European Exploration in the Americas in two minutes
- Portugal led early exploration: in the 1400s Prince Henry the Navigator paid for voyages down West Africa's coast, seeking a sea route to Asia's spices, allies against Muslim rulers, and converts.
- The caravel, compass, and astrolabe made voyages practical, and on Madeira and São Tomé the Portuguese used enslaved Africans to grow sugar, a plantation model later carried to the Americas.
- In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in Spain, and agreed to back Columbus, hoping for Asian riches, an edge over Portugal, and converts to Catholicism.
- Columbus left Spain in August 1492, reached the Bahamas on October 12, took captives, claimed land for Spain, and insisted until his death in 1506 that he had found Asia.
- In 1493 the pope drew a line down the Atlantic, and the Treaty of Tordesillas moved it west in 1494: Spain claimed lands west of it, Portugal lands east, including Brazil.
- Vasco da Gama reached India by sea in 1498; England's John Cabot sailed west in 1497, and France's Jacques Cartier explored the St. Lawrence River in the 1530s.
- On the exam: causation questions ask you to rank economic, religious, political, and technological motives for exploration and connect them to the Columbian Exchange and Spain's empire.
Topic 1.3 key terms
- Motives for exploration
Europeans explored and conquered for new sources of wealth, to compete with rival kingdoms, and to spread Christianity. One voyage usually served all three.
- Caravel, compass and astrolabe
The caravel was a small, fast ship whose triangular lateen sail let it sail closer to the wind. The compass showed direction; the astrolabe measured the sun or a star to find latitude.
- Nation-states
Kingdoms united under strong central rulers, like Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella. Their monarchs needed trade income and the Church's support, so they paid for voyages and claimed new lands.
- Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)
Spain and Portugal's agreement to divide newly claimed lands along a line west of the Cape Verde Islands: Spain to the west, Portugal to the east, which later included Brazil. No Native nation agreed to it.
- Columbian Exchange
The movement of plants, animals, people and diseases between the Americas and Europe, Africa and Asia after 1492. It ran both ways and changed life on both sides of the ocean.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
The Oath
June 12, 1494
On June 12, 1494, off the coast of Cuba, a notary told Columbus's crews the penalty for any ship's boy who broke his oath:
Pérez de Luna · our translation of his recordAdapted
…a hundred lashes, and they would cut out his tongue.
Every man had to swear that Cuba was part of the mainland of Asia, and never say otherwise.
Columbus needed Cuba to be Asia, because he had promised Spain's monarchs a short western route to the spices and gold of the East. He had staked his fortune and his reputation on that promise, and Spain wanted the route to Asia before Portugal found one. Portugal was far ahead, because its ships had been working their way down the coast of Africa for more than half a century.
Christians and Spices
1434–1480s
Key terms: Motives for exploration, Caravel, compass and astrolabe
Pepper grew in India, and on its way to Venice it passed through the hands of many traders, each adding to the price.
Portugal, on the Atlantic edge of Europe, wanted a sea route to Asia that went around all of them.
For decades, Prince Henry of Portugal, later called Henry the Navigator, paid for voyages down the Atlantic coast of Africa.
Prince Henry · reported later by Zurara
“You cannot find a peril so great that the hope of reward will not be greater.”
Henry wanted trade, allies against the Muslim rulers of North Africa, and converts to Christianity. To get home against the wind, his captains sailed their small, fast caravels far out into the Atlantic to catch winds blowing toward Portugal. Pilots steered by the compass, a Chinese invention that reached Europe through Arab merchants, and found their latitude with an astrolabe.
In 1444, Portuguese raiders brought African captives ashore at Lagos, a port in southern Portugal, and Henry took his share.
Henry's chronicler, Gomes Eanes de Zurara, wrote to praise the prince, yet he recorded the families' grief:
Zurara · his words, written later
“…then was it needful to part fathers from sons, husbands from wives, brothers from brothers.”
On Atlantic islands such as Madeira and, later, São Tomé, the Portuguese put enslaved Africans to work growing sugar. Portuguese planters grew rich on that sugar, and Europeans later carried the same plantation system to the Americas.
By the 1480s, printers across Europe were selling maps and travel books. A sailor from Genoa named Christopher Columbus read them closely, and in Lisbon he asked Portugal's king to pay for a voyage west to Asia.
The Short World
1492
Key terms: Nation-states
Portugal's king turned him down, and in Castile, one of the Spanish kingdoms, a panel of scholars doubted him too. They knew the Earth was round, but they said the Indies, as Europeans called Asia, lay much too far west to reach.
Columbus never accepted their objection, and years later, in a letter of 1498, he was still making the same case:
Christopher Columbus
“Aristotle says that the world is small…”
Christopher Columbus
“…and that it is easy to pass from Spain to the Indies.”
In January 1492, Spain's monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, conquered Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in Spain. That April, at their army camp outside the city, they agreed to back Columbus's voyage. They hoped for Asia's riches, an edge over Portugal, and converts to the Catholic faith.
Columbus · journal prologue, Markham
“…they made great concessions to me, and ennobled me…”
He would become Admiral of the Ocean Sea and keep a tenth of any riches he found.
Measure the ocean Columbus expected, then measure the real one. Asia was more than four times as far as he claimed, and two continents that Europeans did not know about were in the way.
Columbus sailed from Spain on August 3, 1492, with three small ships and about ninety men. From the Canary Islands he sailed west for five weeks without sight of land, and when his crews complained, he would not turn back.
In the Way
October 1492 – February 1493
On October 12, 1492, Columbus went ashore on Guanahaní, an island in the Bahamas, and claimed it for Spain. The island was home to the Lucayans, a Taíno people, and they watched the strangers row ashore.
Christopher Columbus
“I… will take hence… six natives for your Highnesses, that they may learn to speak.”
He took several Lucayans captive, so that they would learn Spanish and become his guides and interpreters.
Christopher Columbus
“…with fifty men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them.”
For ten weeks he sailed from island to island, past Cuba to Hispaniola, hunting for gold and for China's emperor.
On Christmas Day 1492, Columbus's flagship ran aground off Hispaniola, the island now shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Guacanagarí, the Taíno ruler of that coast, sent canoes, and his people unloaded the wreck and guarded the cargo. Other Taíno traders offered pieces of gold for little brass hawk's bells, and Columbus wanted more gold.
Through signs, Guacanagarí told Columbus about raiders from other islands, and the admiral fired a small cannon and promised that Spain would destroy them. Guacanagarí had rivals of his own, and well-armed strangers could make him stronger.
Columbus's men built a fort from the wreck's timbers, and he named it La Navidad and left part of the crew to search for gold. It was the first Spanish settlement in the Americas.
In February 1493, on the way home, Columbus wrote to Luis de Santángel, a royal official who had helped pay for the voyage.
Columbus · letter to Santángel, 1493
“…they are guileless, and so liberal of all they have that no one would believe it who had not seen it…”
In the same letter, he promised the monarchs gold, spices and cotton, and one more cargo:
Christopher Columbus
“…slaves, as many of these idolators as their Highnesses shall command to be shipped.”
A Line Down the Atlantic
1493–1498
Key terms: Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), Columbian Exchange
Storms forced Columbus into Lisbon on the way home, and Portugal's King João II claimed the new islands for Portugal. Spain asked the pope, head of the Catholic Church, to back its claim, and in 1493 he drew a line down the Atlantic. João wanted more ocean, so in 1494 the two kingdoms moved the line farther west in the Treaty of Tordesillas.
Spain claimed the lands west of the line and Portugal those to the east, which later gave Portugal its claim to Brazil. Neither crown asked the millions of people who already lived on those lands.
Columbus had already sailed again before the treaty, in September 1493, with seventeen ships, more than a thousand men, and horses. In the Canary Islands, the fleet loaded calves, goats, sheep, pigs, chickens and seeds. This time the Spanish came to stay, and their ships began what historians call the Columbian Exchange.
When the fleet reached Hispaniola that November, it found La Navidad burned and every man left there dead.
The colonists brought their horses ashore on Hispaniola, the first horses in the Americas in more than ten thousand years. Their pigs and cattle multiplied fast, and the sugar cane they planted had taken root by January 1494.
In May 1498, Vasco da Gama sailed around Africa to Calicut, in India, and sent a convict ashore, where two North African merchants met him.
A merchant from Tunis · journal-reported speech
“May the Devil take thee! What brought you hither?”
A Portuguese convict sent ashore · reported answer
“We came in search of Christians and of spices.”
Portugal now had its sea road to India, while Columbus insisted until his death in 1506 that he had reached Asia.