The Age of Exploration : From Christopher Columbus to Ferdinand Magellan

164 Pages·2014·17.01 MB·English

by  Pletcher

Introduction
Zheng He
Prince Henry the Navigator
Niccolò dei Conti
Dinís Dias
Alvise Ca’ da Mosto
Martín Alonso and Vicente Yáñez Pinzón
Francisco de Almeida
Obadiah of Bertinoro
John Cabot
Diogo Cão
Bartolomeu Dias
Christopher Columbus
Afonso de Albuquerque
Amerigo Vespucci
Pêro da Covilhã
Vasco da Gama
Juan Ponce de León
Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar
Pedro Álvares Cabral
João da Nova
Lodovico de Varthema
Diego de Almagro
Lourenço de Almeida
Vasco Núñez de Balboa
Francisco Pizarro
Sebastian Cabot
Juan Sebastián del Cano
Ferdinand Magellan
Panfilo de Narváez
Pedro de Alvarado
Hernán Cortés
Giovanni da Verrazzano
Juan de Grijalba
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
Francisco de Orellana
Jacques Cartier
Sebastián de Benalcázar
Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada
Marcos de Niza
Hernando de Soto
David Reubeni
Jean-François de La Rocque de Roberval
Marina
Gonzalo Pizarro
Saint Francis Xavier
Francisco Vázquez de Coronado
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo
Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
T
he century and a half between 1400 and 1550 was a remarkable time in
world history. In Asia, the continent’s two great civilizations, China and
India, were developing highly sophisticated cultures—the Chinese under the
Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and India under a series of smaller polities that
eventually became the Mughal empire (early 16th–mid-18th century). In both
lands, especially in China, much of the external focus during that time was on
preventing more of the incursions from Mongols that had so dominated previous
centuries. Indeed, perhaps the most enduring legacy of the Ming is China’s Great
Wall, the remaining sections of which are testament to the enormous resources
the Chinese expended maintaining and expanding that barrier and symbolic of
their efforts to keep outsiders at bay.
Meanwhile, throughout Europe, nations centred on monarchies were
beginning to emerge from the manor-based decentralized feudal society that had
been in place for centuries. The process progressed to such a degree that by the
beginning of the 16th century, centralized authority, within the frontiers of the
nation-state, covered much of the continent—the first time it had been so since
the Roman Empire. The economy of Europe was also being transformed from
one largely of labour services provided to lords by the serf class to more of a
money economy in which peasants, artisans, and merchants played an increasing
role. This was made possible in large part by the terrible plague epidemics of the
second half of the 14th century, which had so depleted the continent’s
population that they had contributed significantly to the ruin of the landowners.
The 15th and 16th centuries also witnessed the great cultural and intellectual
flowering in Europe known as the Renaissance that produced such renowned
individuals as Leonardo da Vinci, Niccolò Machiavelli, and William
Shakespeare, as well as the remarkable innovation of printing with movable type
that greatly facilitated the dissemination of information. While much of Asia
may have been focused more inward than outward during that time, Europe was
looking to push beyond its boundaries, drawn by the wonders and riches of the
East that it had learned of from such travelers as Marco Polo. Access to the East
by land, however, had become difficult by 1400. The vast empire of the
Mongols, which had once stretched across Eurasia, was much diminished, and
European merchants could no longer rely on the safety of such land routes as the
ancient Silk Road. In addition, the Ottoman Turks, who were hostile to Christian
Europeans, were growing in power in the Middle East, and they effectively
blocked the outlets to the Mediterranean Sea of Europe’s traditional sea routes
from Asia.
World map by Martin Waldseemüller, 1507, in which the name America first
appears in reference to the New World. Library of Congress Geography and
Map Division
Those circumstances, along with the growing desire of the emerging
European states for trade and adventure, became great incentives for those in the
West to seek new sea routes to Asia. The first great overseas voyages of the 15th
century, however, did not originate in the West but were those of the renowned
Chinese admiral Zheng He, sent by the Ming on seven expeditions between 1405