The Age of Exploration: A Brief History

Columbus and other Spanish explorers were initially disappointed with their discoveries—unlike Africa or Asia, the Caribbean islanders had little to trade with the Castilian ships. The islands thus became the focus of colonization efforts. It was not until the continent itself was explored that Spain found the wealth it had sought. Shortly after Columbus's return from what would later be called the "West Indies", a division of influence became necessary to avoid conflict between the Spanish and Portuguese.

It did not mention Portugal, which could not claim newly discovered lands east of the line. King John II of Portugal was not pleased with the arrangement, feeling that it gave him far too little land—preventing him from reaching India, his main goal. He then negotiated directly with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to move the line west, and allowing him to claim newly discovered lands east of it.

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An agreement was reached in , with the Treaty of Tordesillas that divided the world between the two powers. In this treaty the Portuguese received everything outside Europe east of a line that ran leagues west of the Cape Verde islands already Portuguese , and the islands discovered by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage claimed for Castile , named in the treaty as Cipangu and Antilia Cuba and Hispaniola. The Spanish Castile received everything west of this line. At the time of negotiation, the treaty split the known world of Atlantic islands roughly in half, with the dividing line about halfway between Portuguese Cape Verde and the Spanish discoveries in the Caribbean.

Since it was east of the dividing line, he claimed it for Portugal and this was respected by the Spanish. Portuguese ships sailed west into the Atlantic to get favourable winds for the journey to India, and this is where Cabral was headed on his journey, in a corridor the treaty was negotiated to protect. Some suspect the Portuguese had secretly discovered Brazil earlier, and this is why they had the line moved eastward and how Cabral found it, but there is no reliable evidence of this.

Others suspect Duarte Pacheco Pereira secretly discovered Brazil in , but this not considered credible by mainstream historians. Later the Spanish territory would prove to include huge areas of the continental mainland of North and South America, though Portuguese-controlled Brazil would expand across the line, and settlements by other European powers ignored the treaty. Very little of the divided area had actually been seen by Europeans, as it was only divided by a geographical definition rather than control on the ground. Columbus's first voyage in spurred maritime exploration and, from , a number of explorers headed west.

Sailing from Bristol , probably backed by the local Society of Merchant Venturers , Cabot crossed the Atlantic from a northerly latitude hoping the voyage to the "West Indies" would be shorter [70] and made a landfall somewhere in North America, possibly Newfoundland. After returning he possibly went to Bristol to sail in the name of England.

In , newly crowned King Manuel I of Portugal sent an exploratory fleet eastwards, fulfilling his predecessor's project of finding a route to the Indies. In July news spread that the Portuguese had reached the "true indies", as a letter was dispatched by the Portuguese king to the Spanish Catholic Monarchs one day after the celebrated return of the fleet. The third expedition by Columbus in was the beginning of the first successful Castilian Spanish colonization in the West Indies , on the island of Hispaniola.

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Despite growing doubts, Columbus refused to accept that he had not reached the Indies. During the voyage he discovered the mouth of the Orinoco River on the north coast of South America now Venezuela and thought that the huge quantity of fresh water coming from it could only be from a continental land mass, which he was certain was the Asian mainland.

As shipping between Seville and the West Indies grew, knowledge of the Caribbean islands, Central America and the northern coast of South America grew. One of these Spanish fleets, that of Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci in —, reached land at the coast of what is now Guyana , when the two explorers seem to have separated in opposite directions. The —16 expedition was spurred on by reports of Portuguese exploration of the region see below.

On 21 April a mountain was seen and was named Monte Pascoal , and on 22 April Cabral landed on the coast. Cabral perceived that the new land lay east of the line of Tordesillas, and sent an envoy to Portugal with the discovery in letters, including the letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha. Cabral was the first captain to touch four continents, leading the first expedition that connected and united Europe, Africa, the New World, and Asia.

At the invitation of King Manuel I of Portugal, Amerigo Vespucci [81] —a Florentine who had been working for a branch of the Medici Bank in Seville since , fitting oceanic expeditions and travelling twice to The Guianas with Juan de la Cosa in the service of Spain [82] —participated as observer in these exploratory voyages to the east coast of South America. The expeditions became widely known in Europe after two accounts attributed to him, published between and , suggested that the newly discovered lands were not the Indies but a " New World ", [83] the Mundus novus , Latin title of a contemporary document based on Vespucci letters to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici , which had become widely popular in Europe.

Vespucci wrote that they headed toward the southwest and south, following "a long, unbending coastline" apparently coincident with the southern South American coast. Manuel's censors who had to pressure him to alter his account, because he had revealed far too much to Lorenzo de' Medici and into the public domain, is unknown. In , Binot Paulmier de Gonneville , challenging the Portuguese policy of mare clausum , led one of the earliest French Normand and Breton expeditions to Brazil. He intended to sail to the East Indies, but near the Cape of Good Hope his ship was diverted to west by a storm, and landed in the present day state of Santa Catarina southern Brazil , on 5 January Driven away by the Tramontane or north wind, they retraced their course.

Nuno Manuel , who would serve the Spanish Crown after , believed that the navigators had discovered a southern strait to west and Asia. In , an expedition sent by the Spanish Crown to find a way to Asia was led by the experienced Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan. The fleet explored the rivers and bays as it charted the South American coast until it found a way to the Pacific Ocean through the Strait of Magellan. They explored the territories of present-day southern Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia , using the native trail network, the Peabiru.

They were also the first Europeans to cross the Chaco and reach the outer territories of the Inca Empire on the hills of the Andes , near Sucre. Protected from direct Spanish competition by the treaty of Tordesillas, Portuguese eastward exploration and colonization continued apace. Twice, in and , Portugal officially rejected Christopher Columbus 's idea of reaching India by sailing westwards.

A long-overdue expedition was prepared. Under new king Manuel I of Portugal , on July a small exploratory fleet of four ships and about men left Lisbon under the command of Vasco da Gama. By December the fleet passed the Great Fish River —where Dias had turned back—and sailed into unknown waters.

On 20 May , they arrived at Calicut. The efforts of Vasco da Gama to get favourable trading conditions were hampered by the low value of their goods, compared with the valuable goods traded there. In , a second, larger fleet of thirteen ships and about men were sent to India. On the Asiatic mainland the first factories trading-posts were established at Kochi and Calicut and then Goa East of Malacca, Albuquerque sent several diplomatic missions: Although he was the first to land on Lintin Island in the Pearl River Delta , it was Rafael Perestrello —a cousin of the famed Christopher Columbus —who became the first European explorer to land on the southern coast of mainland China and trade in Guangzhou in , commanding a Portuguese vessel with a crew from a Malaysian junk that had sailed from Malacca.

After a few decades, hostilities between the Portuguese and Chinese ceased and in the Chinese allowed the Portuguese to occupy Macau. To enforce a trade monopoly, Muscat , and Hormuz in the Persian Gulf , were seized by Afonso de Albuquerque in and in , respectively. He also entered into diplomatic relations with Persia. In while trying to conquer Aden , an expedition led by Albuquerque cruised the Red Sea inside the Bab al-Mandab , and sheltered at Kamaran island. Using a small brigantine and ten native canoes , they sailed along the coast and made landfalls. On September 6, the expedition was reinforced with 1, men, fought several battles, entered a dense jungle and climbed the mountain range along the Chucunaque River from where this "other sea" could be seen.

Balboa went ahead and, before noon September 25, he saw in the horizon an undiscovered sea, becoming the first European to have seen or reached the Pacific from the New World. The expedition descended towards the shore for a short reconnaissance trip, thus becoming the first Europeans to navigate the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the New World. He named the new sea Mar del Sur South Sea , since they had travelled south to reach it.

Balboa's main purpose in the expedition was the search for gold-rich kingdoms. To this end, he crossed through the lands of caciques to the islands, naming the largest one Isla Rica Rich Island, today known as Isla del Rey. Aware of the efforts of the Spanish to find a route to India by sailing west, Magellan presented his plan to Charles I of Spain. The king and Christopher de Haro financed Magellan's expedition. On August 10, , they departed from Seville with a fleet of five ships—the flagship Trinidad under Magellan's command, San Antonio , Concepcion , Santiago and Victoria , the first being a caravel , and all others rated as carracks or "naus"—with a crew of about men from several nations, with the goal of reaching the Maluku Islands by travelling west, trying to reclaim it under Spain's economic and political sphere.

The fleet sailed further and further south, avoiding the Portuguese territories in Brazil, and became the first to reach Tierra del Fuego at the tip of the Americas. On September 6, Victoria returned to Spain, thus completing the first circumnavigation of the globe. Of the men who set out on five ships, only 18 completed the circumnavigation and managed to return to Spain in this single vessel led by Elcano.

Seventeen others arrived later in Spain: Antonio Pigafetta , a Venetian scholar and traveller who had asked to be on board and become a strict assistant of Magellan, kept an accurate journal that become the main source for much of what we know about this voyage. This round-the-world voyage gave Spain valuable knowledge of the world and its oceans which later helped in the exploration and settlement of the Philippines.

Although this was not a realistic alternative to the Portuguese route around Africa [] the Strait of Magellan was too far south, and the Pacific Ocean too vast to cover in a single trip from Spain successive Spanish expeditions used this information to explore the Pacific Ocean and discovered routes that opened up trade between Acapulco , New Spain present-day Mexico and Manila in the Philippines. Soon after Magellan's expedition, the Portuguese rushed to seize the surviving crew and built a fort in Ternate.

The expedition reached the islands with great difficulty, docking at Tidore. As there was not a set eastern limit to the Tordesillas line, both kingdoms organized meetings to resolve the issue. From to Portuguese and Spanish experts met at Badajoz-Elvas trying to find the exact location of the antimeridian of Tordesillas, which would divide the world into two equal hemispheres.

Each crown appointed three astronomers and cartographers , three pilots and three mathematicians. Lopo Homem , Portuguese cartographer and cosmographer was in the board, along with cartographer Diogo Ribeiro on the Spanish delegation. The board met several times, without reaching an agreement: The issue was settled only in , after a long negotiation, with the signing of Treaty of Zaragoza , that attributed the Maluku Islands to Portugal and the Philippines to Spain.

Between and Portugal sent several expeditions around the Maluku Islands. In October one of the vessels reached the Maluku Islands. In his attempt to return to New Spain he was diverted by the northeast trade winds , which threw him back, so he tried sailing back down, to the south. He returned to New Guinea and sailed northeast, where he sighted the Marshall Islands and the Admiralty Islands , but again was surprised by the winds, which brought him a third time to the Moluccas.

Rumours of undiscovered islands northwest of Hispaniola had reached Spain by and king Ferdinand II of Aragon was interested in forestalling further exploration. While Portuguese were making huge gains in the Indian Ocean, the Spanish invested in exploring inland in search of gold and valuable resources. The members of these expeditions, the " conquistadors ", came from a variety of backgrounds including artisans, merchants, clergy, lesser nobility and freed slaves. They usually supplied their own equipment in exchange for a share in profits, having no direct connection with the royal army, and often no professional military training or experience.

In the Americas the Spanish found a number of empires that were as large and populous as those in Europe. However, small bodies of conquistadors , with large armies of Indigenous Americans groups, managed to conquer these states. During this time, pandemics of European disease such as smallpox devastated the indigenous populations. Once Spanish sovereignty was established, the Spanish focused on the extraction and export of gold and silver. He would become governor of discovered lands, but was to finance himself all exploration.

In April they sighted land and named it La Florida —because it was Easter Florida season—believing it was an island, becoming credited as the first European to land in the continent.

The arrival location has been disputed between St. They headed south for further exploration and on April 8 encountered a current so strong that it pushed them backwards: They reached the coast where Mayans invited them to land, but were attacked at night and only a remnant of the crew returned. From Trinidad he proceeded to Tabasco and won a battle against the natives.

Among the vanquished was La Malinche , his future mistress, who knew both Aztec Nahuatl language and Maya, becoming a valuable interpreter and counsellor. In July his men took over Veracruz and he placed himself under direct orders of new king Charles I of Spain. They headed to Tenochtitlan and on the way made alliances with several tribes.

In October, accompanied by about 3, Tlaxcaltec they marched to Cholula , the second largest city in central Mexico. Either to instill fear upon the Aztecs waiting for him or as he later claimed wishing to make an example when he feared native treachery, they massacred thousands of unarmed members of the nobility gathered at the central plaza and partially burned the city.

Much of the treasure looted was lost during this panicked escape. A first attempt to explore western South America was undertaken in by Pascual de Andagoya. Francisco Pizarro had accompanied Balboa in the crossing of the Isthmus of Panama. In he formed a partnership with priest Hernando de Luque and soldier Diego de Almagro to explore the south, agreeing to divide the profits. They dubbed the enterprise the " Empresa del Levante ": Pizarro would command, Almagro would provide military and food supplies, and Luque would be in charge of finances and additional provisions.

On 13 September , the first of three expeditions left to conquer Peru with about 80 men and 40 horses. The expedition was a failure, reaching no farther than Colombia before succumbing to bad weather, hunger and skirmishes with hostile locals, where Almagro lost an eye. The place names bestowed along their route, Puerto deseado desired port , Puerto del hambre port of hunger and Puerto quemado burned port , attest to the difficulties of their journey.

Two years later they began a second expedition with reluctant permission from the Governor of Panama. In August , they left with two ships, men and several horses. Upon reaching San Juan River they separated, Pizarro staying to explore the swampy coasts and Almagro sent back for reinforcements.

Pizarro's main pilot sailed south and, after crossing the equator, captured a raft from Tumbes. To his surprise, it carried textiles, ceramic and much-desired gold, silver, and emeralds, becoming the central focus of the expedition. Soon Almagro joined with reinforcements and they resumed. After a difficult voyage facing strong winds and currents, they reached Atacames where they found a large native population under Inca rule, but they did not land. Pizarro remained safe near the coast, while Almagro and Luque went back for reinforcements with proof of the rumoured gold.

The new governor outright rejected a third expedition and ordered two ships to bring everyone back to Panama. Almagro and Luque grasped the opportunity to join Pizarro. When they arrived at the Isla de Gallo , Pizarro drew a line in the sand, saying: Choose, each man, what best becomes a brave Castilian. They headed for La Isla Gorgona , where they remained for seven months before the arrival of provisions. They decided to sail south and, by April , reached the northwestern Peruvian Tumbes Region and were warmly received by local Tumpis. Two of Pizarro's men reported incredible riches, including gold and silver decorations around the chief's house.

They saw for the first time a llama which Pizarro called "little camels".

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The natives named the Spanish "Children of the Sun" for their fair complexion and brilliant armours. They decided then to return to Panama to prepare a final expedition. Before leaving they sailed south through territories they named such as Cabo Blanco, port of Payta, Sechura, Punta de Aguja, Santa Cruz, and Trujillo , reaching the ninth degree south.

In the spring of Pizarro sailed for Spain, where he had an interview with king Charles I. The king heard of his expeditions in lands rich in gold and silver and promised to support him. Pizarro was then able to convince many friends and relatives to join: Pizarro's third and final expedition left Panama for Peru on 27 December With three ships and one hundred and eighty men they landed near Ecuador and sailed to Tumbes, finding the place destroyed.

They entered the interior and established the first Spanish settlement in Peru , San Miguel de Piura. One of the men returned with an Incan envoy and an invitation for a meeting. After marching for two months, they approached Atahualpa. He refused the Spanish, however, saying he would "be no man's tributary. Despite fulfilling his promise of filling one room with gold and two with silver, he was convicted for killing his brother and plotting against Pizarro, and was executed. In three Portuguese traders accidentally became the first Westerners to reach and trade with Japan.

The expedition set sail on November Urdaneta set sail from San Miguel on the island of Cebu on June 1, , but was obliged to sail as far as 38 degrees North latitude to obtain favourable winds. He reasoned that the trade winds of the Pacific might move in a gyre as the Atlantic winds did. If in the Atlantic, ships made the Volta do mar to pick up winds that would bring them back from Madeira, then, he reasoned, by sailing far to the north before heading east, he would pick up trade winds to bring him back to North America.

His hunch paid off, and he hit the coast near Cape Mendocino , California, then followed the coast south. The ship reached the port of Acapulco, on October 8, , having travelled 12, miles 19, kilometres in days. Thus, a cross-Pacific Spanish route was established, between Mexico and the Philippines.

For a long time these routes were used by the Manila galleons , thereby creating a trade link joining China, the Americas, and Europe via the combined trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic routes. Nations outside Iberia refused to acknowledge the Treaty of Tordesillas. France, the Netherlands and England each had a long maritime tradition and had been engaging in privateering.

Despite Iberian protections, the new technologies and maps soon made their way north. War between England and Spain also broke out. The combined empires were simply too big to go unchallenged by European rivals. Philip's troops conquered the important trading cities of Bruges and Ghent. Antwerp , then the most important port in the world, fell in The Protestant population was given two years to settle affairs before leaving the city.

Those were mainly skilled craftsmen, rich merchants of the port cities and refugees that fled religious persecution, particularly Sephardi Jews from Portugal and Spain and, later, the Huguenots from France. The Pilgrim Fathers also spent time there before going to the New World. This mass immigration was an important driving force: After the defeat of the Spanish Armada in there was a huge expansion of maritime trade even though the defeat of the English Armada would confirm the naval supremacy of the Spanish navy over the emergent competitors.

The emergence of Dutch maritime power was swift and remarkable: In , Cornelis de Houtman was sent by Dutch merchants to Lisbon, to gather as much information as he could about the Spice Islands. In , merchant and explorer Jan Huyghen van Linschoten , having travelled widely in the Indian Ocean at the service of the Portuguese, published a travel report in Amsterdam, the "Reys-gheschrift vande navigatien der Portugaloysers in Orienten" "Report of a journey through the navigations of the Portuguese in the East". That same year Houtman followed this directions in the Dutch first exploratory travel that discovered a new sea route, sailing directly from Madagascar to Sunda Strait in Indonesia and signing a treaty with the Banten Sultan.

Dutch and British interest, fed on new information, led to a movement of commercial expansion, and the foundation of English , and Dutch chartered companies.

Events Leading Up To The Age Of Exploration

Dutch, French, and English sent ships which flouted the Portuguese monopoly, concentrated mostly on the coastal areas, which proved unable to defend against such a vast and dispersed venture. Spain put limited efforts into exploring the northern part of the Americas, as its resources were concentrated in Central and South America where more wealth had been found.

In , Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed at the behest of Francis I of France , who was motivated by indignation over the division of the world between Portuguese and Spanish. As a result of his expedition, the Diogo Ribeiro world map outlines the East coast of North America almost perfectly. Europeans explored the Pacific Coast beginning in the midth century. Francisco de Ulloa explored the Pacific coast of present-day Mexico including the Gulf of California , proving that Baja California was a peninsula.

His account provided the first recorded use of the name "California". After his death the crew continued exploring as far north as Oregon. The English naval commander Francis Drake sailed along the coast in somewhere north of Cabrillo's landing site—the actual location of Drake's landing was secret and is still undetermined [] [] —and claimed the land for England, [] calling it Nova Albion.

The term "Nova Albion" was therefore used on many European maps to designate territory north of the Spanish settlements. He explored the Hudson River and laid the foundation for Dutch colonization of the region. Hudson's final expedition ranged farther north in search of the Northwest Passage , leading to his discovery of the Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay. After wintering in the James Bay , Hudson tried to press on with his voyage in the spring of , but his crew mutinied and they cast him adrift.

When it became apparent that there was no route through the heart of the Americas, attention turned to the possibility of a passage through northern waters, which English called the Northwest Passage. The desire to establish such a route motivated much of the European exploration of both coasts of North America and in Russia. In Russia the idea of a possible seaway connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific was first put forward by the diplomat Gerasimov in , although Russian settlers on the coast of the White Sea , the Pomors , had been exploring parts of the route as early as the 11th century.

During the voyage across the Barents Sea , Willoughby thought he saw islands to the north, and islands called Willoughby's Land were shown on maps published by Plancius and Mercator into the s. His ships with the frozen crews, including Captain Willoughby and his journal, were found by Russian fishermen a year later. They managed to bring it on board, but the bear rampaged and was killed. Barentsz reached the west coast of Novaya Zemlya and followed it northward, before being forced to turn back in the face of large icebergs.

The following year, Prince Maurice of Orange named him chief pilot of a new expedition of six ships, loaded with merchant wares that the Dutch hoped to trade with China. In , the States-General offered a high reward for anybody who successfully navigated the Northeast Passage. The Town Council of Amsterdam purchased and outfitted two small ships, captained by Jan Rijp and Jacob van Heemskerk , to search for the elusive channel, under the command of Barents.

They set off on May, and on June discovered Bear Island and Spitsbergen , sighting its northwest coast. They saw a large bay, later called Raudfjorden and entered Magdalenefjorden , which they named Tusk Bay , sailing into the northern entrance of Forlandsundet , which they called Keerwyck , but were forced to turn back because of a shoal. On 28 June they rounded the northern point of Prins Karls Forland , which they named Vogelhoek , on account of the large number of birds, and sailed south, passing Isfjorden and Bellsund , which were labelled on Barentsz's chart as Grooten Inwyck and Inwyck.

The ships once again reached Bear Island on 1 July, which led to a disagreement. They parted ways, with Barentsz continuing northeast, while Rijp headed north.

Age of Discovery

Barentsz reached Novaya Zemlya and, to avoid becoming entrapped in ice, headed for the Vaigatch Strait but became stuck within the icebergs and floes. Stranded, the man crew was forced to spend the winter on the ice. Dealing with extreme cold, they used the merchant fabrics to make additional blankets and clothing and caught Arctic foxes in primitive traps, as well as polar bears. When June arrived, and the ice had still not loosened its grip on the ship, scurvy -ridden survivors took two small boats out into the sea. Barentsz died at sea on 20 June , while studying charts.

It took seven more weeks for the boats to reach Kola where they were rescued by a Russian merchant vessel. Only 12 crewmen remained, reaching Amsterdam in November. Two of Barentsz' crewmembers later published their journals, Jan Huyghen van Linschoten , who had accompanied him on the first two voyages, and Gerrit de Veer who had acted as the ship's carpenter on the last. In , Henry Hudson made a second attempt, trying to go across the top of Russia. He made it to Novaya Zemlya but was forced to turn back.

Terra Australis Ignota Latin, "the unknown land of the south" was a hypothetical continent appearing on European maps from the 15th to the 18th centuries, with roots in a notion introduced by Aristotle. It was depicted on the midth-century Dieppe maps , where its coastline appeared just south of the islands of the East Indies; it was often elaborately charted, with a wealth of fictitious detail.

The discoveries reduced the area where the continent could be found; however, many cartographers held to Aristotle's opinion, like Gerardus Mercator and Alexander Dalrymple even so late as [] argued for its existence, with such arguments as that there should be a large landmass in the Southern Hemisphere as a counterweight to the known landmasses in the Northern Hemisphere.

As new lands were discovered, they were often assumed to be parts of this hypothetical continent. Juan Fernandez , sailing from Chile in , claimed he had discovered the Southern Continent. He represented this to the King of Spain as the Terra Australis incognita. In fact, it was not Australia but an island in present-day Vanuatu. Dutch navigator and colonial governor, Willem Janszoon sailed from the Netherlands for the East Indies for the third time on December 18, , as captain of the Duyfken or Duijfken , meaning "Little Dove" , one of twelve ships of the great fleet of Steven van der Hagen.

Janszoon then crossed the eastern end of the Arafura Sea , without seeing the Torres Strait , into the Gulf of Carpentaria. On February 26, , he made landfall at the Pennefather River on the western shore of Cape York in Queensland, near the modern town of Weipa. This is the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent. Janszoon proceeded to chart some kilometres miles of the coastline, which he thought was a southerly extension of New Guinea. In — Abel Tasman , also a Dutch explorer and merchant in the service of the VOC, circumnavigated New Holland proving that Australia was not part of the mythical southern continent.

He was the first known European expedition to reach the islands of Van Diemen's Land now Tasmania and New Zealand and to sight the Fiji islands, which he did in Tasman, his navigator Visscher, and his merchant Gilsemans also mapped substantial portions of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. This map, the Tabula Rogeriana, provided inspiration to a number of curious explorers. From the late 13th to early 15th century the Middle Ages , some explorers traveled by land from to Eurasia and beyond, using pre-existing trade routes from Eurasia to the Middle East to China.

These trips were carried out by Italian traders, Christian missionaries, and Russian royalty. In the midth century, a Moroccan scholar set out to several regions, including: When the Yongle Emperor of China died, however, the new Emperor advocated isolationism and abolished international exploration and trade. Several books were published about travel accounts, feeding the greater of the world and its undiscovered places.

The Portuguese are often credited with making the first discoveries of the Age of Exploration. These exploration parties traveled down the west coast of Africa and eventually to the Cape of Good Hope and into the Indian Ocean by A decade later, Vasco de Gama discovered the way around the Cape of Good Hope and to India, which established the first sea route between Portugal and India.

Mankind The Story of All of Us

Portuguese exploration continued to Japan in and to Brazil in Late in the 15th century, Spain became involved in sea exploration as well in order to overcome the monopoly that Portugal held over the west African trade route. His exploration crew first landed in the already inhabited Canary Islands before proceeding to the Bahamas. He erroneously believed that he had landed in the West Indies. Doubts began to raise that this new Atlantic path was actually leading to Asia. Explorers began to learn significantly more about these new lands and by , the Pacific Ocean was reached by crossing the Isthmus of Panama.

Discovering that the Pacific Ocean is located on the other side of the New World led to a renewed desire to explore. Between and , Spanish crews sailed the west coast of South America, while the Portuguese were exploring off the coast of Southeast Asia. Find out how sailors were recruited, what was their average diet, and what ailments they had to face while sailing the open seas!

Journeys could take years. Ships only covered about miles a day. The pay was poor. Crews worked around the clock in shifts minding the ship. Disobedience led to harsh punishments. Beatings and floggings were common, and mutineers were put to death. Scurvy, Seasickness and Slime Sailors consumed about 3, calories a day, which they got from: Salted beef or pork; flour mixed with fat was served when meat rations ran low.

Biscuit or hardtack; hardtack was infested with weevils and bugs, which sailors ate as additional food.