Exploration & The Columbian Exchange

Portuguese Exploration

  • Portuguese sailors sailed down the coast of Africa and returned to Portugal w/ the development of the caravel ship and the sailing compass

  • Portuguese ships started exploring more and more of West Africa after 1434

  • Traded with local communities and set up plantations that exploited Muslim and Slavic slave labor

    • Made Portugal a lot of $$$

African Slavery

  • Slavery in Africa long predated the coming of Europeans

  • Coming of Portuguese + other Europeans to West Africa expedited the buying and selling of slaves within Africa

  • First African salves were shipped to islands in the Caribbean ~1502

An Alternative Route

  • European merchants traveled through Constantinople to reach Asian markets before 1453

    • Was expensive and time consuming

    • Merchants from Christian countries were barred from the city when the Ottoman Turks took over

  • Vasco da Gama became the first European to go around the horn of Africa instead ~1498

Christopher Columbus

  • Columbus hypothesized that if you sailed far enough West across the Atlantic, you would eventually hit Asia

  • Convinced Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to fund this venture

    • Both wanted to make Spain more powerful, and if Columbus was successful, Spain would have easy access to goods in other countries

God, Gold, & Glory

  • The three major motives for European exploration and colonization

  • Religious motivations can be traced back all the way back to the Crusades

    • The series of religious wars between the 11th and 15th centuries during which European Christians sought to claim Jerusalem as an exclusively Christian space

  • Europeans also searched for optimal trade routes to lucrative Asian markets

  • Hoped to gain global recognition for their country

The Reconquista

  • 800 years of violence and expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain/Portugal) after the failed crusades

  • Competition between Christians and Muslims for predominance continued

    • Catholics looked to colonization partly as a means as continuing religious conquests

    • Religious devotion motivated rulers to convert Native Americans

Trade & Mining

  • The Crusades increased trade between the East and West

  • Demand for silk, spices, and porcelain created new markets for merchants along the Silk Road

    • Transport was expensive and slow because Muslim middleman collected taxes as the goods were exchanged

  • Sailors wanted to find a trade route that cut out middlemen

A Thirst for Glory

  • Mercantilism —> an economic theory that rejected free trade and promoted government regulation of the economy for the purpose of enhancing state power

    • Defined the economic policy of European colonizing countries

    • Argues that only a limited amount of wealth existed in the world

A Major “Discovery”

  • Columbus and his company made landfall in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492

    • Sailed on and “discovered” the island of Hispaniola soon afterward

  • Left 38 men on the island and brought 10 natives back to Spain to convert

  • Columbus returned the next year w/ 1,000 men to explore the area, beginning European colonization of the New World

  • Died believing he found the West Indies

The Columbian Exchange

  • Explorations of Amerigo Vespucci along the coast of South America between 1499-1502 made it clear this was a continent entirely unknown to Europeans

    • Where the name “America” comes from

  • More land was covered —> more opportunities saw by the explorers

  • Colombian Exchange: transatlantic flow of goods/people

    • Included diseases that lead to a huge decrease in the Native American population