20 The voyages of discovery

“Discovery” is a highly relative, Eurocentric term in the context of the history of exploration. The lands that the likes of Vasco da Gama, Columbus and Cabot “discovered” were already inhabited by other peoples—it was just that Europeans had not been there before. Nevertheless, these “discoveries” were to have profound consequences for both the discoverers and the discovered, and for the world as a whole.

The great exploratory voyages embarked upon by European navigators from the mid-15th century were by no means unprecedented. For thousands of years those extraordinary seafarers the Polynesians had been sailing across thousands of miles of the Pacific Ocean in their outrigger canoes, navigating by the stars to colonize far-flung islands. Around the end of the 9th century AD, the Vikings had established a colony in Greenland, and in 1000 Leif Eriksson established a short-lived settlement called Vinland somewhere in northeast North America—possibly on Newfoundland, or in Maine. Around the same time, Arab merchants had established trading settlements down the east coast of Africa, and at the beginning of the 15th century the Chinese admiral Zheng He had also reached East Africa, and also Arabia, India and the East Indies. But none of these voyages of discovery had quite the enduring impact of the European “discovery” of the Americas and the opening up of new sea routes to Asia and beyond.

Round the Cape It was not in furtherance of scientific knowledge that the early European voyages of discovery were undertaken. The principal motive was commercial—in particular, a desire to get a share in the extremely valuable spice trade. Spices originated in the Indies (as southern and southeastern Asia was known), and came to Europe via long and difficult land routes across central Asia and the Middle East. The break-up of the Mongol empire and the expansion of the Ottomans in the 14th century made these routes more problematic. The small but powerful maritime republic of Venice controlled the trade from the Near East across the Mediterranean to Europe, and this motivated its trading rivals to seek alternative routes.

The kingdom of Portugal, situated on the Atlantic, took the lead, largely owing to the encouragement of Henry the Navigator (1394–1460), younger son of King John I. Prince Henry established a school of navigation, encouraged the colonization of Madeira and the Azores, and sponsored a series of exploratory voyages down the west coast of Africa, where a number of trading posts were established. All this was made possible by the development of sailing vessels more suited to the open ocean than the oar-powered Mediterranean galley, and by new navigational aids, such as the magnetic compass (first used by the Chinese, and then by the Arabs), the quadrant and the astrolabe.

Prince Henry’s patronage of explorers was continued after his death by King John II of Portugal. Under the latter’s auspices, in 1488 Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, demonstrating that a new way to the East lay open. In 1498 another Portuguese navigator, Vasco da Gama, sailed round the Cape, then continued up the east coast of Africa and across the open ocean to Calicut, in southwest India. He returned with a small quantity of spices.

“Your highness … will soon convert to our holy faith a multitude of people, acquiring large dominions and great riches for Spain. Because without doubt there is in these lands a very great quantity of gold.”

Christopher Columbus, letter to his patron, King Ferdinand of Spain, October 1492

Others followed in his footsteps, reaching as far as the fabled Spice Islands (the Moluccas) in the East Indies. The charts they made of their complex routes through the dangerous waters of the Malay archipelago became worth more than their weight in gold.

To the New World Christopher Columbus had no idea of the existence of the Americas when he sailed west in 1492. It had long been known that the world was round, but Columbus, thinking the Earth was smaller than it actually is, believed that by sailing west he would reach the Indies much more quickly than by sailing round Africa. In the event, it took his three ships thirty-three days to make landfall on the Bahamas, and such was his conviction that he had reached the Indies that he referred to the inhabitants asIndios.

Columbus was an Italian, but his patrons were Ferdinand and Isabella, king and queen of a newly united Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella were ardent Catholics, and Columbus reported that this “New World” was full of heathens ready for conversion to the true faith—and also full of gold. The Spanish Crown’s claim to the new lands to the west was challenged by Portugal, and by the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, brokered by the pope, the Americas were divided between the two countries, with Portugal gaining Brazil and Spain the rest. The English also took an interest in the New World, and in 1496 King Henry VII sponsored an Italian navigator, John Cabot, who the following year reached northeast North America.

Naming America

By a stroke of fortune, America was not named after Christopher Columbus, but rather after a Florentine merchant adventurer, Amerigo Vespucci, who in 1499 sailed along the northeast coast of South America and discovered the mouth of the Amazon. Columbus has had to content himself with giving his name to a South American republic, a North American river, a number of US cities, a federal district and a Canadian province.

Colonization and domination It was to be another ninety years before the English attempted to establish settlements in North America, but further south the Spanish and Portuguese were quick to take advantage of their technological superiority over the natives. The mighty empires of the Aztecs and the Incas were soon overthrown, their gold and silver looted, and the indigenous people enslaved and forcibly converted. “For these people,” wrote a Jesuit missionary in 1563, “there is no better preaching than by the sword and iron rod.” Millions died from European diseases to which they had no immunity.

The European domination of the world had begun. But there were consequences. As the European powers facing the Atlantic—Spain and Portugal, and then the Netherlands, Britain and France—thrived on the wealth from the new-found lands, the Mediterranean turned into something of a backwater, and the great Italian trading cities of Venice and Genoa went into decline. Not all of the imports from the New World were beneficial, however. The huge amounts of silver brought back to Spain contributed to widespread economic inflation across Europe in the 16th century. Other imports, such as tobacco and syphilis, had a more insidious effect on European well-being, causing the deaths of countless millions over the centuries that followed.

the condensed idea

The voyages of discovery set the scene for European colonization and world domination