Discovering Our Past: Medieval and Early Modern Times

Chapter 10: The Age of Exploration

Chapter Overview

Innovations like the astrolabe, compass, and the caravel made exploration in the 1400s and 1500s possible. Strong kingdoms, like Portugal, Spain, France, and England, sought water routes to Asia and attempted to find them through exploration. Portuguese explorers searched for water routes by way of southern Africa, while Christopher Columbus looked west across the Atlantic Ocean. With three ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, Columbus landed in America, but he believed he was in Asia and never realized that he had discovered a continent unknown to Europeans. After Columbus, Spanish, French and English explorers continued exploration across the Atlantic Ocean.

In the 1500s, advanced civilizations, like the Aztec and Inca Empires, designed complex farming methods, built irrigation systems, and drained swamps. Portuguese and Spanish explorers conquered these powerful empires and established New Spain and New Castile. Other Europeans watched the two empires grow and developed the idea of mercantilism. By exporting more goods than they imported, countries believed they could become more powerful and wealthy. Trade and the rise of joint-stock companies helped build early capitalist societies.

The explorations of Christopher Columbus set into motion the exchange of people, goods, technology, ideas, and diseases. Corn and potatoes from North America were sent to Europe, and in turn, European and Asian grains like wheat, oats, barley, rye, and rice appeared in North America. The exchange of food products abroad helped increase the world's food supply and also the world's population. Not all changes were positive, however. Europeans brought new diseases to the Americas, and some new species of plants and animals hurt the local environment.

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