The Age of European Exploration Essay

1. There are a few reasons why the European Exploration expands dramatically in the 15th century. First, many European countries at that time have got plenty of food or resources, and due to the Mediterranean trade and so on, many Europeans got enough wealth from that, and the technology like compass was available. More importantly, due to the Black Death which killed about a third of the European population, the remaining population started to take greater risks and they want more wealth from Asia and Africa, some counties may focus on the state wealth, others may have individuals who focus more on the individual wealth.

Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, European exploration and expansion thrived. Portugal led the way in this movement of exploration with their development of efficiently built ships known as caravels, seafaring devices such as compasses and astrolabes, and cutting-edge naval academies. Various European countries, including Spain, England, France, etc., followed Portugal’s example by utilizing their progressive naval technology. These technological advancements led to the crossing of oceans and eventually the circumnavigation of the world. These Portuguese sailing techniques were implemented by explorers such as Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Hernando Cortes, Francisco Pizarro, and Bernal Castillo allowing them to travel by sea to places such as Africa, East Asia, the Caribbean, and the Americas. These nations and explorers were persuaded to put in the time and effort to complete these complex expeditions by three essential motivations. Financial gain, political dignity, and religious expansion were fundamental motivators for the European Age of Exploration.

DBQ: Age of European Exploration Imagine having everything taken from you because a couple of guys want the land you own. During the Age of Exploration, Europeans were trying to find land and other treasures when they came across Native Americans. However, this was not good for the Native Americans; it was actually very destructive. These Native Americans suffered great hardships, after coming into contact with the Europeans. Some hardships were an unfair fight between these two cultures, their population began to decrease, and they didn’t have the freedom to worship their own religion.

Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and his companions, Andres Dorantes, Alonzo del Castillo Maldonado, and Estevan were the sole survivors of a four hundred men expedition. The group of them went about the friendly Indian tribes preforming miracles of healing, with the power of Christianity. At one time five sick persons were brought into the camp, and the Indians insisted that Castillo should cure them. At sunset he pronounced a blessing over the sick, and all the Christians united in a prayer to God, asking him to restore the sick to health, and on the following morning there was not a sick person among them. De Vaca and his companions reached the Pacific coast where the Indians, showed signs of civilization, living in houses covered with straw, wearing cotton clothes and dressed skins, with belts and ornaments of stone, and cultivating their fields, but had been driven therefrom by the brutal Spanish soldiery and had taken refuge in the mountains, de Vaca and his comrades, being regarded as emissaries from the Almighty, exercised such power over these untutored savages that, at their bidding, the Indians returned to their deserted habitations, and began again to cultivate their fields, the assurance being given them by de Vaca and his companions that henceforth they would

Christopher Columbus sailed west to find a new trade route to the Far East but

Columbus made a measly three more voyages to and from the new world by his death in 1506. There was never any doubt in Columbus’s mind that he didn’t find the Indies all the way up until he died. In 1493 Spain and Portugal were almost strangling each other over the new world so Pope Alexander VI did something about it. A line of Demarcation was drawn, however; due to the ill-informed pope, Spain received a huge more amount of the new world than Portugal which later ended in

Throughout the European age of exploration, all of Europe clamored for a piece of the spice trade, using dubious and often brutal tactics to establish a foothold in India and Southeast Asia. Spain, Portugal, England and the Dutch competed with each other to establish dominance in the region. As European outposts began to form a ring around the Indian Ocean, European countries started to acquire enormous wealth that helped to fuel the colonization of any territory deemed suitable for settlement. With direct European access to Asian goods, primarily spices, these resources became less of luxury items and more of necessities, thus requiring more trade and

The Spanish were the first of the European countries to make it to the New World. The Spanish were mainly focused on gaining land and discovering new lands. Christopher Columbus was a Portuguese sailor that went to Spain’s most powerful regional rulers, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, to propose his idea of westward voyage. Spain agreed to the voyage and collected ninety men and three ships. Believing that he had reached China, he returned to Spain and brought

After these events he went on to a more peaceful void of ventures. He made three voyages to find the North-West Passage, which was made possible by Elizabeth and other city financiers. In the first of these three journeys which was in 1576 he found what is now called

The Commercial Revolution changed Europe by changing the way people did business in the 1200s. On page 33 in CTF, the second paragraph states “During the Commercial Revolution, however, merchants and craftspeople became more aggressive about making a profit.” Many Landlords wanted farmers to grow crops to be sold on their rented land. Cities grew rich from specific things such as dying cloth in Florence and glassmaking in Venice. They also brought rare goods from far away making many cities have rich trading centers. Not everybody could afford a business because people were too obsessed with making money. Instead, they created joint-stock companies just in case their business didn’t work out as planned. People opened banks to earn capital from interest such as the Medici family. Europe reached a high point where many people were wealthy and gained more power changing rising Europe’s economy and power causing many monopolies. There was also great growth in the merchant's class and towns/urban centers (Page 33, CTF). The Commercial Revolution was greatly based off trade (CTF, PG. 35, Paragraph 3-6) and many things were traveled via the Silk Road. When trading with other places, people became interested in where these things were from so the explored and looked for these places. Another reason for people exploring was that they wanted to spread Christianity.

After Columbus, more expeditions followed. In 1513 Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and discovered the Pacific Ocean and Juan Ponce de León explored the coasts of Florida. Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition sailed around the tip of South America, across the Pacific to the Philippines, through the Indian Ocean, and back to Europe around the southern tip of Africa between 1519 and

The voyages that Columbus took gave Europe a new outlook on how the world was and how they fit in the new world. It gave Europe the idea to explore more lands. Portugal and Spain wanted to claim these lands for themselves. A decree was made that created the Line of Demarcation, which is an imaginary line that divided the ocean which Spain could claim the land west of the line. Portugal did not like this, they thought it was unfair. Then they had a Treaty of Tordesillas, which moved the line another 800 miles to the west.

Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean he was born in Italy thereafter, became a sailor in Portugal who had a passion for sailing. As he got older, he became a captain who desired to travel around the world with a map he come across with only continents parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia. There were plenty of European traders that wanted to sail west from the other side of the Ocean they thought they would find treasure valuable items spices, jewels and gold to trade. His plan was to sail west to China calculating his journey from Spain will take him approximately 21 days he underestimates his distance.

How did the European Age of exploration contribute on Europe's rebirth? The age of exploration brought Europe's golden age which was also known as the renaissance. The renaissance helped reshape the way europe was before. The renaissance was the way that europe was able to get back up from the isolation they were facing (dark age). Europe was facing a dark age with the isolation from the silk road because people needed resources and an economy.

European explorers first landed on the shores of what would later become North America more than 500 years ago. Not long after the first explorers had entered the "New World" they found out that they were not alone on this new frontier. Their neighbors in this new land were the Native Americans who had been there for centuries, virtually unaware of life outside the continent. Thus began an inconsistent and often times unstable relationship between the European settlers and the North American Indians. Two nations who had particularly interesting relationships with the Native Americans were the British and the French, both of whom took different approaches to their relations with the Indians economically as well