age of discovery

The Age of Discovery (or the Age of Exploration), also known as the early modern period, was a period largely overlapping with the Age of Sail, approximately from the 15th century to the 17th century in European history, during which seafaring Europeans explored and colonized regions across the globe.

The extensive overseas exploration, with the Portuguese and Spanish at the forefront, later joined by the Dutch, English, and French, emerged as a powerful factor in European culture, most notably the European encounter and colonization of the Americas. It also marks an increased adoption of colonialism as a government policy in several European states. As such, it is sometimes synonymous with the first wave of European colonization.

European exploration outside the Mediterranean started with the maritime expeditions of Portugal to the Canary Islands in 1336, and later with the Portuguese discoveries of the Atlantic archipelagos of Madeira and Azores, the coast of West Africa in 1434 and the establishment of the sea route to India in 1498 by Vasco da Gama, which is often considered a very remarkable voyage, as it initiated the Portuguese maritime and trade presence in Kerala and the Indian Ocean.

A main event in the Age of Discovery took place when Spain sponsored the transatlantic voyages of Christopher Columbus between 1492 and 1504, which saw the beginning of the colonization of the Americas. Years later, the Spanish expedition of Magellan–Elcano expedition made the first circumnavigation of the globe between 1519 and 1522, which was regarded as a major achievement in seamanship, and had a significant impact on the European understanding of the world. These discoveries led to numerous naval expeditions across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, and land expeditions in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia that continued into the late 19th century, followed by the exploration of the polar regions in the 20th century.

European overseas exploration led to the rise of international trade and the European colonial empires, with the contact between the Old World (Europe, Asia, and Africa) and the New World (the Americas), as well as Australia, producing the Columbian exchange, a wide transfer of plants, animals, food, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases, and culture between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. The Age of Discovery and later European exploration allowed the mapping of the world, resulting in a new worldview and distant civilizations coming into contact. At the same time, new diseases were propagated, decimating populations not previously in contact with the Old World, particularly concerning Native Americans. The era saw the widespread enslavement, exploitation and military conquest of native populations concurrent with the growing economic influence and spread of European culture and technology.

Concept

The concept of discovery has been scrutinized, critically highlighting the history of the core term of this periodization. The term "age of discovery" has been in the historical literature and still commonly used. J. H. Parry, calling the period alternatively the Age of Reconnaissance, argues that not only was the era one of European explorations to regions heretofore unknown to them but that it also produced the expansion of geographical knowledge and empirical science. "It saw also the first major victories of empirical inquiry over authority, the beginnings of that close association of science, technology, and everyday work which is an essential characteristic of the modern western world." Anthony Pagden draws on the work of Edmundo O'Gorman for the statement that "For all Europeans, the events of October 1492 constituted a 'discovery'. Something of which they had no prior knowledge had suddenly presented itself to their gaze." O'Gorman argues further that the physical and geographical encounter with new territories was less important than the Europeans’ effort to integrate this new knowledge into their worldview, what he calls "the invention of America". Pagden examines the origins of the terms "discovery" and "invention". In English, "discovery" and its forms in the romance languages derive from "''disco-operio'', meaning to uncover, to reveal, to expose to the gaze” with the implicit idea that what was revealed existed previously. Few Europeans during the period of explorations used the term "invention" for the European encounters, with the notable exception of Martin Waldseemüller, whose map first used the term "America".

A central legal concept of the Discovery Doctrine, expounded by the United States Supreme Court in 1823, draws on assertions of European powers' right to claim land during their explorations. The concept of "discovery" been used to enforce colonial claiming and the age of discovery, but has been also vocally challenged by indigenous peoples and researchers.Frichner, Tonya Gonnella. (2010)
“Preliminary Study of the Impact on Indigenous Peoples of the International Legal Construct Known as the Doctrine of Discovery.”
E/C.19/2010/13. Presented at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Ninth Session, United Nations Economic and Social Council, New York, 27 Apr 2010. Many indigenous peoples have fundamentally challenged the concept and colonial claiming of "discovery" over their lands and people as forced and negating indigenous presence.

The period alternatively called the ''Age of Exploration'', has also been scrutinized through reflections on the understanding and use of exploration. Its understanding and use, like science more generally, has been discussed as being framed and used for colonial ventures, discrimination and exploitation, by combining it with concepts such as the "frontier" (as in frontierism) and manifest destiny, up to the contemporary age of space exploration.

Alternatively, the term and concept of contact, as in first contact, has been used to shed a more nuanced and reciprocal light on the age of discovery and colonialism, using the alternative names of Age of Contact or Contact Period, discussing it as an "unfinished, diverse project".

Overview

The Portuguese began systematically exploring the Atlantic coast of Africa in 1418, under the sponsorship of Infante Dom Henrique ( Prince Henry). In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias reached the Indian Ocean by this route.

In 1492, the Catholic Monarchs of Castile and Aragon funded Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus's plan to sail west to reach the Indies by crossing the Atlantic. Columbus encountered a continent uncharted by most Europeans (though it had begun to be explored and was temporarily colonized by the Norse starting some 500 years earlier). Later, it was called America after Amerigo Vespucci, a trader working for Portugal. Portugal quickly claimed those lands under the terms of the Treaty of Alcáçovas but Castile was able to persuade the Pope, who was himself a Castilian, to issue four papal bulls to divide the world into two regions of exploration, where each kingdom had exclusive rights to claim newly discovered lands. These were modified by the Treaty of Tordesillas, ratified by Pope Julius II.

In 1498, a Portuguese expedition commanded by Vasco da Gama reached India by sailing around Africa, opening up direct trade with Asia. While other exploratory fleets were sent from Portugal to northern North America, in the following years Portuguese India Armadas also extended this Eastern oceanic route, touching sometimes South America and by this way opening a circuit from the New World to Asia (starting in 1500, under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral), and explored islands in the South Atlantic and Southern Indian Oceans. Soon, the Portuguese sailed further eastward, to the valuable Spice Islands in 1512, landing in China one year later. Japan was reached by the Portuguese only in 1543. In 1513, Spanish Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached the "other sea" from the New World. Thus, Europe first received news of the eastern and western Pacific within a one-year span around 1512. East and west exploration overlapped in 1522, when a Castilian (Spanish) expedition, led by Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and, after his death in the Maluku islands, by Spanish Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, sailing westward, completed the first circumnavigation of the world, while Spanish ''conquistadors'' explored the interior of the Americas, and later, some of the South Pacific islands. The main objective of this voyage was to disrupt Portuguese trade in the East.

Since 1495, the French, the English, and the Dutch entered the race of exploration after learning of these exploits, defying the Iberian monopoly on maritime trade by searching for new routes, first to the western coasts of North and South America, through the first English and French expeditions (starting with the first expedition of John Cabot in 1497 to the north, in the service of England, followed by the French expeditions to South America and later to North America), and into the Pacific Ocean around South America, but eventually by following the Portuguese around Africa into the Indian Ocean; discovering Australia in 1606, New Zealand in 1642, and Hawaii in 1778. Meanwhile, from the 1580s to the 1640s, Russians explored and conquered almost the whole of Siberia and Alaska in the 1730s.

Background

Rise of European trade

After the fall of Rome largely severed the connection between Europe and lands further east, Christian Europe was largely a backwater compared to the Arab world, which quickly conquered and incorporated large territories in the Middle East and North Africa. The Christian crusades to retake the Holy Land from the Muslims was not a military success, but it did bring Europe into contact with the Middle East and the valuable goods manufactured or traded there. From the 12th century, the European economy was transformed by the interconnecting of river and sea trade routes, leading Europe to create trading networks.

Before the 12th century, a major obstacle to trade east of the Strait of Gibraltar, which divided the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean, was Muslim control of great swaths of territory, including the Iberian peninsula and the trade monopolies of Christian city-states on the Italian peninsula, especially Venice and Genoa. Economic growth of Iberia followed the Christian reconquest of Al-Andalus in what is now southern Spain and the Siege of Lisbon (1147 AD), in Portugal. The decline of Fatimid Caliphate naval strength that started before the First Crusade helped the maritime Italian states, mainly Venice, Genoa and Pisa, dominate trade in the eastern Mediterranean, with merchants there becoming wealthy and politically influential. Further changing the mercantile situation in the Eastern Mediterranean was the waning of Christian Byzantine naval power following the death of Emperor Manuel I Komnenos in 1180, whose dynasty had made several notable treaties and concessions with Italian traders, permitting the use of Byzantine Christian ports. The Norman Conquest of England in the late 11th century allowed for peaceful trade on the North Sea. The Hanseatic League, a confederation of merchant guilds and their towns in northern Germany along the North Sea and Baltic Sea, was instrumental in commercial development of the region. In the 12th century, the region of Flanders, Hainault and Brabant produced the finest quality textiles in northern Europe, which encouraged merchants from Genoa and Venice to sail there directly from the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar and up the Atlantic coast. Nicolòzzo Spinola made the first recorded direct voyage from Genoa to Flanders in 1277.

Technology: Ship design and the compass

Technological advancements that were important to the Age of Exploration were the adoption of the magnetic compass and advances in ship design.

The compass was an addition to the ancient method of navigation based on sightings of the sun and stars. The compass had been used for navigation in China by the 11th century and was adopted by the Arab traders in the Indian Ocean. The compass spread to Europe by the late 12th or early 13th century. A companion to the PBS Series ''The Genius That Was China''. Use of the compass for navigation in the Indian Ocean was first mentioned in 1232. The first mention of use of the compass in Europe was in 1180. The Europeans used a "dry" compass, with a needle on a pivot. The compass card was also a European invention.

The Javanese built ocean going merchant ships called '' po'' since at least the 1st century AD. It was over 50 m in length and had a freeboard of 5.2–7.8 m. The ''po'' was capable of carrying 700 people together with more than 10,000 ''hú'' (斛) of cargo (250–1000 tons according to various interpretations). They are built with multiple planks to resist storms, and had 4 sails plus a bowsprit sail.

Ships grew in size, required smaller crews and were able to sail longer distances without stopping. This led to significant lower long-distance shipping costs by the 14th century. Cogs remained popular for trade because of their low cost. Galleys were also used in trade.

Early geographical knowledge and maps

The '' Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'', a document dating from 40 to 60 AD, describes a newly discovered route through the Red Sea to India, with descriptions of the markets in towns around Red Sea, Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, including along the eastern coast of Africa, which states "for beyond these places the unexplored ocean curves around toward the west, and running along by the regions to the south of Aethiopia and Libya and Africa, it mingles with the western sea (possible reference to the Atlantic Ocean)". European medieval knowledge about Asia beyond the reach of the Byzantine Empire was sourced in partial reports, often obscured by legends, dating back from the time of the conquests of Alexander the Great and his successors.
Another source was the Radhanite Jewish trade networks of merchants established as go-betweens between Europe and the Muslim world during the time of the Crusader states.

In 1154, the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi created a description of the world and a world map, the Tabula Rogeriana, at the court of King Roger II of Sicily,Houben, 2002, pp. 102–04.Harley & Woodward, 1992, pp. 156–61. but still Africa was only partially known to either Christians, Genoese and Venetians, or the Arab seamen, and its southern extent unknown. There were reports of great African Sahara