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The Consequences of the Age of Exploration Essay

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The Age of Discovery, also known by others as the “Age of Exploration”, was a period starting in the 15th century, lasting for over 200 years, and was conceived by the pioneer Portuguese and Spanish explorers in their search for precious metals and very costly spices, such as saffron and cardamom. Although the expansion of knowledge about the world was a good intention, it ultimately turned out be have extremely severe consequences, which its effects are still being suffered to this day! First of all, “Why were there consequences?”. During the Age of Exploration, there were corrupt governments and inside them, corrupt officials. These greedy, nefarious bureaucrats were responsible for the driving force behind searching not only for …show more content…

Why were spices used and valued so highly? First recorded around 1200 B.C. with the Egyptians, spices were used for a variety of purposes. The Romans and the Jews used spices for burial, which helped preserve corpses. Others, like the early Anglo-Saxons in modern Great Britain, used them to cover the bad taste of spoiled food. With this extreme demand, the number of spice traders and sailors grew exponentially over time. Beginning in 1419, Prince Henry of Portugal, also known as “The Navigator”, began financing sailors, mapmakers, and shipbuilders that were devoted to finding new lands. These men were from different nationalities, ranging from Italy, Arabia, and Germany. Their primary focus was to sail around Africa, and land in India. Although at first they failed to go to India, they were successful in sailing down the west African coast, which was the beginning for one of the worse trades in the history of mankind, which is slavery. In 1444, the first 200 slaves from Africa were shipped to Portugal. Later, in 1488, Portuguese captain Bartholemeu Dias sailed around Africa, passing by the Cape of Good Hope. One decade later, Vasco de Gama went farther than Dias and came back to Portugal loaded with spices from the East. Then the Spanish came along. Unlike Portugal, that based its empire off of naval capabilities, the Spanish based theirs off conquest and colonization. There were many Spanish conquistadors, but the most famous of them all is Christopher

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