Intellectual and Geographic Exploration in Europe

Between 1300 and 1500, as the Mexica and Inca were expanding their empires overland in the Americas, European scholars extended their fields of study to include many new topics. New printing technology made books more available and affordable, enabling people like Christopher Columbus to read and compare many different books. Portuguese and Spanish ships colonized lands farther and farther away, and as the pace of European exploration hastened, especially after 1450, many different explorers, of whom Columbus is the most famous, crossed the Atlantic.

Rise of Humanism

Since the founding of universities in Europe around 1200, students had to read Greek and Latin texts in the Bible. Instructors used an approach called scholasticism, in which the main goal was to reconcile the many differences among ancient authorities to form a logical system of thought. Around 1350, a group of Italian scholars pioneered a new intellectual movement called humanism. Humanists studied many of the same texts as before, but they tried to impart a more general understanding of them to their students in hope that they’d morally improve and help others do the same.

In 1487, Venetian woman named Cassandra Fedele set out her own understanding of humanism in public address. Having studied Greek and Latin with a tutor, Fedele urged her audience to study Cicero, Plato, and Aristotle because she maintained that virtue and intelligence are more useful than wealth and physical strength. She eloquently expressed the major tenet of humanism: studying the humanities made students, whether from noble or low-born families, more refined and better people.

Historians call this period of humanist revival the Renaissance. Most historians no longer see the Renaissance as a sharp departure from earlier periods; they recognize that the intellectual advances of the 12th and 13th centuries underpinned those of the humanist era.

The introduction of printing in Europe contributed greatly to the humanist movement because movable type made books cheaper. Johannes Gutenberg printed the first European book, a Bible, using movable type sometime before 1454. This was not the first book int he world made with the movable type; the Chinese knew about movable type as early the 111 century, and the world’s earliest surviving book using movable type was made in Korea in about 1400. Moreover, Gutenberg could not have printed the Bible if paper, a Chinese invention, had not reached Europe.

Within 50 years of its introduction, printing had transformed the European book. Although European readers had once prized illuminated manuscripts prepared by hand, with beautiful illustrations and exquisite lettering, now typesetters streamlined texts so they could be printed more easily.

Early European Exploration in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic

European merchants, primarily from the Italian city-states of Venice and Genoa, maintained settlements in certain locations far from Europe, such as Constantinople and the island of Cyprus. These communities had walled enclosures called factories that held warehouses, a place for ships to refit, and houses. The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 would encourage many of these merchants to go west instead.

After around 1350, as European navigators began to sail past the Strait of Gibraltar into the Atlantic Ocean, cartographers began to show the various Atlantic Islands off the coast of Africa, such as the Canary Islands and the Azores, on their maps. One motivation for exploring these unknown islands were religious. As Catholic rulers of Spain and Portugal regained different Islamic cities in Iberia during the 13th and 14 centuries in a campaign called the reconquista, they hoped to expand Christian territory into North Africa. At the time, Spain contained several distinct kingdoms. In 1415, a Portuguese prince named Henry (the Navigator) captured the Moroccan fortress of Ceuta. His goal was to convert the inhabitants to Christianity.

Henry tried to take the Canary Islands for Christianity in 1424, but the inhabitants, armed only with stone tools, repelled the invaders.; nevertheless, the Portuguese continued to capture and enslave Canary Islanders. The Portuguese occupied the islands of Madeira, and in 1454 they established plantations there, which soon exported large amounts of sugar.

Many navigators were afraid to venture past the Madeira Islands because of the dreaded torrid zone. Greek and Roman geographers had posted that the northern temperate zone was bordered by an uninhabitable frigid zone to the north and a torrid zone to the south, whose scorching heat made it impossible to cross. After the 12th century, all informed people realized the globe was round.

Many Europeans had assumed that Cape Bojador, in modern Morocco, marked the beginning of the impenetrable torrid zone. But in 1432, te Portuguese sailed past the cape and reported that no torrid zone existed.

The Portuguese Slave Trade After 1444

Henry realized that since no torrid zone existed, the Portuguese could transport slaves from the west coast of Africa and sell them in Europe. Portuguese vessels had already brought back 38 African slaves from West Africa. In 1444, Henry dispatched 6 caravels to bring back slaves from the Arguin bank, south of Cape Bojador.

In 1444, Henry staged a huge public reception of slaves for his subjects. The ships’ captains presented one slave each to a church and to a Franciscan convent to demonstrate their intention to convert to slaves Christianity.

Many saw the trade of slaves as a Christian act: if the Africans converted to Christianity, they could attain salvation. From the beginning, the European slave trade combined the profit motive with a missionary impulse.

Within 10 years, the Portuguese slave traders had reached agreements with 2 rulers in northern Senegal to trade horses for slaves each year. The price of a horse varied from 9 to 14 slaves. By the time of Henry’s death in 1460, Portuguese ships had transported about 1,000 slaves a year, fewer than the 4,300 slaves who crossed the Sahara overland in Muslim caravans each year at the time. After 1460, the oceanic trade continued to grow. Many of the African slaves worked on sugar plantations, either in the Canary Islands or on Madeira.