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What Was the Age of Exploration?

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• Key Figures & Milestones
• Physical Geography
• Political Geography
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The Birth of the Age of Exploration

The discovery of the new world, opening the americas, the end of the era, contributions to science, long-term impact.

• M.A., Geography, California State University - East Bay
• B.A., English and Geography, California State University - Sacramento

The era known as the Age of Exploration, sometimes called the Age of Discovery, officially began in the early 15th century and lasted through the 17th century. The period is characterized as a time when Europeans began exploring the world by sea in search of new trading routes, wealth, and knowledge.

During this era, explorers learned more about areas such as Africa and the Americas and brought that knowledge back to Europe. Massive wealth accrued to European colonizers due to trade in goods, spices, and precious metals. Nevertheless, there were also vast consequences. Labor became increasingly important to support the massive plantations in the New World, leading to the trade of enslaved people, which lasted for 300 years and had an enormous impact on Africa and North America.

The impact of the Age of Exploration would permanently alter the world and transform geography into the modern science it is today.

Key Takeaways

• During the Age of Exploration, methods of navigation and mapping improved, switching from traditional portolan charts to the world's first nautical maps; the colonies and Europe also exchanged new food, plants, and animals. 
• The Age of Exploration also decimated indigenous communities due to the combined impact of disease, overwork, and massacres.
• The impact persists today, with many of the world's former colonies still considered the developing world, while colonizing countries are the First World countries, holding a majority of the world's wealth and annual income.

Many nations were looking for goods such as silver and gold, but one of the biggest reasons for exploration was the desire to find a new route for the spice and silk trades.

When the Ottoman Empire took control of Constantinople in 1453, it blocked European access to the area, severely limiting trade. In addition, it also blocked access to North Africa and the Red Sea, two very important trade routes to the Far East.

The first of the journeys associated with the Age of Discovery were conducted by the Portuguese. Although the Portuguese, Spanish, Italians, and others had been plying the Mediterranean for generations, most sailors kept well within sight of land or traveled known routes between ports.  Prince Henry the Navigator  changed that, encouraging explorers to sail beyond the mapped routes and discover new trade routes to West Africa.

Portuguese explorers discovered the Madeira Islands in 1419 and the Azores in 1427. Over the coming decades, they would push farther south along the African coast, reaching the coast of present-day Senegal by the 1440s and the Cape of Good Hope by 1490. Less than a decade later, in 1498, Vasco da Gama would follow this route to India.

While the Portuguese were opening new sea routes along Africa, the Spanish also dreamed of finding new trade routes to the Far East. Christopher Columbus , an Italian working for the Spanish monarchy, made his first journey in 1492. Instead of reaching India, Columbus found the island of San Salvador in what is known today as the Bahamas. He also explored the island of Hispaniola, home of modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Columbus would lead three more voyages to the Caribbean, exploring parts of Cuba and the Central American coast. The Portuguese also reached the New World when explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral explored Brazil, setting off a conflict between Spain and Portugal over the newly claimed lands. As a result, the  Treaty of Tordesillas  officially divided the world in half in 1494.

Columbus' journeys opened the door for the Spanish conquest of the Americas. During the next century, men such as Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro would decimate the Aztecs of Mexico, the Incas of Peru, and other indigenous peoples of the Americas. By the end of the Age of Exploration, Spain would rule from the Southwestern United States to the southernmost reaches of Chile and Argentina.

Great Britain and France also began seeking new trade routes and lands across the ocean. In 1497, John Cabot , an Italian explorer working for the English, reached what is believed to be the coast of Newfoundland. Many French and English explorers followed, including Giovanni da Verrazano, who discovered the entrance to the Hudson River in 1524, and Henry Hudson, who mapped the island of Manhattan first in 1609.

Over the next decades, the French, Dutch, and British would all vie for dominance. England established the first permanent colony in North America at Jamestown, Va., in 1607. Samuel du Champlain founded Quebec City in 1608, and Holland established a trading outpost in present-day New York City in 1624.

Other important voyages of exploration during this era included Ferdinand Magellan's attempted circumnavigation of the globe, the search for a trade route to Asia through the Northwest Passage , and Captain James Cook's voyages that allowed him to map various areas and travel as far as Alaska.

The Age of Exploration ended in the early 17th century after technological advancements and increased knowledge of the world allowed Europeans to travel easily across the globe by sea. The creation of permanent settlements and colonies created a network of communication and trade, therefore ending the need to search for new routes.

It is important to note that exploration did not cease entirely at this time. Eastern Australia was not officially claimed for Britain by Capt. James Cook until 1770, while much of the Arctic and Antarctic were not explored until the 20th century. Much of Africa also was unexplored by Westerners until the late 19th century and early 20th century.

The Age of Exploration had a significant impact on geography. By traveling to different regions around the globe, explorers were able to learn more about areas such as Africa and the Americas and bring that knowledge back to Europe.

Methods of navigation and mapping improved as a result of the travels of people such as Prince Henry the Navigator. Before his expeditions, navigators had used traditional portolan charts, which were based on coastlines and ports of call, keeping sailors close to shore.

The Spanish and Portuguese explorers who journeyed into the unknown created the world's first nautical maps, delineating not just the geography of the lands they found but also the seaward routes and ocean currents that led them there. As technology advanced and known territory expanded, maps and mapmaking became more and more sophisticated.

These explorations also introduced a whole new world of flora and fauna to Europeans. Corn, now a staple of much of the world's diet, was unknown to Westerners until the time of the Spanish conquest, as were sweet potatoes and peanuts. Likewise, Europeans had never seen turkeys, llamas, or squirrels before setting foot in the Americas.

The Age of Exploration served as a stepping stone for geographic knowledge. It allowed more people to see and study various areas around the world, which increased geographic study, giving us the basis for much of the knowledge we have today.

The effects of colonization persist as well, with many of the world's former colonies still considered the developing world and the colonizing nations the First World countries, which hold a majority of the world's wealth and receive a majority of its annual income.

• Profile of Prince Henry the Navigator
• A Timeline of North American Exploration: 1492–1585
• The History of Cartography
• The European Overseas Empires
• Biography of Ferdinand Magellan, Explorer Circumnavigated the Earth
• Explorers and Discoverers
• The Truth About Christopher Columbus
• European Exploration of Africa
• Biography and Legacy of Ferdinand Magellan
• The Portuguese Empire
• Biography of Christopher Columbus, Italian Explorer
• Major Events and Eras in American History
• Amerigo Vespucci, Explorer and Navigator
• Biography of Juan Sebastián Elcano, Magellan's Replacement
• Amerigo Vespucci, Italian Explorer and Cartographer
• The Second Voyage of Christopher Columbus

Visiting Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion?

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Europe and the age of exploration.

Salvator Mundi

Albrecht Dürer

The Celestial Map- Northern Hemisphere

Astronomical table clock

Astronomicum Caesareum

Michael Ostendorfer

Mirror clock

Movement attributed to Master CR

Portable diptych sundial

Hans Tröschel the Elder

Celestial globe with clockwork

Gerhard Emmoser

The Celestial Globe-Southern Hemisphere

James Voorhies Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2002

Artistic Encounters between Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas The great period of discovery from the latter half of the fifteenth through the sixteenth century is generally referred to as the Age of Exploration. It is exemplified by the Genoese navigator, Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), who undertook a voyage to the New World under the auspices of the Spanish monarchs, Isabella I of Castile (r. 1474–1504) and Ferdinand II of Aragon (r. 1479–1516). The Museum’s jerkin ( 26.196 ) and helmet ( 32.132 ) beautifully represent the type of clothing worn by the people of Spain during this period. The age is also recognized for the first English voyage around the world by Sir Francis Drake (ca. 1540–1596), who claimed the San Francisco Bay for Queen Elizabeth ; Vasco da Gama’s (ca. 1460–1524) voyage to India , making the Portuguese the first Europeans to sail to that country and leading to the exploration of the west coast of Africa; Bartolomeu Dias’ (ca. 1450–1500) discovery of the Cape of Good Hope; and Ferdinand Magellan’s (1480–1521) determined voyage to find a route through the Americas to the east, which ultimately led to discovery of the passage known today as the Strait of Magellan.

To learn more about the impact on the arts of contact between Europeans, Africans, and Indians, see  The Portuguese in Africa, 1415–1600 ,  Afro-Portuguese Ivories , African Christianity in Kongo , African Christianity in Ethiopia ,  The Art of the Mughals before 1600 , and the Visual Culture of the Atlantic World .

Scientific Advancements and the Arts in Europe In addition to the discovery and colonization of far off lands, these years were filled with major advances in cartography and navigational instruments, as well as in the study of anatomy and optics. The visual arts responded to scientific and technological developments with new ideas about the representation of man and his place in the world. For example, the formulation of the laws governing linear perspective by Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) in the early fifteenth century, along with theories about idealized proportions of the human form, influenced artists such as Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). Masters of illusionistic technique, Leonardo and Dürer created powerfully realistic images of corporeal forms by delicately rendering tendons, skin tissues, muscles, and bones, all of which demonstrate expertly refined anatomical understanding. Dürer’s unfinished Salvator Mundi ( 32.100.64 ), begun about 1505, provides a unique opportunity to see the artist’s underdrawing and, in the beautifully rendered sphere of the earth in Christ’s left hand, metaphorically suggests the connection of sacred art and the realms of science and geography.

Although the Museum does not have objects from this period specifically made for navigational purposes, its collection of superb instruments and clocks reflects the advancements in technology and interest in astronomy of the time, for instance Petrus Apianus’ Astronomicum Caesareum ( 25.17 ). This extraordinary Renaissance book contains equatoria supplied with paper volvelles, or rotating dials, that can be used for calculating positions of the planets on any given date as seen from a given terrestrial location. The celestial globe with clockwork ( 17.190.636 ) is another magnificent example of an aid for predicting astronomical events, in this case the location of stars as seen from a given place on earth at a given time and date. The globe also illustrates the sun’s apparent movement through the constellations of the zodiac.

Portable devices were also made for determining the time in a specific latitude. During the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the combination of compass and sundial became an aid for travelers. The ivory diptych sundial was a specialty of manufacturers in Nuremberg. The Museum’s example ( 03.21.38 ) features a multiplicity of functions that include giving the time in several systems of counting daylight hours, converting hours read by moonlight into sundial hours, predicting the nights that would be illuminated by the moon, and determining the dates of the movable feasts. It also has a small opening for inserting a weather vane in order to determine the direction of the wind, a feature useful for navigators. However, its primary use would have been meteorological.

Voorhies, James. “Europe and the Age of Exploration.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/expl/hd_expl.htm (October 2002)

Further Reading

Levenson, Jay A., ed. Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration . Exhibition catalogue. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1991.

Vezzosi, Alessandro. Leonardo da Vinci: The Mind of the Renaissance . New York: Abrams, 1997.

Additional Essays by James Voorhies

• Voorhies, James. “ Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) .” (October 2004)
• Voorhies, James. “ Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) and the Spanish Enlightenment .” (October 2003)
• Voorhies, James. “ Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) .” (October 2004)
• Voorhies, James. “ School of Paris .” (October 2004)
• Voorhies, James. “ Art of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Naples .” (October 2003)
• Voorhies, James. “ Elizabethan England .” (October 2002)
• Voorhies, James. “ Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) and His Circle .” (October 2004)
• Voorhies, James. “ Fontainebleau .” (October 2002)
• Voorhies, James. “ Post-Impressionism .” (October 2004)
• Voorhies, James. “ Domestic Art in Renaissance Italy .” (October 2002)
• Voorhies, James. “ Surrealism .” (October 2004)

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The Ages of Exploration

Age of discovery, age of discovery.

15th century to the early 17th century

The Age of Discovery refers to a period in European history in which several extensive overseas exploration journeys took place. Religion, scientific and cultural curiosity, economics, imperial dominance, and riches were all reasons behind this transformative age. The search for a westward trade route to Asia was one of the largest motivations for many of these voyages. Christopher Columbus’ voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492 lead to the discovery of a New World, and created a new surge in exploration and colonization. World maps changed as European powers such as England, France, Spain, the Dutch, and Portugal began claiming lands. But there were also negative effects to the Europeans’ arrival in the New World. Europeans encountered, and in many cases conquered and enslaved, native peoples of the new lands to which they traveled.

Advancements in ships, navigational instruments, and knowledge of world geography grew significantly. Vessels of the Age of Discovery continued to be built of wood and powered by sail or oar, and, on occasion, both. Medieval navigational tools such as the compass, kamal, astrolabe, cross-staff, and the mariner’s quadrant were still used but became replaced by more effective tools. Newer tools such as the mariner’s astrolabe, traverse board, and back staff soon provided better navigational support in determining longitude and latitude. These tools, along with improved maps enabled explorers to travel the vast oceans as never before. The Age of Discovery created a new period of global interaction, and began a new age of European colonialism that would intensify over the next several centuries.

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Greek and Roman philosophers had predicted the existence of a great southern landmass some 2000 years ago. As the earth was a sphere, they believed there must be a huge continent to the south to counterbalance the continents in the north.

Originally postulated by Aristotle, Ptolemy then expanded this notion of  Terra Australis Incognita  - the unknown southern land.

It would take until the 18th century before this mysterious continent was finally located, charted and later named  Australia . Explore the State Library's incredible maps, journals, drawings and books to understand how the pieces of our continent were gradually put together. 

Voyages of Discovery - the Great South Land  is made possible through a partnership with the  Bruce & Joy Reid Foundation .

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2.2: Asia in the Age of Discovery - Chinese Expansion During the Ming Dynasty

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• Catherine Locks, Sarah Mergel, Pamela Roseman, Tamara Spike & Marie Lasseter
• George State Universities via GALILEO Open Learning Materials

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By the time Prince Henry, called “the Navigator,” third son of John I of Portugal, established a school for navigational studies at Sagres, Portugal in the third decade of the fifteenth century (around 1433), the Chinese had been engaged in navigational exploration under the Ming Dynasty for more than thirty years. In 1369 the last of the Mongol invaders, who had controlled China since 1294, was defeated by the founder of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang. Zhu chose the name “Ming” or “bright” for his dynasty rather than his family name, Zhu, which means “pig” and called himself “Hong Wu,” which translates to “vast military.”

Hong Wu ruled China from 1368 to 1398, during which time he concentrated on defeating and controlling the last of the Mongols (they were driven out in 1420), expanding the military, and ruling over a diverse kingdom of Confucians, Muslims, and Christians. During the Ming dynasty, the Chinese expanded their rule into Mongolia and Central Asia, and for a brief time, Vietnam. When Hong Wu died, the throne passed to his son, Shu Di, who took the name Yung Lo ; he is also called the Yongle Emperor. Yung Lo had spent much of his youth undertaking expeditions against the remaining Mongol strongholds, and, when he became emperor, continued Chinese expansion, assisted by the Muslim eunuch, Zheng He, or Cheng Ho. After moving the capital city of his empire to Beijing, he constructed a new, splendid palace, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and an impressive observatory. The construction of the Forbidden City took fourteen years to complete and employed 100,000 artisans and one million workers. Yung Lo also began dredging and reconstructing the Grand Canal. In 1417, the Emperor left Nanking for the last time, moving to his new capital city. The Court officially established itself there in 1421.

Not only was Yung Lo intent on creating a splendid new capital city for his empire, he also wanted to expand China’s military and economic control into the areas surrounding the Indian Ocean. Malacca, the third largest state in Malaysia, had become the center of a thriving Indian Ocean trading network in which porcelains, silks, and camphor from China, pepper, cloves, and other spices from the Moluccas, and cotton from India came into the port of Malacca. Yung Lo saw in this area an opportunity for Chinese expansion, and shortly after he became Emperor he chose Zheng He to lead a series of naval voyages from China into the Indian Ocean. Dispute exists among historians about his motivation in this endeavor. Historian John K. Fairbank maintains that “these official expeditions were not voyages of exploration in the Vasco da Gama or Columbian sense. They followed established routes of Arab and Chinese trade in the seas east of Africa.”

On the other hand, some historians of the twenty-first century have been influenced by the theories of Historian Gavin Menzies, whose best seller, 1421: The Year China Discovered America , contends that the Chinese did indeed go well beyond the familiar trade routes, not only rounding the Cape of Good Hope, but also traveling to Australia and Central and South America. Menzies supports his theory with the diaries of fifteenth century Portuguese and Spanish conquistadors who encountered “Chinese people” when they arrived in the Americas, as well as with archaeological evidence, such as remains of the familiar blue and white Ming porcelain along the western coast of South America. Menzies believes that Yung Lo’s purpose was two-fold: “to sail the oceans of the world and chart them” in order to inspire awe in the countries of the world and to bring them “under China’s tribute system.”

Although the theories of Menzies have created interest among historians, most scholars hold the view that the Chinese were mainly seeking new tributary nations, generally agreeing with Anatole Andro who comments in The 1421 Heresy that, though Menzies’s theories are compelling, additional concrete evidence is needed before his contentions can be accepted as fact.

Whatever his motivation, Yung Lo did in fact commission the construction of a grand fleet. According to Andro Anatole, “The Ming maritime voyages were set in motion the very moment [Yung Lo] ascended the throne. Although the first ships did not set sail until 1405, more than two years into the new reign, preparations for the voyages were underway from day one.”6 He points out that the project was immense and complicated. Raw materials were not readily available and many were “procured from distant districts.” Artisans came from all parts of the empire, and Zheng He himself had to be trained in navigational methods and cartography, or map reading.

One shipyard near Nanking alone built 2,000 vessels, including almost a hundred large treasure ships. The latter were approximately 400 feet long and almost 200 feet wide. Dragon eyes were carved on the prows to scare away evil spirits. Anatole reminds us that “The large Chinese ships, majestic and impressive, and more than enough to fill with awe a country of lesser stature than the mighty Ming, were first and foremost built for military personnel transport.”

In addition to these large ships were junks belonging to merchants that were, in turn, protected by warships. As the Chinese flotilla progressed, the ships of other nations joined it, in order to secure the protection of the armada’s warships. By the time the armada reached India, seeking such spices as pepper, salt, ginger, and cinnamon, there were 800 ships in the flotilla. According to Fairbank, the armada of 1405-1407 set out with 317 ships. Of these, 62 were treasure ships. In comparison, the famous Spanish Armada that sailed against England in 1588 was made up of only 137 ships.

Zheng He made seven voyages between 1405 and 1433, and, according to historian Louise Levathes’s When China Ruled the Seas: the Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, Yung Lo probably had in mind the expansion of the tributary system and the acquisition of information about distant lands and rare plants and animals. She comments that Zheng He went as far west as Egypt in order to gather herbs that might be used to fight a smallpox outbreak that plagued China.

Although the Chinese were interested in the products of other cultures, and though Zheng He brought to China an Arab book on medical remedies, a giraffe, and “300 virgins,” Yung Lo’s successor, Zhu Zhanji, decided in 1433 to disband this naval effort and “never again were the expeditions resumed.” Several possibilities explain this occurrence: the Chinese found nothing in the cultures visited that they could not obtain through trade; after Zheng He’s death, no admiral rose to his stature as a sailor; or, according to Fairbank, “anti-commercialism and xenophobia won out.” Whatever the reason, the Chinese armada was allowed to fall into disrepair, service personnel were placed elsewhere, and a minister of war, Kiu Daxia, burned the navigational charts. Interestingly, the Chinese did not follow up on these voyages of trade and/or exploration, even though they were the inventors of gunpowder and the cannon, instruments necessary for European expansion as they struck out to find an all-water route to India.

What remains is this question: why did the Chinese take this approach, becoming in essence isolationists? Menzies suggests that superstition got the best of the culture as a series of natural disasters portended future catastrophe.Historian Ray Huang blames it on the extravagances of Yung Lo, and Fairbank, on Neo-Confucian prejudice against expansion. Historian L. Carrington Goodrich concedes that “the expeditions ceased as suddenly as they began, again for reasons only guessed at,” though the expense and the “spirit of isolationism” that “penetrated the Court” were certainly factors. Most scholars concede that, while various explanations exist, the “abrupt discontinuance” of China’s outreach remains “one of the most fascinating enigmas in the history of the culture.” Whatever the reason, the Chinese did reap the benefits of expanded tribute, and the Chinese people participated in a “vast immigration” into Southeast Asia, taking with them Chinese knowledge and culture.

The establishment of the Ming Dynasty in China in 1439 brought an end to Mongol rule and began a new era. The Forbidden City, the seat of Chinese rule in the following centuries and a lasting symbol of Chinese power, was built during this period. It was during this time also that the Chinese first undertook substantial oceanic voyages, far earlier than their European counterparts. Zheng He’s massive fleet dwarfed European expeditions of the era, both in the number and the size of ships. The armadas explored much of the Indian Ocean region, as far as Africa, mapping, charting, trading, and incorporating a great part of the region into a Chinese tributary system. Although a few historians have suggested that Zheng He’s fleet sailed as far as Australia and the Americas, compelling documentary evidence for this is lacking.

When the Ming Emperor Yung Lo died, Chinese participation in naval expansion died with him. The succeeding emperors did not follow up on the voyages of the early fifteenth century, and by the end of the century had begun a policy that would typify Chinese attitudes toward trade with overseas cultures: if foreign powers wanted to trade with China, they could bring their goods to her shores, in their own ships. And eventually, even this trade was limited to the port of Canton only.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Zheng He’s goals for exploring the Indian Ocean included

• exploring and mapping the region.
• establishing trade with port cities.
• incorporating new areas into the Chinese tribute system.
• all of the above.
• none of the above.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{2}\)

One possible reason for Zhu Zanji’s decision to end the voyages of Zheng He was

• a spirit of isolationism in the Chinese court under Zhu Zanji.
• to save money and avoid the expense of the voyages.
• to end competition with the French, who were entering the Indian Ocean trade.

Chapter 1 — Worlds Collide: Before and After 1492

The origins of european exploration, learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify the major historical developments that fueled Europe’s “age of exploration”
• Explain the significance of Portugal’s expansion into Africa and the neighboring Atlantic islands, particularly for the slave trade out of Africa
• Discuss the motives for early Portuguese and Spanish exploration, including Columbus’s voyage to the New world

Long before the famed mariner Christopher Columbus “discovered” America for the Europeans, Norse (Viking) seafarers from Scandinavia established colonial outposts in Iceland and Greenland and, around the year 1000, Leif Erikson reached Newfoundland in present-day Canada. But the colonies failed. Culturally and geographically isolated, a combination of limited resources, inhospitable weather, food shortages, and Native resistance drove the Norse back into the sea. It was explorers sailing for Portugal and Spain who ushered in an unprecedented age of exploration and contact with the Americas beginning in the fifteenth century.

In the hundreds of years that passed between these two episodes of Atlantic exploration, Europe had experienced tremendous change. Greater contact with the East had helped inspire a Renaissance in scholarship and art while introducing new trade goods. In the 1340s, merchants returning from the region of the Black Sea unwittingly brought with them the bubonic plague. Within a few short years about one-third of Europe’s population had perished. A high birth rate, however, coupled with bountiful harvests, brought dramatic population growth during the next century. Meanwhile, European nation-states began to consolidate their power under the authority of ambitious kings and queens. By 1492, when Christopher Columbus’s three ships landed in the Bahamas, Europe had emerged from the long Middle Ages and was poised to seize a permanent place in the history of the Americas.

EUROPE ON THE BRINK OF CHANGE

The story of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas might be said to have begun as far back as the Crusades. A series of military conflicts waged between Christians and Muslims after Muslim rulers had gained control over the Holy Land, the Crusades brought Europeans into closer contact with the Middle East. Religious zeal inspired many of the knights who volunteered to fight on behalf of Christendom. Adventure, the chance to win land and titles, and the Church’s promise of wholesale forgiveness of sins also motivated many. The battle for the Holy Lands did not conclude until the Crusaders lost their Mediterranean stronghold at Acre (in present-day Israel) in 1291 and the last of the Christians left the area a few years later.

This map of the early Crusades, from the collection of the Norman B. Levanthal Map Center, shows the extent of the contested region in the east and the routes of the crusading armies from Europe.

Although the Crusaders did not ultimately succeed in their goals, the experience of the Crusades had profound effects, both positive and negative. On the negative side, the wide-scale persecution of Jews began. Christians classed them with the infidel Muslims and labeled them “the killers of Christ.” In the coming centuries, kings either expelled Jews from their kingdoms or forced them to pay heavy tributes for the privilege of remaining. Muslim-Christian hatred also festered, and intolerance grew.

On the positive side, maritime trade between East and West expanded. As Crusaders experienced the feel of silk, the taste of spices, and the utility of porcelain, desire for these products created new markets for merchants. In particular, the Adriatic port city of Venice prospered enormously from trade with Islamic merchants. From the days of the early adventurer Marco Polo, Venetian sailors had traveled to ports on the Black Sea and established their own colonies along the Mediterranean Coast. From there, they gained overland access to goods from the East, traded hundreds of miles along routes collectively known as the Silk Road. But transporting goods along the old Silk Road was costly, slow, and unprofitable. Muslim middlemen collected taxes as the goods changed hands. Robbers waited to ambush the treasure-laden caravans. A direct water route to the East, cutting out the land portion of the trip, would allow European merchants to maximize returns. In addition to seeking a water passage to the wealthy cities in the East, sailors wanted to find a route to the exotic and wealthy Spice Islands in modern-day Indonesia and the East Indies, whose location was kept secret by Muslim rulers. Longtime rivals of Venice, the merchants of Genoa and Florence also looked to expand their commercial interests.

PORTUGUESE EXPLORATION

Located on the Iberian Peninsula of southwestern Europe, Portugal, with its port city of Lisbon, soon became the center for merchants desiring to undercut the Venetians’ hold on trade. With a population of about one million and supported by its ruler Prince Henry, whom historians call “the Navigator,” this independent kingdom fostered exploration of and trade with western Africa. Skilled shipbuilders and navigators who took advantage of maps from all over Europe, Portuguese sailors used triangular sails and built lighter vessels called caravels that could sail down the African coast on longer ocean voyages. Portuguese mariners also began to use the astrolabe, a tool to calculate latitude, that allowed for more precise navigation on the open seas.

Motivated by economic as well as religious goals, the Portuguese established forts along the Atlantic coast of Africa during the fifteenth century. Their trading posts there generated new profits that funded further trade and further colonization. By the end of the fifteenth century the Portuguese mariner Vasco de Gama leapfrogged his way southward and around the southern tip of Africa to reach the Indian Ocean. From there he followed the winds to India and lucrative Asian markets. Meanwhile, the vagaries of ocean currents and the limits of the day’s technology forced other Portuguese, as well as Spanish, mariners to sail west into the open sea before cutting back east to Africa. So doing, the Portuguese and Spanish stumbled upon several islands off the Atlantic coast of Europe and Africa, including the Azores, the Canary Islands, and the Cape Verde Islands. Although small and little known to Americans today, these islands became training grounds for the later colonization of the New World, particularly the cultivation of sugar.

Originally grown in Asia, sugar had become a popular, widely profitable luxury item consumed by the wealthy nobility of Europe by the fifteenth century. But it had proven difficult to cultivate in Europe. It required tropical temperatures, daily rainfall, unique soil conditions, and a fourteen-month growing season. With the Atlantic Islands, the Portuguese found new land to support sugar production. New patterns of human and ecological destruction followed. Isolated from the mainlands of Europe and Africa for millennia, most of the islands’ natives either perished or were enslaved after Europeans arrived. Those who were enslaved were used to cultivate the difficult, labor-intensive sugar crops. But their small numbers proved inadequate to meet the labor demand. Having recently established good relations with powerful African rulers from the Kongo, Ndongo, and Songhai, Portuguese merchants looked to fill the gap with slaves from Africa. Slavery had long existed among African societies, often as a consequence of war or debt. Typically, African servants became a part of the extended tribal family. Responding to Portuguese requests, African leaders soon traded war captives—who by custom forfeited their freedom in battle—for Portuguese guns, iron, and manufactured goods. The Portuguese then exported these African captives to their Atlantic islands. Thus were born the first Atlantic plantations.  In time, much of the Atlantic World would become a gargantuan sugar-plantation complex in which Africans labored to produce the highly profitable commodity for European consumers.

Elmina Castle

In 1482, Portuguese traders built Elmina Castle (also called São Jorge da Mina, or Saint George’s of the Mine) in present-day Ghana, on the west coast of Africa. A fortified trading post, it had mounted cannons facing out to sea, not inland toward continental Africa; the Portuguese had greater fear of a naval attack from other Europeans than of a land attack from Africans. Portuguese traders soon began to settle around the fort and established the town of Elmina.

Elmina Castle on the west coast of Ghana was used as a holding pen for slaves before they were brought across the Atlantic and sold. Originally built by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century, it appears in this image as it was in the 1660s, after being seized by Dutch slave traders in 1637.

Although the Portuguese originally used the fort primarily for trading gold, by the sixteenth century they had shifted their focus. The dungeon of the fort now served as a holding pen for African slaves from the interior of the continent, while on the upper floors Portuguese traders ate, slept, and prayed in a chapel. Slaves lived in the dungeon for weeks or months until ships arrived to transport them to Europe or the Americas. For them, the dungeon of Elmina was their last sight of their home country.

SPANISH EXPLORATION AND COLUMBUS’S VOYAGE

The history of Spanish exploration begins with the history of Spain itself. During the fifteenth century, Spain hoped to gain an advantage over Portugal, its rival on the Iberian Peninsula. The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1469 unified Catholic Spain and began the process of building a nation that could compete for worldwide power. Since the 700s, much of Spain had been under Islamic rule, and King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I, arch-defenders of the Catholic Church against Islam, were determined to defeat the Muslims in Granada, the last Islamic stronghold on the fringes of Europe. In 1492, they completed the Reconquista: the centuries-long Christian conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. The Reconquista marked another step forward in the process of making Spain an imperial power, and Ferdinand and Isabella were now ready to look further afield.

Their goals were to expand Catholicism and to gain a commercial advantage over Portugal. To those ends, Ferdinand and Isabella sponsored extensive Atlantic exploration. Spain’s most famous explorer, Christopher Columbus, was actually from Genoa, Italy. He believed that, using calculations based on other mariners’ journeys, he could chart a westward route to India, which could be used to expand European trade and spread Christianity. Starting in 1485, he approached Genoese, Venetian, Portuguese, English, and Spanish monarchs, asking for ships and funding to explore this westward route. All those he petitioned—including Ferdinand and Isabella at first—rebuffed him; their nautical experts all concurred that Columbus’s estimates of the width of the Atlantic Ocean were far too low. However, after three years of entreaties, and, more important, the completion of the Reconquista, Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to finance Columbus’s expedition in 1492, supplying him with three ships: the Nina , the Pinta , and the Santa Maria . The Spanish monarchs knew that Portuguese mariners had reached the southern tip of Africa and sailed the Indian Ocean. They understood that the Portuguese would soon reach Asia and, in this competitive race to reach the Far East, the Spanish rulers decided to act.

This sixteenth-century map shows the island of Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and Dominican Republic). Note the various fanciful elements, such as the large-scale ships and sea creatures, and consider what the creator of this map hoped to convey. In addition to navigation, what purpose would such a map have served?

Columbus held erroneous views that shaped his thinking about what he would encounter as he sailed west. He believed the earth to be much smaller than its actual size and, since he did not know of the existence of the Americas, he fully expected to land in Asia. On October 12, 1492, however, he made landfall on an island in the Bahamas. He then sailed to an island he named Hispaniola (present-day Dominican Republic and Haiti). Believing he had landed in the East Indies, Columbus called the native Taínos he found there “Indios,” giving rise to the term “Indian” for any native people of the New World. Upon Columbus’s return to Spain, the Spanish crown bestowed on him the title of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and named him governor and viceroy of the lands he had discovered. As a devoted Catholic, Columbus had agreed with Ferdinand and Isabella prior to sailing west that part of the expected wealth from his voyage would be used to continue the fight against Islam.

Columbus sailed in three caravels such as these. The Santa Maria, his largest, was only 58 feet long.

Columbus’s 1493 letter—or probanza de mérito (proof of merit)—describing his “discovery” of a New World did much to inspire excitement in Europe. Probanzas de méritos were reports and letters written by Spaniards in the New World to the Spanish crown, designed to win royal patronage. Today they highlight the difficult task of historical work; while the letters are primary sources, historians need to understand the context and the culture in which the conquistadors, as the Spanish adventurers came to be called, wrote them and distinguish their bias and subjective nature. While they are filled with distortions and fabrications, probanzas de méritos are still useful in illustrating the expectation of wealth among the explorers as well as their view that native peoples would not pose a serious obstacle to colonization.

In 1493, Columbus sent two copies of a probanza de mérito to the Spanish king and queen and their minister of finance, Luis de Santángel. Santángel had supported Columbus’s voyage, helping him to obtain funding from Ferdinand and Isabella. Copies of the letter were soon circulating all over Europe, spreading news of the wondrous new land that Columbus had “discovered.” Columbus would make three more voyages over the next decade, establishing Spain’s first settlement in the New World on the island of Hispaniola. Many other Europeans followed in Columbus’s footsteps, drawn by dreams of winning wealth by sailing west. Another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, sailing for the Portuguese crown, explored the South American coastline between 1499 and 1502. Unlike Columbus, he realized that the Americas were not part of Asia but lands unknown to Europeans. Vespucci’s widely published accounts of his voyages fueled speculation and intense interest in the New World among Europeans. Among those who read Vespucci’s reports was the German mapmaker Martin Waldseemuller. Using the explorer’s first name as a label for the new landmass, Waldseemuller attached “America” to his map of the New World in 1507, and the name stuck.

Columbus’s Probanza de mérito of 1493

The exploits of the most famous Spanish explorers have provided Western civilization with a narrative of European supremacy and Indian savagery. However, these stories are based on the self-aggrandizing efforts of conquistadors to secure royal favor through the writing of probanzas de méritos (proofs of merit). Below are excerpts from Columbus’s 1493 letter to Luis de Santángel, which illustrates how fantastic reports from European explorers gave rise to many myths surrounding the Spanish conquest and the New World.

This island, like all the others, is most extensive. It has many ports along the sea-coast excelling any in Christendom—and many fine, large, flowing rivers. The land there is elevated, with many mountains and peaks incomparably higher than in the centre isle. They are most beautiful, of a thousand varied forms, accessible, and full of trees of endless varieties, so high that they seem to touch the sky, and I have been told that they never lose their foliage. . . . There is honey, and there are many kinds of birds, and a great variety of fruits. Inland there are numerous mines of metals and innumerable people. Hispaniola is a marvel. Its hills and mountains, fine plains and open country, are rich and fertile for planting and for pasturage, and for building towns and villages. The seaports there are incredibly fine, as also the magnificent rivers, most of which bear gold. The trees, fruits and grasses differ widely from those in Juana. There are many spices and vast mines of gold and other metals in this island. They have no iron, nor steel, nor weapons, nor are they fit for them, because although they are well-made men of commanding stature, they appear extraordinarily timid. The only arms they have are sticks of cane, cut when in seed, with a sharpened stick at the end, and they are afraid to use these. Often I have sent two or three men ashore to some town to converse with them, and the natives came out in great numbers, and as soon as they saw our men arrive, fled without a moment’s delay although I protected them from all injury.

What does this letter show us about Spanish objectives in the New World? How do you think it might have influenced Europeans reading about the New World for the first time?

The 1492 Columbus landfall accelerated the rivalry between Spain and Portugal, and the two powers vied for domination through the acquisition of new lands. In the 1480s, Pope Sixtus IV had granted Portugal the right to all land south of the Cape Verde islands, leading the Portuguese king to claim that the lands discovered by Columbus belonged to Portugal, not Spain. Seeking to ensure that Columbus’s finds would remain Spanish, Spain’s monarchs turned to the Spanish-born Pope Alexander VI, who issued two papal decrees in 1493 that gave legitimacy to Spain’s Atlantic claims at the expense of Portugal. Hoping to salvage Portugal’s Atlantic holdings, King João II began negotiations with Spain. The resulting Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 drew a north-to-south line through South America; Spain gained territory west of the line, while Portugal retained the lands east of the line, including the east coast of Brazil.

This 1502 map, known as the Cantino World Map, depicts the cartographer’s interpretation of the world in light of recent discoveries. The map shows areas of Portuguese and Spanish exploration, the two nations’ claims under the Treaty of Tordesillas, and a variety of flora, fauna, figures, and structures. What does it reveal about the state of geographical knowledge, as well as European perceptions of the New World, at the beginning of the sixteenth century?

Section Summary

One effect of the Crusades was that a larger portion of western Europe became familiar with the goods of the East. A lively trade subsequently developed along a variety of routes known collectively as the Silk Road to supply the demand for these products. Brigands and greedy middlemen made the trip along this route expensive and dangerous. By 1492, Europe—recovered from the Black Death and in search of new products and new wealth—was anxious to improve trade and communications with the rest of the world. Venice and Genoa led the way in trading with the East. The lure of profit pushed explorers to seek new trade routes to the Spice Islands and eliminate Muslim middlemen.

Portugal, under the leadership of Prince Henry the Navigator, attempted to send ships around the continent of Africa. Meanwhile, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile hired Columbus to find a route to the East by going west. As strong supporters of the Catholic Church, they sought to bring Christianity to the East and any newly found lands, as well as hoping to find sources of wealth.

Critical Thinking Questions

• Why did the authors of probanzas de méritos choose to write in the way that they did? What should we consider when we interpret these documents today?

Answers to Critical Thinking Questions

• Probanzas de méritos featured glowing descriptions of lands of plenty. The Spanish explorers hoped to find cities of gold, so they made their discoveries sound as wonderful as possible in these letters to convince the Spanish crown to fund more voyages. When we read them now, we need to take the descriptions with a grain of salt. But we can also fact-check these descriptions, whereas the Spanish court could only take them at face value.

caravels improved European sailing vessels using triangular sails, pioneered by Portuguese mariners

Crusades  a series of military expeditions made by Christian Europeans to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries

Hispaniola  the island in the Caribbean, present-day Haiti and Dominican Republic, where Columbus first landed and established a Spanish colony

probanza de mérito  proof of merit: a letter written by a Spanish explorer to the crown to gain royal patronage

Reconquista  Spain’s nearly eight-hundred-year holy war against Islam, which ended in 1492

• US History. Authored by : P. Scott Corbett, Volker Janssen, John M. Lund, Todd Pfannestiel, Paul Vickery, and Sylvie Waskiewicz. Provided by : OpenStax College. Located at : http://openstaxcollege.org/textbooks/us-history . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11740/latest/
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Age of Discovery

• 1.1 Past the Age of Discovery
• 2 Eat and drink
• 3.1 Christopher Columbus
• 3.2 John Cabot
• 3.3 Vasco da Gama
• 3.4 Ferdinand Magellan
• 3.5 Hernán Cortés
• 3.6 Jacques Cartier
• 3.7 Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo
• 3.8 St. Francis Xavier
• 3.9 Sir Francis Drake
• 3.10 Matteo Ricci
• 3.11 Henry Hudson
• 3.12 Samuel de Champlain
• 3.13 Abel Tasman
• 3.14 Vitus Bering
• 3.15 James Cook
• 3.16 Louis Antoine de Bougainville
• 3.17 George Vancouver
• 3.18 Matthew Flinders
• 4.2 Americas

The Age of Discovery , also known as the Age of Exploration , was the period from the 15th century to the late 18th, when Europeans set sail to discover and explore other lands. It also marked the beginning of European colonialism and the start of the Mercantilist Age, as well as the beginning of globalization.

While the European explorers did discover many uninhabited islands, for the most part they were exploring lands that had been discovered and settled by other people thousands of years before. The widely-used term "Age of Discovery" reflects the Eurocentric view of the world that existed at the time.

For this article, we focus on seaborne exploration and consider the Age of Exploration to end with the navigators Cook, Vancouver, Tasman and Flinders exploring the Pacific in the late 18th century. This excludes various expansions over land — the Russian Empire , the Ottoman Empire , Imperial China , America's Old West and so on — and more recent explorations in the Arctic , Antarctica and Space .

The article In the footsteps of explorers takes a broader approach to exploration, including explorers from other time-periods and those not from Europe.

Though the great voyages of the Age of Discovery were neither the world's first nor the first major ones by Europeans, they were very influential. Trade routes had been maintained between the Roman Empire and the East via the Silk Road for many centuries.

The period from the 5th to the 15th century AD is in Europe known as the Middle Ages , earlier implied to be a "dark" age between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance and Age of Discovery. This view is today dismissed, and there were indeed many great explorers during the time, both Europeans and others. Vikings reached North America around 1000 CE. Marco Polo 's book, published around 1300, told of the riches of the East and strongly influenced later exploration. The Islamic Golden Age produced explorers such as Ibn Battuta , who travelled further than any known person before him. China's Ming Dynasty sent the Ming Treasure Voyages across the South China Sea and Indian Ocean in the 15th century, making it as far the east coast of Africa .

The European Age of Discovery began in 1415, as the Portuguese captured the Moorish port of Ceuta in North Africa, marking the start of the Portuguese Empire . They were pioneers in the Age of Exploration, discovering the system of ocean currents and prevailing winds in the Atlantic Ocean, and striving to improve their shipbuilding and seamanship skills in order to use it. The understanding of the trade winds, and the development of triangular sails capable of crosswind sailing, enabled Europeans to sail across oceans and establish global empires.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to expand over the seas since the Vikings . First they discovered and settled some nearby and until then uninhabited archipelagos, Madeira in 1418 and the Azores in 1427.

Inaugurated around 1433, the Sagres nautical school, sponsored by Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), was set up to study the maritime exploration of the Atlantic Ocean, which led to the reaching of Greenland , Newfoundland , Labrador , and the west coast of Africa. The discovery of a passable route around Cape Bojador by Portuguese mariner Gil Eanes in 1434 was a major breakthrough for European seamanship, of almost mystical significance. After Prince Henry's death, his pupils continued to voyage further and further, enabling Portugal to begin a major chapter in world history with the New World discoveries and a monopoly over trade between the Orient and Western Europe. The Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias would become the first European to sight and sail around the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. Explorers Vasco da Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral reached India in 1498 and Brazil in 1500, respectively, setting in motion the colonial scheme of occupation and exploitation.

Other countries soon joined in. Spain sent Columbus on a series of voyages starting in 1492, and also sent out voyages under other commanders; in 1519 they sent out the Magellan expedition, the first circumnavigation of the world. In the process, Magellan would become the first European to sail through "the Strait that shall forever bear his name", in 1520. This would be the main route for ships sailing between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans until the first European sighting and rounding of Cape Horn further south by the Dutch navigator Willem Schouten in 1616. John Cabot explored Newfoundland and nearby areas for the British starting in 1497. French exploratory voyages began around 1508 under Giovanni da Verrazzano, and what is now Quebec was claimed for the Kingdom of France by Jacques Cartier by 1540.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach Indonesia , in 1512, with British, Dutch and Spanish traders not far behind. In medieval Europe, pepper cost more than its weight in gold, so the Spice Islands were an extremely valuable colony. Several small wars were fought over them, with the Dutch ending up in control.

The Treaty of Tordesillas was signed in 1494 after the Pope mediated in a dispute between Portugal and Spain; it divided the non-Christian world between those two powers. The Protestant powers and even Catholic France ignored it.

• Spain was granted the right to occupy much of the New World, plus most of the Pacific. They soon grabbed most of the Americas, except Portuguese Brazil and various areas where the British, Dutch or French beat them to it.
• Portugal got Brazil and was granted a free hand in the Old World, except for Christian Europe. They rushed to establish bases (though generally not large colonies) all along the trade routes to the riches of the East. They held Angola , Goa , East Timor and Macau until the late 20th century. They were also in Sri Lanka , Malacca , the Spice Islands and Taiwan until the Dutch or the British displaced them.

The treaty allowed either nation to intrude into the other's zone provided the area was not yet colonized, they formed alliances with local rulers, and they spread the Faith. At least in the mind of the Spanish King, this justified taking the Philippines in the 1560s.

Past the Age of Discovery

It was the Portuguese, from their base in Macau, who first began serious trade with China and Japan. Later, other European powers and the U.S. joined in. However, both countries would maintain relatively isolationist trade policies until the 19th century, when the British forced China into very unfavorable trade terms following their victory in the First Opium War in 1842, and the Americans forced Japan to open up during the Black Ships incident in 1853.

Italy did not develop its own colonial empire until the late 19th century — they took Eritrea in 1882, Somalia in 1889, Libya in 1911, Ethiopia in 1936, and had a few small concessions in China — but many of the explorers in the early days were Italians. These included Columbus, Cabot, Verrazzano, Amerigo Vespucci and Magellan's chronicler, Antonio Pigafetta.

Along with military conquest and commerce, the other goal of imperialism was Christianizing the indigenous peoples, which was the role of missionaries. And except in Muslim , Hindu , Sikh and most Buddhist areas, and nations with their own longstanding Christian churches, they were very successful in attaining converts, eventually leading to Christianity becoming the world's most prolific religion, a position it maintains today. Many of the early missionaries to nations far from Europe took fascinating journeys which can be retraced, and there are many historical missions around the world with functioning churches and museums that can be visited.

The Europeans often maintained control over their colonies through a "divide and conquer" strategy, in which they would deliberately stoke tensions between different groups. Moreover, many people were shipped between far flung regions of the colonial empires to provide labour for the respective colonial masters. This has resulted in significant ethnic and religious tensions that have persisted even after the colonies gained independence, sometimes even resulting in civil wars, ethnic cleansings or genocides.

At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the industrial era, the inland of many continents, as well as the polar regions, remained uncharted. Among famous inland expeditions were the Lewis and Clark expedition across North America, and the voyages of Sven Hedin across Central Asia. The North and South Pole were reached by humans only in the 20th century.

Eat and drink

The Age of Discovery also had a huge impact on global culinary culture, and many ingredients now seen as integral parts of many European cuisines such as potatoes, tomatoes and cocoa actually have their origins in the Americas . Turkeys are native to North America, and originally domesticated by the ancient Mesoamericans, but are today an integral part of the traditional English Christmas dinner. Similarly, chillis have become an integral part of many Asian and African cuisines despite their origin in what is today southern Mexico and Central America , having been brought to these areas by Spanish and Portuguese traders in the 16th century. Maize (corn), which is native to southern Mexico, has become a staple in many African cuisines. Sweet potatoes are originally from South America, but today China is the largest grower.

Unlike native American ingredients, native Australian ingredients have a comparatively minor impact on the global culinary scene, the sole exception being the macadamia nut, which is now one of Hawaii 's major exports.

Crops and animals originally domesticated in Ancient Mesopotamia — barley, wheat, cattle, sheep and others — spread to Europe in ancient times, and the Age of Discovery spread them to the rest of the world. Today agriculture in many temperate zone former colonies — including Canada, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina — is largely based on them.

Coffee had its origins in the Horn of Africa , but is now also grown in many other parts of the world, including parts of the Americas and Southeast Asia. Tobacco has also spread widely from its origins in the Americas.

Tea was introduced into Europe from China during the Age of Discovery, with Russia being the main player in the overland caravan routes via Siberia and Central Asia , while Portugal and the Netherlands initially dominated the sea routes though later the British took over much of the trade. The United Kingdom in particular took a liking to this new beverage, and tea drinking became a status symbol among the British nobility, thus giving rise to the traditional afternoon tea. The British also introduced commercial tea growing to their colonies in attempt to break the Chinese monopoly, and today, India , Sri Lanka , Kenya and Malaysia are major tea producers.

This section lists many of the more famous explorers of the period.

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) was a Genoese colonizer and explorer who made several voyages across in Atlantic in the service of the Spanish crown from 1492-1502, thus kickstarting the Age of Discovery and the formation of the Spanish colonial empire . While he never set foot in what are now the states of the United States of America , his voyages are celebrated in the form of the public holiday Columbus Day.

John Cabot, or Giovanni Caboto, (c. 1450 – c. 1500) was a Venetian working for the English King who made three trips west from Bristol in 1497 and 1498. The records are scanty and their interpretation controversial, but it seems that he was the first European since the Vikings to reach Newfoundland .

One of his sons, Sebastian, was also an explorer; working for the English King between 1504 and 1512 he explored the North American coast as far south as Chesapeake Bay and became the first to look for the Northwest Passage, following the north coast of what is now Quebec until the weather forced him to turn back. Later he worked for Spain exploring South America.

Vasco da Gama

Vasco da Gama (c.1460-1524) was a Portuguese explorer who became the first European to reach India by sea, going around Africa in the process. His voyages thus allowed Portugal to establish a colonial empire in much of Africa and Asia.

Ferdinand Magellan

Ferdinand Magellan (c.1480-1521) was a Portuguese explorer in the service of the Spanish crown who organised the first circumnavigation of the globe, and became the first European to reach Asia from the east, by first sailing through the strait that was later named after him . Magellan himself was killed in a tribal war in Mactan in what is now the Philippines , and the circumnavigation was completed by his subordinate commander Juan Sebastián Elcano.

Hernán Cortés

Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) is best known as the Spanish conquistador who conquered the Aztec empire, paving the way for the rise of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. The conquistadors were the earliest Spanish explorers in the Americas, but they were motivated mostly by greed and glory, seeking dominion over the indigenous peoples and appropriation of their gold and silver (which they found in abundance in Mesoamerica). Cortés conquered a large area stretching from Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico across Central Mexico to the Pacific coast.

Jacques Cartier

Jacques Cartier (1491-1557) was a Breton who explored the Gulf of Saint Lawrence (which he named, because he arrived there on the Saint's feast day) and the Saint Lawrence River for France between 1531 and 1542. He was the first European to reach what were then indigenous settlements and are now Quebec City and Montreal . He could not go beyond Montreal due to rapids.

He did not command the third voyage in 1541-42. This was to be France's first attempt at establishing a permanent settlement in the New World, and overall command was given to de Roberval who was to be governor of the colony; Cartier was chief navigator. The colony failed, but by then Cartier was already retired in St Malo which now has a Jacques Cartier Museum .

Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo

In 1542, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo (c.1497-1543) was a Spanish explorer who sailed north from Mexico to explore the North American west coast. He is recognized as the first European to set foot in what is now the U.S. state of California and his crew sailed as far north as the Rogue River in Oregon before winter weather caused the ship to turn south to return to Mexico. The place where Cabrillo first landed in San Diego is the site of a U.S. National Monument . Cabrillo would never finish his exploration of the west coast, he died in the Channel Islands in 1543 after shattering his leg in a fall.

St. Francis Xavier

St. Francis Xavier (1506-1552) was a Navarrese Catholic missionary who was one of the founders of the Society of Jesus ( Jesuits ). He led evangelization efforts in much of the Portuguese colonial empire in Asia, in particular Goa and Malacca , and became the first Christian missionary to reach Borneo , the Maluku Islands and Japan . He was on a diplomatic mission to China when he fell ill and died on the island of Shangchuan near Taishan , Guangdong . Initially buried on a beach on the island, his body was later exhumed and moved to St Paul's Church in Malacca (now in ruins). He would later be moved again to the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa , where he lies to this day.

• 21.748896 112.774402 1 St. Francis Church , Shangchuan Island, Taishan , China . Church built in memory of St. Francis Xavier on the spot where he died. ( updated Jul 2023 )
• 31.591154 130.551173 5 Xavier Park ( ザビエル公園 ), Kagoshima , Japan . Park commemorating the stay of St. Francis Xavier in Kagoshima, with statues of him and his two Japanese disciples Anjiro and Bernardo, the former of whom was the first record Japanese Christian, and that latter of whom was the first Japanese to set foot on European soil. The park is also home to the ruins of the Xavier Church that was built in his honour in 1908, but destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. ( updated Jul 2023 )
• 31.603706 130.571803 6 Monument of St. Xavier’s Landing ( ザビエル上陸記念碑 ), Kagoshima , Japan . Located in Gionnosu Park, on the site where St. Francis Xavier first landed in Japan. ( updated Jul 2023 )

Sir Francis Drake

Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596) was an English explorer and privateer, famous for sailing around the world, including leading the first circumnavigation of the globe under a single commander from 1577 to 1580, and for his many raids on Spanish waters. The most notable of these were his attack on Cartagena de Indias in April 1586 with 23 ships and 3,000 men, burning 200 houses and the cathedral, and departing only after a ransom was paid a month later; and the "singeing of King Philip's beard" in 1587, against Cádiz , A Coruña and the Spanish Armada, occupying the harbours and destroying 37 naval and merchant ships. Legend says, on his return, he raided and destroyed the old Sagres school, a Spanish asset at this time; when Golden Hinde arrived and docked at the Tower of London, Queen Elizabeth I went aboard with the French ambassador, announced him "Sir", and handed the Frenchman a sword to perform the deed (and embroil the French and Spanish empires against each other). His legacy is mixed; in Latin America, El Draque is remembered mostly as a pirate, whereas the Anglosphere sees him as a bona fide explorer.

Matteo Ricci

Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) was an Italian Jesuit priest who led Roman Catholic evangelization efforts in China. Born in Macerata , then part of the Papal States, he joined the Society of Jesus while studying in Rome at the Roman College in 1571. He set off from Lisbon on a missionary expedition to Asia in 1578 and arrived in the then-Portuguese colony of Goa later that year. He was then dispatched from Goa to Macau , then a Portuguese trading post, in 1582, where studied Chinese language and culture, becoming one of the first Westerners to master the Chinese writing system and literary classics. From Macau he would later travel into the Chinese heartland, eventually reaching the capital Beijing in 1598. While in Beijing, Ricci became an advisor to the imperial court of the Ming Dynasty, becoming the first Westerner to be invited into the Forbidden City. Ricci introduced Western knowledge to China, including by publishing the first world map in the Chinese language in 1602, and managed to convert several important Chinese officials to Christianity by, rather controversially, promoting interpretations of Christian doctrine that were compatible with China's dominant philosophy of Confucianism, and incorporating elements of Confucian rites into Chinese Catholic rites, before dying in Beijing in 1610. Although Chinese law at that time required foreigners who died in China to be buried in Macau, due to Ricci's contributions to China, the emperor granted a special exception for him to be buried in Beijing as per his wishes.

• 22.197425 113.541239 7 Statue of Matteo Ricci , Macau . Unveiled in 2010 on the anniversary of Matteo Ricci's arrival in the city, the statue sits on the site where the College of St. Paul, where Ricci had stayed while in Macau, once stood. ( updated Jul 2023 )
• 23.047291 112.477692 10 Former site of Temple of Flowers of the Saints ( 利玛窦仙花寺遗址 ), Zhaoqing , China . The former site of the Temple of Flowers of the Saints, the first Roman Catholic church in the Chinese mainland, which was founded by Matteo Ricci. A plaque commemorating the former existence of the church now stands on the site. ( updated Jul 2023 )

Henry Hudson

Henry Hudson (1565-1611?) was an Englishman who led several expeditions to the New World. Most were under the English flag, searching for the Northwest passage, though on one he explored areas further south for the Dutch East India Company, leading to that company founding "New Amsterdam" which later became New York City . The Hudson River, Hudson's Bay and various other things were named for him.

Samuel de Champlain

Samuel de Champlain (1567–1635) was a French colonist, navigator, cartographer, draftsman, soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnologist, diplomat, and chronicler. He made over twenty trips across the Atlantic Ocean, and founded Quebec City and New France in 1608. An important figure in Canadian history, Champlain created the first accurate coastal map during his explorations, and founded various colonial settlements.

Abel Tasman

In November 1642, Dutch East India Company commander Abel Tasman (1603-1659), exploring from Mauritius under orders of Anthony van Diemen, governor-general of the Dutch East Indies , found Tasmania island, and claimed it. He named it "Van Diemen's Land" after his patron; it was re-named to its current name after him in 1856. A cape and a group of islands in northern New Zealand are still called by names given by Tasman, and Abel Tasman National Park on the South Island is named for him. He reportedly reached Fiji and Tonga , later returning to Batavia .

His second voyage took place in 1644; he mapped a part of Australia's northern coast, but failed to find the Torres Strait and a possible trade route, and the expedition was deemed a failure.

Vitus Bering

Danish cartographer and explorer Vitus Jonassen Bering (1681-1741), also known as Ivan Ivanovich Bering, an officer in the Russian Navy, explored the Bering Sea region and claimed Kamchatka (1725-28) and Alaska (1741) on behalf of the Russian Empire . The Bering Strait, the Bering Sea, Bering Island (where he is buried, after dying while underway), the Bering Glacier and the Bering Land Bridge were all named in his honor. He was neither the first Russian to sight North America (that having been achieved by Mikhail Gvozdev during the 1730s), nor the first Russian to pass through the strait which now bears his name (an honour which goes to the relatively unknown 17th-century expedition of Semyon Dezhnev). Reports from his second voyage were jealously guarded by the Russian administration, preventing Bering's story from being retold in full for at least a century after his death. Nonetheless, Bering's achievements, both as an individual explorer and as a leader of the second expedition, have never been doubted. Captain James Cook, despite knowledge of Dezhnev's earlier expedition, chose to use the name "Bering Strait".

Born in 1728, Cook joined the Royal Navy in 1755, eventually rising to the rank of captain. He saw action in the Seven Years' War and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec, which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society. This led to his commission in 1766 as commander of HM Bark Endeavour for the first of three expeditions around the Pacific Ocean, during which he achieved the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand, as well as the first European contact and waypoint naming on the eastern coastline of Australia. He was killed at Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii on 14 February 1779, in a conflict with locals.

Louis Antoine de Bougainville

Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville (1729–1811) from Saint-Malo was a French admiral and explorer. A contemporary of James Cook, he took part in the Seven Years' War in North America and the American Revolutionary War against Britain. Bougainville later gained fame for his expeditions, including a scientific circumnavigation of the globe in 1763, the first recorded settlement on the Falkland Islands which he named "Isles Malouines", and voyages into the Pacific Ocean. Bougainville Island of Papua New Guinea , as well as the Bougainvillea genus of tropical ornamental plants, were named after him.

George Vancouver

Vancouver was a British officer of the Royal Navy best known for his 1791–95 expedition, to lay formal British claim and start colonization of North America's northwestern Pacific Coast regions previously mapped by James Cook. The Canadian city of Vancouver , as well as the nearby Vancouver Island were named after him. The colony was called British Columbia , and became a province of Canada in 1871.

Matthew Flinders

Captain Matthew Flinders (1774–1814) was an English navigator, cartographer and officer of the Royal Navy who led the second circumnavigation of New Holland, that he would subsequently call "Australia", and identified it as a continent. Flinders made three voyages to the Southern Ocean between 1791 and 1810.

Today, Flinders is often forgotten about in his home country (England), but he is well known to Australians, and many places in Australia are named after him.

Wikivoyage has itinerary articles for some of the greatest voyages of the Age of Discovery:

• Voyages of Columbus — Spain to the Caribbean, 1492
• Cape Route — Vasco da Gama, Portugal to India by going south around Africa, 1498
• Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation — around the world, by going past the southern tip of mainland South America, 1519-1521
• Voyages of James Cook — United Kingdom to the Pacific , 1766-1780
• Voyages of George Vancouver — United Kingdom to the west coast of North America , 1791–1795
• Voyages of Matthew Flinders — United Kingdom to Australia , 1791-1810

In Lisbon , the capital of Portugal, see the Torre de Belém where Portuguese explorers embarked on their voyages to distant lands, and where they disembarked on their return to the motherland. The Museu da Marinha (Maritime Museum) in the Belém district, evokes Portugal's domination of the seas. Its collections include model ships from the Age of Discovery onward. The oldest exhibit is a wooden figure representing the Archangel Raphael that accompanied Vasco da Gama on his voyage to India.

Seville was the main base for Spanish expeditions in this period and has the General Archive of the Indies , a library of documents on Spanish exploration and colonization.

In Saint-Malo , France, you can visit the Jacques Cartier Museum in his former house, which has been restored and fitted out to evoke the daily life and travels of Cartier who explored and claimed Canada for France in the mid-16th century.

In Bristol , in the United Kingdom, you can board the Matthew of Bristol , a replica of the ship used by John Cabot (an Italian also known as Giovanni Caboto) to explore the coast of North America for England.

In London , in the United Kingdom, you can board a replica of Sir Francis Drake's The Golden Hinde built using traditional methods. Buckland Abbey, in Yelverton near Plymouth , was owned by Sir Francis Drake, and is now a museum. A number of mementos of his life are displayed there.

In Santo Domingo , the capital of the Dominican Republic, you can visit the "Faro a Colon", a huge lighthouse and monument built to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the Americas in 1492. It is also a museum that claims to house his remains. Santo Domingo was the first major European settlement in the New World. Christopher Columbus walked these streets! The Cathedral of Seville , Spain, has the results of DNA testing to back its claim to having the explorer's remains.

In Punta Arenas , Chile, the Museo Nao Victoria hosts a replica of the Nao Victoria , one of the ships used by Juan Sebastián Elcano, a Spaniard, who completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth (1519-21). It also has a replica of the HMS Beagle .

Sitka in Alaska is a Russian-born city, the former capital of Russian Alaska.

Mossel Bay , South Africa, has a Bartolomeu Dias Museum Complex with information about European explorers and a replica of the ship used by 15th-century Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias.

At Kwaaihoek , Alexandria, near Port Elizabeth in South Africa, the Dias Cross Memorial is a replica of the cross erected in 1488 by Bartolomeu Diaz, the famous Portuguese navigator.

Malacca was first colonised by the Portuguese in 1511, after Alfonso de Albuquerque defeated the Malacca Sultanate in a war. The Dutch would gain control of it after defeating the Portuguese in a war in 1641. It would remain under Dutch rule until the signing of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty in 1824, when the British took over Malacca in exchange for the Dutch taking the British colonies in Sumatra. Today, you can visit the Portuguese settlement, where descendants of the Portuguese colonisers who intermarried with the locals reside, and some continue to speak a Portuguese-based creole. It is also a good place to sample the distinctive Portuguese Eurasian cuisine. Other sites dating back to the Portuguese colonial era include the ruins of the A Famosa fort and the Church of Saint Paul. Several Dutch colonial buildings also survive, including the Stadhuys and the adjacent Christ Church.

Penang was colonised by the British in 1786, when the Sultan of Kedah sold it to Captain Francis Light of the British East India Company, making it the first British colony in Southeast Asia. Today, George Town , the capital of Penang, is known for being one of the best preserved examples of a British colonial capital in Southeast Asia. Light died of malaria in 1794, and is buried in the Old Protestant Cemetery on the island, where his grave can be visited.

Macau was colonised by Portugal in 1557, when China's Ming Dynasty granted them the right to establish a permanent trading post as gratitude for helping the Chinese to eliminate coastal pirates, making it the first European colony in East Asia. Portugal would hold on to Macau until 1999, when it was returned to China, which incidentally also marked the end of European colonialism in Asia. Today, Macau is home to an exceptionally high concentration of well-preserved Portuguese colonial architecture, particularly around the Largo do Senado , complete with the traditional Portuguese pavement, and you could easily mistake it for somewhere in Europe were it not for the people and Chinese-language signs. There is also the Ruins of Saint Paul, the remnants of a Portuguese Roman Catholic church that was destroyed in a fire in 1835. Another legacy of Portuguese rule is the unique Macanese cuisine, with perhaps its most famous dish being the Macanese egg tart, which was originally derived from the Portuguese pastel de nata .

Taiwan ' s history is more complex. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to sight it in 1544 and named it Ilha Formosa (beautiful island), the name by which it first became known to the West. Formosa was the usual name in English until it was replaced by the Chinese name "Taiwan" in the late 20th century. The Spanish held parts of it in the early 1600s but were driven out by the Dutch, who were driven out by Ming Dynasty loyalist Koxinga (known in China as Zheng Chenggong) in 1661. He set up an independent kingdom which lasted until the Qing Dynasty invaded in 1683. The Qing kept control until 1895 when Japan took the island. Japan was forced to give it back to China in 1945 after their defeat in World War II .

Gulangyu in Xiamen has a museum for Koxinga who drove the Dutch out of Taiwan. Although popularly remembered as a pirate in the West, he is one of the few historical leaders considered a hero by the governments in both Beijing and Taipei; defeating the foreign devils makes him a good guy in everyone's books. There are also numerous sites dedicated to him across the strait in Tainan , including the Chih-kan Tower and several temples. Tainan is also home to the ruins of several forts that were built during the Dutch colonial period.

The first Europeans to reach the Philippines were a Spanish expedition under Magellan in the 1520s, during which Magellan himself was killed in Mactan by local tribal chief Lapu-Lapu. The Spanish returned to colonize in the 1560s and held it until 1898 when the Americans took it over (along with Cuba , Puerto Rico and Guam ) after the Spanish-American War. Today many attractions in the country are remnants of the Spanish colonial period, with the city of Vigan being perhaps the best preserved example of a Spanish colonial city in the country.

Wikivoyage also has a number of articles on things that were influenced by European exploration and colonialism.

The "Big Five" colonial empires were:

• British Empire including its "jewel in the crown", the British Raj
• Dutch Empire
• French Colonial Empire
• Portuguese Empire
• Spanish Empire

Other articles on related topics include:

• Austro-Hungarian Empire
• Atlantic slave trade
• Danish Empire
• German Empire
• Italian Empire
• Swedish Empire
• Russian Empire and its successor, the Soviet Union
• Indigenous cultures of North America
• Indigenous cultures of Mesoamerica
• Indigenous cultures of South America
• Indigenous Australian culture
• Maori culture
• Western food in Asia

The Belgians also built a smaller colonial empire. Wikivoyage does not have an article on the Belgian colonial empire (as of October 2022). The descendants of European colonists in thirteen British colonies in North America would declare independence as the United States of America in 1776, with the new country beginning its expansion shortly after, and subsequently building a colonial empire of its own in the 19th and 20th centuries.

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Exploration of North America

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 6, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009

The story of North American exploration spans an entire millennium and involves a wide array of European powers and uniquely American characters. It began with the Vikings’ brief stint in Newfoundland circa 1000 A.D. and continued through England’s colonization of the Atlantic coast in the 17th century, which laid the foundation for the United States of America. The centuries following the European arrivals would see the culmination of this effort, as Americans pushed westward across the continent, enticed by the lure of riches, open land and a desire to fulfill the nation’s manifest destiny .

The Vikings Discover the New World

The first attempt by Europeans to colonize the New World occurred around 1000 A.D. when the Vikings sailed from the British Isles to Greenland, established a colony and then moved on to Labrador, the Baffin Islands and finally Newfoundland. There they established a colony named Vineland (meaning fertile region) and from that base sailed along the coast of North America, observing the flora, fauna and native peoples. Inexplicably, Vineland was abandoned after only a few years. 

Did you know? Explorer Henry Hudson died when his crew mutinied and left Hudson, his son and seven crewmembers adrift in a small open boat in the Hudson Bay .

Although the Vikings never returned to America, other Europeans came to know of their accomplishments. Europe, however, was made up of many small principalities whose concerns were mainly local. Europeans may have been intrigued by the stories of the feared Vikings’ discovery of a “new world,” but they lacked the resources or the will to follow their path of exploration. Trade continued to revolve around the Mediterranean Sea, as it had for hundreds of years.

The Reformation, the Renaissance and New Trade Routes

Between 1000 and 1650, a series of interconnected developments occurred in Europe that provided the impetus for the exploration and subsequent colonization of America. These developments included the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Renaissance , the unification of small states into larger ones with centralized political power, the emergence of new technology in navigation and shipbuilding and the establishment of overland trade with the East and the accompanying transformation of the medieval economy.

The Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Church’s response in the Counter-Reformation marked the end of several centuries of gradual erosion of the power of the Catholic Church as well as the climax of internal attempts to reform the Church. Protestantism emphasized a personal relationship between each individual and God without the need for intercession by the institutional church. 

In the Renaissance, artists and writers such as Galileo, Machiavelli and Michelangelo adopted a view of life that stressed humans’ ability to change and control the world. Thus, the rise of Protestantism and the Counter-Reformation, along with the Renaissance, helped foster individualism and create a climate favorable to exploration.

At the same time, political centralization ended much of the squabbling and fighting among rival noble families and regions that had characterized the Middle Ages . With the decline of the political power and wealth of the Catholic Church, a few rulers gradually solidified their power. Portugal, Spain, France and England were transformed from small territories into nation-states with centralized authority in the hands of monarchs who were able to direct and finance overseas exploration.

As these religious and political changes were occurring, technological innovations in navigation set the stage for exploration. Bigger, faster ships and the invention of navigational devices such as the astrolabe and sextant made extended voyages possible.

A Faster Route to the East 

But the most powerful inducement to exploration was trade. Marco Polo’s famous journey to Cathay signaled Europe’s “discovery” of Chinese and Islamic civilizations. The Orient became a magnet to traders, and exotic products and wealth flowed into Europe. Those who benefited most were merchants who sat astride the great overland trade routes, especially the merchants of the Italian city-states of Genoa, Venice and Florence.

The newly unified states of the Atlantic–France, Spain, England and Portugal–and their ambitious monarchs were envious of the merchants and princes who dominated the land routes to the East. Moreover, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, war between European states and the Ottoman Empire greatly hampered Europe’s trade with the Orient. The desire to supplant the trade moguls, especially the Italians, and fear of the Ottoman Empire forced the Atlantic nations to search for a new route to the East.

Portugal: Bartolomeu Dias, Vasco de Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral

Portugal led the others into exploration. Encouraged by Prince Henry the Navigator, Portuguese seamen sailed southward along the African coast, seeking a water route to the East. They were also looking for a legendary king named Prester John who had supposedly built a Christian stronghold somewhere in northwestern Africa. Henry hoped to form an alliance with Prester John to fight the Muslims. 

During Henry’s lifetime the Portuguese learned much about the African coastal area. His school developed the quadrant, the cross-staff and the compass, made advances in cartography and designed and built highly maneuverable little ships known as caravels.

After Henry’s death, Portuguese interest in long-distance trade and expansion waned until King John II commissioned Bartolomeu Dias to find a water route to India in 1487. Dias sailed around the tip of Africa and into the Indian Ocean before his frightened crew forced him to give up the quest. A year later, Vasco da Gama succeeded in reaching India and returned to Portugal laden with jewels and spices. 

In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral discovered and claimed Brazil for Portugal, and other Portuguese captains established trading posts in the South China Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian Sea. These water routes to the East undercut the power of the Italian city-states, and Lisbon became Europe’s new trade capital.

Spain and Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus launched Spain’s imperial ambitions. Born in Genoa, Italy, around 1451, Columbus learned the art of navigation on voyages in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. At some point he probably read Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly’s early fifteenth-century work, Imago mundi, which argued that the East could be found by sailing west of the Azores for a few days. 

Columbus, hoping to make such a voyage, spent years seeking a sponsor and finally found one in Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain after they defeated the Moors and could turn their attention to other projects.

In August 1492, Columbus sailed west with his now famous ships, Niña, Pinta  and Santa María. After ten weeks he sighted an island in the Bahamas, which he named San Salvador. Thinking he had found islands near Japan, he sailed on until he reached Cuba (which he thought was mainland China) and later Haiti. 

Columbus returned to Spain with many products unknown to Europe–coconuts, tobacco, sweet corn, potatoes–and with tales of dark-skinned native peoples whom he called “Indians” because he assumed he had been sailing in the Indian Ocean.

Although Columbus found no gold or silver, he was hailed by Spain and much of Europe as the discoverer of d’Ailly’s western route to the East. John II of Portugal, however, believed Columbus had discovered islands in the Atlantic already claimed by Portugal and took the matter to Pope Alexander II. 

Twice the pope issued decrees supporting Spain’s claim to Columbus’s discoveries. But the territorial disputes between Portugal and Spain were not resolved until 1494 when they signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, which drew a line 370 leagues west of the Azores as the demarcation between the two empires.

Despite the treaty, controversy continued over what Columbus had found. He made three more voyages to America between 1494 and 1502, during which he explored Puerto Rico , the Virgin Islands, Jamaica, and Trinidad. Each time he returned more certain that he had reached the East. 

Subsequent explorations by others, however, persuaded most Europeans that Columbus had discovered a “New World.” Ironically, that New World was named for someone else. A German geographer, Martin Waldseemüller, accepted the claim of Amerigo Vespucci that he had landed on the American mainland before Columbus. In 1507 Waldseemüller published a book in which he named the new land “America.”

Spanish Explorers After Columbus

More Spanish expeditions followed. Juan Ponce de León  explored the coasts of Florida in 1513. Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and discovered the Pacific Ocean in the same year. 

Ferdinand Magellan’s  expedition (in the course of which he put down a mutiny and was later killed ) sailed around the tip of South America, across the Pacific to the Philippines, through the Indian Ocean and back to Europe around the southern tip of Africa between 1519 and 1522.

Two expeditions led directly to Spain’s emergence as sixteenth-century Europe’s wealthiest and most powerful nation. The first was headed by Hernán Cortés , who in 1519 led a small army of Spanish and Native Americans against the Aztec Empire  of Mexico . Completing the conquest in 1521, Cortés took control of the Aztecs’ fabulous gold and silver mines. 

Ten years later, an expedition under Francisco Pizarro overwhelmed the Inca Empire of Peru, securing for the Spaniards the great Inca silver mines of Potosí.

In 1535 and 1536, Pedro de Mendoza went as far as present-day Buenos Aires in Argentina, where he founded a colony. At the same time, Cabeza de Vaca  explored the North American Southwest, adding that region to Spain’s New World empire.

A few years later (1539-1542), Francisco Vásquez de Coronado  discovered the Grand Canyon and journeyed through much of the Southwest looking for gold and the legendary Seven Cities of Cíbola. About the same time, Hernando de Soto explored southeastern North America from Florida to the Mississippi River. By 1650, Spain’s empire was complete and fleets of ships were carrying the plunder back to Spain.

Religious Motivations

As European powers conquered the territories of the New World, they justified wars against Native Americans and the destruction of their cultures as a fulfillment of the European secular and religious vision of the New World. The idea of “America” antedated America’s discovery and even Viking exploration. 

That idea had two parts: one paradisiacal and utopian, the other savage and dangerous. Ancient tales described distant civilizations, usually to the west, where European-like peoples lived simple, virtuous lives without war, famine, disease or poverty. Such utopian visions were reinforced by religious notions. Early Christian Europeans had inherited from the Jews a powerful prophetic tradition that drew upon apocalyptic biblical texts in the books of Daniel, Isaiah and Revelations. They connected the Christianization of the world with the second coming of Christ. Such ideas led many Europeans (including Columbus) to believe it was God’s plan for Christians to convert pagans wherever they were found.

If secular and religious traditions evoked utopian visions of the New World, they also induced nightmares. The ancients described wonderful civilizations, but barbaric, evil ones as well. Moreover, late medieval Christianity inherited a rich tradition of hatred for non-Christians derived in part from the Crusaders' struggle to free the Holy Land and from warfare against the Moors.

European encounters with the New World were viewed in light of these preconceived notions. To plunder the New World of its treasures was acceptable because it was populated by pagans. To Christianize the pagans was necessary because it was part of God’s plan; to kill them was right because they were Satan’s warriors. 

France: Giovanni da Verrazano, Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain

While Spain was building its New World empire, France was also exploring the Americas. In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano was commissioned to locate a northwest passage around North America to India. He was followed in 1534 by Jacques Cartier , who explored the St. Lawrence River as far as present-day Montreal. 

In 1562, Jean Ribault headed an expedition that explored the St. Johns River area in Florida. His efforts were followed two years later by a second venture headed by René Goulaine de Laudonnière. But the Spanish soon pushed the French out of Florida, and thereafter, the French directed their efforts north and west. In 1608 Samuel de Champlain built a fort at Quebec and explored the area north to Port Royal and Nova Scotia and south to Cape Cod.

Unlike Spain’s empire, “New France” produced no caches of gold and silver. Instead, the French traded with inland tribes for furs and fished off the coast of Newfoundland. New France was sparsely populated by trappers and missionaries and dotted with military forts and trading posts. Although the French sought to colonize the area, the growth of settlements was stifled by inconsistent policies. 

Initially, France encouraged colonization by granting charters to fur-trading companies. Then, under Cardinal Richelieu, control of the empire was put in the hands of the government-sponsored Company of New France. The company, however, was not successful, and in 1663 the king took direct control of New France. Although more prosperous under this administration, the French empire failed to match the wealth of New Spain or the growth of neighboring British colonies.

The Netherlands: Henry Hudson Leads the Dutch

The Dutch were also engaged in the exploration of America. Formerly a Protestant province of Spain, the Netherlands was determined to become a commercial power and saw exploration as a means to that end. 

In 1609, Henry Hudson led an expedition to America for the Dutch East India Company and laid claim to the area along the Hudson River as far as present-day Albany. In 1614 the newly formed New Netherland Company obtained a grant from the Dutch government for the territory between New France and Virginia . About ten years later another trading company, the West India Company, settled groups of colonists on Manhattan Island and at Fort Orange. The Dutch also planted trading colonies in the West Indies.

England: John Cabot and Sir Walter Raleigh

In 1497 Henry VII of England sponsored an expedition to the New World headed by John Cabot , who explored a part of Newfoundland and reported an abundance of fish. But until Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the English showed little interest in exploration, being preoccupied with their European trade and establishing control over the British Isles. 

By the mid-sixteenth century, however, England had recognized the advantages of trade with the East, and in 1560 English merchants enlisted Martin Frobisher to search for a northwest passage to India. Between 1576 and 1578 Frobisher as well as John Davis explored along the Atlantic coast.

Thereafter, Queen Elizabeth granted charters to Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh to colonize America. Gilbert headed two trips to the New World. He landed on Newfoundland but was unable to carry out his intention of establishing military posts. A year later, Raleigh sent a company to explore territory he named Virginia after Elizabeth, the “Virgin Queen,” and in 1585, he sponsored a second voyage, this time to explore the Chesapeake Bay region. By the seventeenth century, the English had taken the lead in colonizing North America, establishing settlements all along the Atlantic coast and in the West Indies.

Sweden and Denmark

Sweden and Denmark also succumbed to the attractions of America, although to a lesser extent. In 1638, the Swedish West India Company established a settlement on the Delaware River near present-day Wilmington called Fort Christina. This colony was short-lived, however, and was taken over by the Dutch in 1655. The king of Denmark chartered the Danish West India Company in 1671, and the Danes established colonies in St. Croix and other islands in the cluster of the Virgin Islands.

Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, a.d. 500-1600 (1971); John H. Parry, The Spanish Seaborne Empire (1966; 2nd ed., 1980); David B. Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, 1481-1620, from the Bristol Voyages of the Fifteenth Century to the Pilgrim Settlement at Plymouth: The Exploration, Exploitation, and Trial-and-Error Colonization of North America by the English (1974).

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Nasa administrator remembers apollo astronaut william anders.

Cheryl Warner

Nasa headquarters.

The following is a statement from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on the passing of Apollo astronaut Maj. Gen. (ret.) William “Bill” Anders, who passed away June 7, in San Juan Islands, Washington state, at the age of 90.

“In 1968, as a member of the Apollo 8 crew, as one of the first three people to travel beyond the reach of our Earth and orbit the Moon, Bill Anders gave to humanity among the deepest of gifts an explorer and an astronaut can give. Along with the Apollo 8 crew, Bill was the first to show us, through looking back at the Earth from the threshold of the Moon, that stunning image – the first of its kind – of the Earth suspended in space, illuminated in light and hidden in darkness: the Earthrise .

“As Bill put it so well after the conclusion of the Apollo 8 mission, ‘We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.’

“That is what Bill embodied – the notion that we go to space to learn the secrets of the universe yet in the process learn about something else: ourselves. He embodied the lessons and the purpose of exploration.

“The voyage Bill took in 1968 was only one of the many remarkable chapters in Bill’s life and service to humanity. In his 26 years of service to our country, Bill was many things – U.S. Air Force officer, astronaut, engineer, ambassador, advisor, and much more.

“Bill began his career as an Air Force pilot and, in 1964, was selected to join NASA’s astronaut corps, serving as backup pilot for the Gemini XI and Apollo 11 flights, and lunar module pilot for Apollo 8.

“He not only saw new things but inspired generation upon generation to see new possibilities and new dreams – to voyage on Earth, in space, and in the skies. When America returns astronauts to the Moon under the Artemis campaign, and ultimately ventures onward to Mars, we will carry the memory and legacy of Bill with us.

“At every step of Bill’s life was the iron will of a pioneer, the grand passion of a visionary, the cool skill of a pilot, and the heart of an adventurer who explored on behalf of all of us. His impact will live on through the generations. All of NASA, and all of those who look up into the twinkling heavens and see grand new possibilities of dazzling new dreams, will miss a great hero who has passed on: Bill Anders.”

For more information about Anders’ NASA career, and his agency biography, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/former-astronaut-william-a-anders/

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10 takeaways from Beyoncé's new album, 'Cowboy Carter'

Sidney Madden

Sheldon Pearce

Cowboy Carter is the hotly anticipated follow-up to to Beyoncé's 2022 album, Renaissance . Blair Caldwell/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

Cowboy Carter is the hotly anticipated follow-up to to Beyoncé's 2022 album, Renaissance .

How long have fans been speculating over the details of Beyoncé 's new album? It depends when you start counting: Some began buzzing over it the second her previous record, the dance-centric Renaissance , was released in 2022 and touted as "act one" of a trilogy. But the chatter has been especially fervent in the past two months, as singles, visuals and other teases popped up during the Grammys, Super Bowl and on the artist's own social media. The Beyhive's busiest bees analyzed clues that pointed toward a country music-inspired sound; they dissected the history of that genre, and how Black musicians have often been written out of it.

After months of anticipation, Cowboy Carter has finally arrived. Is it a country album? In many ways, yes — but it's also a sprawling work filled with disparate influences and references, while remaining a Beyoncé album at its heart. Two NPR Music staffers, reporter Sidney Madden and editor Sheldon Pearce , have been listening since the stroke of midnight. They come to you now with the 10 most important things to know about exactly what Cowboy Carter is, and is not.

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1. It's a sprawling Western epic...

Just as Beyoncé's 2022 album, act i: RENAISSANCE , served as a world-building homage to the unsung Black queer youth who created house music, Cowboy Carter continues the lesson plan. In a statement soon after the album's worldwide release, the artist's Parkwood Entertainment shared that each song on the 27-track project is its own version of a reimagined Western film: "She took inspiration from films like Five Fingers for Marseilles , Urban Cowboy , The Hateful Eight , Space Cowboys , The Harder They Fall and Killers of the Flower Moon , often having the films playing on a screen during the recording process."

Each track, whether an interlude, collaboration or poignant solo, rides out like a full-length film full of scenic grandeur, character and conflicts that any Chitlin' Circuit aficionado or spaghetti Western cinephile can obsess over. As a whole, Cowboy Carter serves as a well of discovery, full of samples, sonic Easter eggs, Knowles family callbacks and, most importantly, an appreciation for pioneers in the country world.

2. ... with a searing image of its titular central character.

In the cowboy, Beyoncé finds her ideal figure of the American West and South. She cites the rodeo as the first place where anyone who loved country music and culture could gather and mingle and feel welcome. It's an image that runs counter to the experience that inspired the album: performing her song "Daddy Lessons" at the CMA Awards in 2016, where she has said she "did not feel welcomed ... and it was very clear that I wasn't." The Cowboy Carter character exists in conversation with the history of Black cowboys, the loaded meaning behind the term and its function in the American imagination.

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3. It's a country album...

There are plenty of categorically country sounds on Cowboy Carter . String instruments are its sonic heartbeat, and the do-si-do of the slide guitar on "DESERT EAGLE" and "TEXAS HOLD 'EM" feel perfectly matched with Bey's feathery vocals. The jovial wiggle of the accordions on "RIIVERDANCE" tip a hat to zydeco music and the artist's Creole heritage. "PROTECTOR" (featuring Beyoncé's youngest daughter, Rumi) is anchored by acoustic guitar. "SWEET HONEY BUCKIIN' " interpolates "I Fall to Pieces," the shuffling standard made famous by Patsy Cline . Compared to Bey's past work in an R&B world full of glitz and glamor, many moments on the album, even with their layered arrangements, feel like intimate jam sessions straight out of a Nashville writing camp.

4. ... and it's also not.

Across the track list, elements of hip-hop, bluegrass and Chicano rock, with pop, rock, Jersey club music and operatic runs. "YA YA" conjures the charisma of Tina Turner and Chuck Berry , while winking in the direction of Nancy Sinatra and The Beach Boys . "BODYGUARD" is a breezy surf-rock romp with Latin percussion and a little whiskey on its breath. "AMEN" rings to the rafters in true gospel splendor. "SWEET HONEY BUCKIIN' " stacks genre upon genre and yet never overwhelms, instead connecting the dots between them with dusty horse gallops. The production credits stretch far beyond the scope of country stalwarts, making the album a treasure hunt for fans and issuing a challenge to the ways country music has come to be defined.

5. It's got country and Americana icons to set the tone...

Voices from country lore appear throughout the track list, signposts for the album's deconstructions of genre. The outlaw country pioneer Willie Nelson , who once bucked the Nashville sound himself, stands in as the host of KNTRY Radio Texas, Beyoncé's fictional pirate station. Dolly Parton draws a line from Becky with the good hair to Jolene, and turns up again before "TYRANT," encouraging Beyoncé to light up a juke joint. In a prelude to one of the album's most adventurous cuts, "SPAGHETTII," Linda Martell, an undersung, trailblazing Black country star of the '70s, lays out a sort of mission statement: "Genres are a funny little concept, aren't they? Yes, they are. In theory, they have a simple definition that's easy to understand. But in practice, well, some may feel confined."

6. ... and it's flipping some old tropes.

There are covers of country classics here that stand out for how stealthily they're reimagined. Parton's 1973 hit "Jolene" shows up early in the album, but Beyoncé adds her own sauce to flip its storied narrative. A vigilant Bey (flip-flopping between being upset and unbothered) clocks the "bird" chirping round her man; unlike Dolly, who responds to a similar threat with a plea for mercy, she puts her rival on notice: " I'm warnin' you, woman, find you your own man / Jolene, I know I'm a queen, Jolene / I'm still a Creole banjee bitch from Louisianne ." This twist renegotiates the common push and pull of rolling-stone / damsel-in-distress infidelity that's historically been a hallmark in country standards, and has only recently started to shift (see also: Carrie Underwood 's "Before He Cheats").

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7. It gives flowers to unsung pioneers.

When Linda Martell shows up in the opening moments of "SPAGHETTII" to pose her question about genres, the slick rhetorical framing cuts to the main conceit of Cowboy Carter and centers Martell herself as a case in point. As a pioneer in the country space, Martell made history with her 1970 album, Color Me Country , and was the first Black woman to perform on the storied Grand Ole Opry. But because of the racist aggression she endured when moving from pop to country, Martell soon left the business. Now, at 82 years old, Martell's getting her due. Her voice is immortalized on both "SPAGHETTII" and "THE LINDA MARTELL SHOW," both tracks that play hopscotch with a range of genres. "I am proud that Beyoncé is exploring her country music roots," the veteran posted on Instagram . "What she is doing is beautiful, and I'm honored to be a part of it. It's Beyoncé, after all!"

8. It shines a light on the stars of country's new age.

A recent study tracking country music programming from 2000 through 2020 revealed that only 29% of country songs played on format radio were by women artists, and of that 29%, 0.01% were Black women. And so along with honoring pioneers, Cowboy Carter platforms new stars in the field who are still working their way through its entrenched gatekeeping and redlining.

Rhiannon Giddens strums her banjo on the album's lead single, "TEXAS HOLD 'EM." Virginia's Shaboozey, whose 2022 release, Cowboys Live Forever, Outlaws Never Die , offered songs for a post-"Old Town Road" country-rap world, cuts through two tracks with his unforgettable tone. "BLACKBIIRD" features the vocals of four Black women — Tanner Adell , Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy and Reyna Roberts. This soulful cover of The Beatles ' classic about Black women's plights and resilience during the American Civil Rights movement puts its subjects in a spotlight that country radio rarely does, bringing home the reality that opportunities for artists like these have scarcely grown in the years since Martell broke ground.

9. It saddles up over the pop-country middle ground.

On Cowboy Carter , Beyoncé is a pop star actively in conversation with the idea of country music, and traversing the distance between those genres seems to have made her consider the existing relationship between them. In two moments on the album, she enlists singers who have been blurring that binary for quite some time: Miley Cyrus and Post Malone . Miley, of course, is the daughter of "Achy Breaky Heart" sensation Billy Ray Cyrus , and in her own pursuit of a pop identity, fiddled with Mike WiLL trap, Flaming Lips psychedelia, glam rock and country pop before settling on the centering sounds of last year's Endless Summer Vacation , which earned her a record of the year Grammy for "Flowers." For his part, Post broke out as a watercolor trap rockstar and has since shifted toward a sound more in line with his Texas roots. Both seem to resonate with the ambiguity Bey sees running through the music.

10. There's more beneath the rhinestone jewel case.

Beyond the many featured guests, other behind-the-scenes contributors help tell the story. The-Dream , Pharrell , No I.D., Raphael Saadiq , Ryan Tedder, Ryan Beatty and Swizz Beatz all helped produce the record. It also boasts an incredibly accomplished cast of supporting players: Pulitzer-winning folk revivalist Giddens , Grammy-winning soul man Jon Batiste , session luminary Nile Rodgers, gospel pedal steelist Robert Randolph , blues rocker Gary Clark Jr. , hip-hop banjoist Willie Jones and the incomparable Stevie Wonder . The incredible variety of names and skills is the secret sauce behind Cowboy Carter 's sprawling vision.