquered Spain in 711.)
3. At last, Ferdinand and Isabella’s armies took Granada, on the southern tip of Spain.
4. Just as Columbus was about to give up again, and offer his services to the King of France, the Spanish monarchs agreed
to finance what Columbus called his “Enterprise of the West Indies” (his plan to establish a sea route to the lands of
east Asia by sailing west from Spain.
5. Part of the reason that Isabella agreed to the Columbus proposal was because she was committed to spreading
Christianity around the world.
6. In Isabella’s zeal for an all-Christian Spain, Isabella also required all Jews living in Spain to leave by August 2, 1492.
None of the Jews who were being made to leave were compensated for the land and property left behind. Instead, the
King and Queen of Spain seized the Jewish properties and land, using it to finance Columbus’s voyages.
7. Columbus’s hopes for the trip were somewhat different than Isabella’s and Ferdinand’s. Columbus hoped primarily for
both trade and conquest.
a. He insisted on being made a nobleman, gaining a coat-of-arms, and being promised 10%of any wealth
coming from conquered lands.
b. He also demanded the right to rule any lands he might conquer.
c. Note: As late as 1961, encyclopedias commonly claimed that Columbus had set sail to prove that the world
was round. In fact, however, Aristotle had proved it centuries earlier. By Columbus’s era, the idea of a round
world was an accepted fact among educated circles (largely due to such information having been popularized
by groups like Prince Henry the Navigator’s Institute at Sagres Point, Portugal.) The mis-information came
from a biography of Columbus written in the 1800s.
8. On Friday, August 3, 1492, Columbus left Palos, Spain with three ships (Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria), and sailed
southwest, in order to reach latitudes where he knew that the winds blew west. He restocked his ships in the Canary
Islands (west of Morocco) and set sail into the unknown.
a. Traveling with Columbus were about 90 sailors (many of them teenagers.) It was a difficult crossing, with
harsh accommodations. The sailors were frightened by how much longer than expected the voyage was taking.
Mutiny was a very real potential danger for Columbus. Columbus began to “fake” the ship’s log entries,
indicating that the three ships had made less forward progress than they actually had each day, in an effort to
quell the sailors’ fears that they would never see Spain again.
b. After 10 weeks at sea, on October 10th, the sailors asked Columbus to turn back.
c. Columbus convinced them to sail west for three more days, and sighted land in two.
D. Reaching The Americas
2.
1. On October 12, 1492, Columbus arrived in the Bahamas (perhaps the island of Samana Cay.) Scholars still
debate the exact island of his arrival, but which ever island it was, Columbus named it “San Salvador.”
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Columbus was convinced that he was on an island just off the Asian mainland. He proceeded to explore, traveling to the
nearby islands of Cuba, and the island that is present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic (which he called
“Hispaniola.”)
Columbus’s journal indicates (October 19) that he originally planned to sail home in April, when the Atlantic Ocean
would be past the winter storm season, but after the Santa Maria was wrecked, he apparently decided to go home sooner.
The wood from the wrecked ship was used to build a fort christened “La Navidad.”
Sometime in mid January, as soon as Columbus could meet up with the Pinta, the two ships set sail for Spain.
Columbus stopped only once on the voyage, just 200 miles east of La Navidad, where his shore party encountered the
only Taino Indians they had seen thus far who had bows and arrows. Columbus’s standing order was that his men
should buy and/or barter for any weapons that they came across. When the shore party began to haggle over the price,
the Indians turned and ran back to the tree line where they had the remainder of their weapons. They reappeared with
ropes instead of more bows (clearly meaning to trade the rope instead of their precious bows), but the Spanish sailors
panicked, and attacked them.
On his return trip, Columbus was blown off course and almost capsized by two fierce storms in February and March. He
did, however, managed to catch the westerly winds that blew off of the American coast towards Europe. ****Actually,
one of Columbus’s most important (and real) “discoveries” was knowledge of the clockwise circulation of the Atlantic
winds and currents.
Columbus returned to the King and Queen of Spain marching a group of Taino Indians before him who were dressed in
feathers and gold.
a. He pointed out that the Taino were intelligent, but without weapons, and therefore would make good slaves.
b. He reported finding many spices and great mines of gold. (He had found very little gold, and the spices he found
were not the familiar far eastern ones that had become so desired by Europeans.) However, Columbus, believing
that he had reached Asia, and remembering Marco Polo’s descriptions, was sure that the gold must be there
somewhere, even though, in truth, he had only actually seen very small quantities of it.
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8. An enthusiastic Spain financed a second voyage, setting out in a convoy of 17 ships with 1,500 men, in 1493. However,
this time when Columbus arrived in the Americas, he found his fort, La Navidad in ruins. Apparently, the Spanish sailors,
who’d been left behind at the Fort, had treated the Taino very badly, and the Taino finally took action against them.
9. In response, Columbus captured all of the nearby Taino and shipped them back to Spain with a message for Isabella that
they were cannibals and should be made into slaves (this was a lie, but Columbus knew that the only circumstance under
which Isabella thought it was permissible to enslave the native peoples was if they were cannibals. Most of those he
shipped out never made it to Spain, having died instead, on the crossing.
10. By Columbus’s third voyage (1498), Isabella had become so angry about his continued brutality to peoples she had
specifically wanted Christianized, that she ordered him home in leg irons, and stripped him of his powers to govern in
lands he discovered.
11. Columbus’s 4th voyage (1502) was marked by the same sort of slave raiding and obsessive searching for gold, as the
previous trips, that he finally lost the support of the Spanish monarchs all together. Columbus died in Spain in 1506,
bitter and humiliated, still believing that he had reached Asia.
E. An Expanding Horizon
1. Within a short time of the route to the Americas becoming known, the Atlantic Ocean Crossing solidly replaced the
Mediterranean Sea as the heart and central focus of European trading. The shift forever changed all of the continents and
peoples involved.
2. In the end, Columbus’s most valuable acquisitions were not gold, nor even Christian converts, but geographical
knowledge.
IV. ON TO THE PACIFIC
A. Dividing The World
1. Columbus’s first voyage set off a huge dispute among Europeans over who would claim what in terms of lands
water rights.
2. Portugal already had a monopoly on the trade with the African coast and wanted to continue exploring the South
Atlantic. They ostensibly claimed the rights to those waters.
3. Spain claimed that the new lands were rightfully theirs (lands clearly situated within the exact waters that Portugal had
been wanting to reserve the right to.)
4. A treaty was drawn up to settle the dispute when Spain and Portugal allowed the Pope to mediate their dispute. The
Pope was, at the time, himself claiming the right to place non-Christian lands under the protection of Christian rulers.
5. In 1493, the Pope divided the world in half for Portugal and Spain. He drew an imaginary line around the earth, running
north and south. The Line of Demarcation, gave Portugal every non-Christian land to the east of the line, and Spain all
of the non-Christian lands to the west of the line. At the time, Spain and Portugal and the Pope only thought that they
were dividing up Asia, because no one yet realized where Columbus had really landed. However, as it turned out, when
the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed in 1494, it actually gave Spain a much better deal, because it gave Spain all of the
Americas in addition to Asia.
B. Cabral and Vespucci
1. Vasco da Gama’s voyage that had established the route around Africa to India was quickly followed up on.
2. Portugal sent Pedro Alvares Cabral, to repeat da Gama’s voyage. Cabral made an even wider swing into the South
Atlantic (to avoid the bad winds off of the coast of West Africa that da Gama had hit.) He swung so far wide (west) that he
inadvertently hit the coast of Brazil (South America---a location Portugal would quickly move to colonize, when Cabral
sent word back to the King recommending a settlement there as a possible routine stop-off point for the India trip.
3. It was Amerigo Vespucci, sent in 1501 to explore that coast, who realized what it really was: “a continent more
densely populated and abounding in animals than our Europe, Asia, and Africa”….that it could only be rightly named the
“New World.”
4. The correctness and importance of Vespucci’s insight was so evident in his comment that it impressed the German
mapmaker later reading the remark. It was the mapmaker who named the new continent America after Vespucci. (For 50
years it was only South America that got the name, while all of North America was only shown on maps as a vast
peninsula connected to Asia.)
C. Balboa Finds the Pacific
1.Vasco Nunez de Balboa was another Spanish explorer who came to the Americas after Columbus. Balboa went to a
Spanish settlement on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Panama, called Darien. He heard Indian reports of another ocean.
2. In 1513, Balboa organized a large expedition to find this other ocean:
a. Heading south, the group cut through the jungle to the top of the mountains that run along the Isthmus of
Panama.
b. From there, Balboa could see an ocean, which he named the “South Sea” (it was the Pacific Ocean).
c. Four days later, Balboa claimed the South Sea for Spain. Now it was realized that Asia lay all the way on the
other side of that ocean.
D. Magellan’s Remarkable Voyage
1. The Spanish were very discouraged by all the Portuguese ships returning home from the Indies full of spices, silks,
and jewels. They were prevented from following Portugal’s route (sailing east) by the Treaty of Tordesillas.
2. Nor could Spain get to the Indies by sailing west, because there was a whole continent in the way.
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3.
However, in 1518 Ferdinand Magellan came up with a plan according to which he would do exactly that--sail west to the
Indies.
a. Magellan was a navigator who had been born in Portugal and had sailed on many Portuguese ships to India and
The Spice Islands.
b. After quarreling with King Manuel of Portugal, Magellan offered to sail for Spain.
c. Magellan’s plan was to find a water passage around the Americas by sailing south.
d. The King of Spain agreed to sponsor the voyage.
4. Magellan set sail in September of 1519 with 5 ships and about 240 men. After crossing the Atlantic, the ships turned
south, sailing down the eastern coast of South America.
a. The further south he sailed, the worse the weather got, and the more discontented the sailors became. They
finally threatened to mutiny, but Magellan executed the mutiny’s leader and that put an end to it.
b. The crew wintered on the coast near the tip of South America, setting out again in the spring of 1520.
c. Very quickly after resuming the voyage, Magellan sailed into a narrow passage that connected the two oceans.
He knew it was a “strait” because it was not the ocean—it was more like a river, yet it was not a river because it
was salt water. The passage he discovered that cut through the tip of South America from the Atlantic side to the
Pacific side bears his name to this day: the Strait of Magellan.
5. Gathering food first, Magellan headed through the strait and in four days entered Balboa’s “South Sea.” Its waters were
so calm, that Magellan renamed the ocean the “Pacific” meaning peaceful.
E. Circling the Globe
1. It took Magellan the next several months to sail across the Pacific. The fresh food ran out within a month. Hunger,
thirst and disease tortured the crews according to a log kept for the King by an Italian nobleman, Antonio Pigafetta.
2. As Magellan completed his circumnavigation of the globe, his starving ships eventually came to islands that were
later named the Philippine Islands in honor of King Philip II of Spain.
a. In the Philippines, Magellan converted a local chief to Catholicism. Then in support of the chief he joined a
Fight against his enemy, and was killed in a beach assault.
b. Note: When Spain established its rule over these islands, it slowly began to convert all the local people to
Catholicism. Spanish clergymen called “friars” who did this missionizing work for the Catholic Church had
soon become powerful in the colonial government. Friars strongly discouraged any native religious practices,
and eventually most Filipinos converted to Catholicism. The Church became an important part of Filipino
society. However, Muslims in the south (called “Moros”) were able to completely resist Spanish rule and the
effects of Catholicism.
c. Magellan’s crew sailed on without him, stopping next in the Spice Islands. Only one of the 5 original ships
actually
completed the voyage under Captain Juan Sebastian del Cano.
d. Del Cano sailed his ship the Victoria across the Indian Ocean and around the tip of Africa and back north to
Spain arriving in 1522, three years after leaving Spain. They were the first to circumnavigate the globe
e. Note: In 1933 a U.S. Pilot was the first solo circumnavigation by plane, flying 15,596 miles in under 8 days.
In 1960, the Triton nuclear submarine made the first journey underwater in 84 days. Yuri A. Gagarin was the
fastest—the soviet cosmonaut orbited Earth in 108 minutes on April 12, 1961.
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