Age of Discovery: Exploration
Overview
Context and Background of the Age of Discovery
The Age of Discovery—or Age of Exploration—occurred within the larger context of European expansion during the second half of the Middle Ages. The Age of Discovery continued into the early modern period.
Learning Objectives
Identify the dynamics of trade and political power that led to European exploration of the New World.
Describe the significance of great explorers such as da Gama, Columbus, and Magellan and how their voyages changed Europe’s conception of the globe and of their world.
Understand the impact of the arrival of Europeans on native cultures and how the native rulers in the Americas tried to use the arrival of the Europeans for their own political ends.
Assess the impact of the Columbian Exchange on both the New World and the Old from an environmental, demographic, ecological, social, and economic perspective.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Marco Polo: Venetian merchant and explorer who travelled across Asia during the last third of the thirteenth century, and inspired later explorers, such as Christopher Columbus
Norse Explorers
Norsemen became the first Europeans to strike out westward across the Atlantic Ocean during the ninth century. Norse explorers reached Iceland during the ninth century, Greenland during the tenth century, and North America at the turn of the eleventh century. While they withdrew from North America later in the eleventh century, they foreshadowed the Age of Discovery/Exploration that began in the fourteenth century.
Prelude to the Age of Discovery
A prelude to the Age of Discovery was a series of European land expeditions across Eurasia in the late Middle Ages. These expeditions occurred within the context of late medieval European economic development and growth, along with a budding sense of curiosity about the world fostered by new universities. And at the end of the eleventh century the initiation of the Crusades exposed Europeans to new opportunities for trade from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean across Asia, particularly merchants from the Italian city-states.
European medieval knowledge about Asia came from reports dating back from the time of the conquests of Alexander the Great (~323 BCE). An updated notion of the world was provided in 1154, when Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi created the Tabula Rogeriana at the bequest of King Roger II of Sicily. The resulting manuscript, written in Arabic, is a description of the world, as was known to al-Idrisi. It contained maps showing the Eurasian continent but did not include anything past the northern part of the African continent. It remained the most accurate world map for the next three centuries, but it also demonstrated that the southern extent of Africa was only partially known by European and Arab seamen at that time.
A series of European expeditions crossing Eurasia by land in the late Middle Ages also marked a prelude to the Age of Discovery. Although the Mongols had threatened Europe with pillage and destruction, Mongol states unified much of Eurasia and allowed safe trade routes and communication lines stretching from the Middle East to China by 1206. A series of Europeans took advantage of these in order to explore eastward. Most were Italians, as trade between Europe and the Middle East was controlled mainly by the Maritime republics.
During the Mongol invasions of Syria, Christian embassies were sent as far as Karakorum, from this they gained a greater understanding of the world. The first of these travelers was Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, who journeyed to Mongolia and back from 1241 to 1247. About the same time, Russian prince Yaroslav of Vladimir traveled to the Mongolian capital. His sons later did the same. These expeditions are thought to have had strong political implications, but they did not result in detailed accounts.
Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant, dictated an account of journeys throughout Asia from 1271 to 1295. His travels are recorded in Book of the Marvels of the World, (also known as The Travels of Marco Polo, c. 1300), a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. Marco Polo was not the first European to reach China, but he was the first to leave a detailed chronicle of his experience. The book inspired Christopher Columbus and many other travelers.
The Travels of Marco Polo: Marco Polo traveling, miniature from the book The Travels of Marco Polo (Il milione), originally published during Polo’s lifetime (c. 1254 – January 8, 1324), but frequently reprinted and translated.
From the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries others explored portions of Africa and Eurasia in personal travels, leaving accounts in the process. During the thirteenth century André de Longjumeau of France and Flemish William of Rubruck reached Mongol-controlled China through Central Asia. From 1325 to 1354, Ibn Battuta—a Moroccan scholar from Tangier—journeyed extensively through Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, recording his impressions in his account. Between 1405 and 1421, Ma Huan, a Muslim voyager and translator, reported on a series of long-range tributary missions sponsored by the Yongle Emperor of Ming China; this provided knowledge of Arabia, East Africa, India, Maritime Southeast Asia, and Thailand. In 1439, Niccolò de’ Conti published an account of his travels to India and Southeast Asia. And Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin of Tver travelled to India from 1466 to 1472.
The Age of Discovery
The geographical exploration of the late Middle Ages eventually led to what today is known as the Age of Discovery: a loosely defined European historical period that took place from the 15th century to the 18th century, during which extensive overseas exploration emerged as a powerful factor in European culture and globalization.
Global exploration started in 1498 with the successful Portuguese travels to the Atlantic archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores, the coast of Africa, and the sea route to India, as well as between 1492 and 1502 with the trans-Atlantic Voyages of Christopher Columbus and the first circumnavigation of the globe between 1519 and 1522. These discoveries led to numerous naval expeditions across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans, as well as land expeditions in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia that continued into the late 19th century. This period ends with the exploration of the polar regions in the 20th century. Many lands previously unknown to Europeans were discovered during this period, though most were already inhabited. From the perspective of non-Europeans, the period was not one of discovery, but one of invasion.
Portuguese Exploration
During the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese explorers were at the forefront of European overseas exploration, which led them to reach India, establish multiple trading posts in Asia and Africa, and settle what would become Brazil. As a result, Portugal created one of the most powerful empires.
Portuguese sailors were at the vanguard of European overseas exploration, discovering and mapping the coasts of Africa, Asia, and Brazil. As early as 1317, King Denis made an agreement with Genoese merchant-sailor Manuel Pessanha (Pesagno), appointing him first Admiral with trade privileges for his homeland in return for twenty manned warships. With this agreement, Portugal hoped to defend against Muslim pirate raids. This created the basis for the Portuguese Navy and the establishment of a Genoese merchant community in Portugal.
In the second half of the 14th century, outbreaks of bubonic plague led to severe depopulation in Portugal. During this time, the economy was extremely localized in a few towns, unemployment rose, and migration led to agricultural land abandonment. Only the sea offered alternatives, with most people settling in fishing and trading in coastal areas. Between 1325 and 1357, Afonso IV of Portugal granted public funding to raise a proper commercial fleet, and he ordered the first maritime explorations under the command of admiral Pessanha, with the help of Genoese. In 1341, the Canary Islands, already known to Genoese, were officially explored under the patronage of the Portuguese king. In 1344, Castile disputed Portugal’s efforts, further propelling the Portuguese navy efforts.
Learning Objectives
Identify the dynamics of trade and political power that led to European exploration of the New World.
Describe the significance of great explorers such as da Gama, Columbus, and Magellan and how their voyages changed Europe’s conception of the globe and of their world.
Understand the impact of the arrival of Europeans on native cultures and how the native rulers in the Americas tried to use the arrival of the Europeans for their own political ends.
Assess the impact of the Columbian Exchange on both the New World and the Old from an environmental, demographic, ecological, social, and economic perspective.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Prince Henry the Navigator: royal sponsor of Portuguese voyages of exploration down the west African coast during the first half of the fifteenth century
Vasco da Gama: first European explorer to reach India by sailing around Africa
spice trade - lucrative trade in exotic, “eastern” spices, such as nutmeg
Pedro Alvares Cabral - Portuguese mariner who conducted the first significant European exploration of the northeastern coast of South America in 1500
Ferdinand Magellan - Portuguese mariner who led the first European expedition to sail around the world, 1519-22
Atlantic Exploration
In 1415, the city of Ceuta (north coast of Africa) was occupied by the Portuguese aiming to control navigation of the African coast. Young Prince Henry the Navigator was there and became aware of profit possibilities in the Saharan trade routes. He invested in sponsoring voyages down the coast of Mauritania, which led to his gathering a group of merchants, shipowners, stakeholders, and participants interested in the sea lanes.
Within two decades of exploration, Portuguese ships bypassed the Sahara. At the time, Europeans did not know what lay beyond Cape Bojador on the African coast. In 1419, two of Henry’s captains—João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira—were driven by a storm to Madeira, an uninhabited island off the coast of Africa that had probably been known to Europeans since the 14th century. In 1420, Zarco and Teixeira returned with Bartolomeu Perestrelo and began Portuguese settlement of the islands. A Portuguese attempt to capture Grand Canary, one of the nearby Canary Islands that had been partially settled by Spaniards in 1402, was unsuccessful and met with protests from Castile. Around the same time, the Portuguese began to explore the North African coast. Diogo Silves reached the Azores islands of Santa Maria in 1427, and in the following years, Portugal discovered and settled the rest of the Azores.
In 1443, Prince Pedro, Henry’s brother, granted him the monopoly of navigation, war, and trade in the lands south of Cape Bojador. This monopoly would later be enforced by two Papal bulls (1452 and 1455), giving Portugal the trade monopoly for the newly appropriated territories and laying the foundations for the Portuguese empire. Until his death in 1460, Henry the Navigator took the lead role in encouraging Portuguese maritime exploration.
India and Brazil
The long-standing Portuguese goal of finding a sea route to Asia was finally achieved in a ground-breaking voyage commanded by Vasco da Gama. His squadron left Portugal in 1497, rounded the Cape and continued along the coast of East Africa. Then, a local pilot was brought on board who guided them across the Indian Ocean. In May 1498, da Gama reached Calicut in western India. Reaching the legendary Indian spice routes unopposed helped the Portuguese improve their economy that, until Gama, was mainly based on trades along Northern and coastal West Africa. These Indian spices were at first mostly pepper and cinnamon, but soon included other products new to Europe. This led to a commercial monopoly for several decades.
Gama’s voyage was significant and paved the way for the Portuguese to establish a long-lasting colonial empire in Asia. The route meant that the entire voyage would be made by sea and that the Portuguese would not need to cross the highly disputed Mediterranean, nor the dangerous Arabian Peninsula.
The second voyage to India was dispatched in 1500 under Pedro Alvares Cabral. While following the same south-westerly route as Gama across the Atlantic Ocean, Cabral made landfall on the Brazilian coast. This was probably an accident, but it has been speculated that the Portuguese had already known of Brazil’s existence. Cabral recommended to the Portuguese king that the land be settled, and two follow-up voyages were sent in 1501 and 1503. The land was found to be abundant in pau-brasil, or brazilwood, from which it later inherited its name, but the failure to find gold or silver in Brazil meant the Portuguese efforts were concentrated on India.
Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia Explorations
The aim of Portugal in the Indian Ocean was to ensure the monopoly of the spice trade. Taking advantage of the rivalries that pitted Hindus against Muslims, the Portuguese established several forts and trading posts between 1500 and 1510. After the victorious sea Battle of Diu, Turks and Egyptians withdrew their navies from India, which allowed for Portuguese trade dominance for almost a century and greatly contributed to the growth of the Portuguese Empire. It also marked the beginning of the European colonial dominance in Asia. A second Battle of Diu in 1538 ended Ottoman ambitions in India and confirmed Portuguese hegemony in the Indian Ocean.
In 1511, the governor of Portuguese India Afonso de Albuquerque sailed to Malacca in Malaysia, the most important eastern point in the trade network. Malacca is where Malay traders met with Gujarati, Chinese, Japanese, Javan, Bengali, Persian, and Arabic traders. Upon Albuquerque’s capture, the port of Malacca became the strategic base for Portuguese trade expansion with China and Southeast Asia. Eventually, the Portuguese Empire expanded into the Persian Gulf as Portugal contested control of the spice trade with the Ottoman Empire. In a shifting series of alliances, the Portuguese dominated much of the southern Persian Gulf for the next hundred years.
From 1519 to 1522 Ferdinand Magellan—a Portuguese explorer funded by the Spanish Crown—organized the Castilian (Spanish) expedition to the East Indies. Selected by King Charles I of Spain to search for a westward route to the Maluku Islands—the “Spice Islands” or today’s Indonesia, Magellan headed south through the Atlantic Ocean to Patagonia, passing through the Strait of Magellan into a body of water he named the “peaceful sea” (the modern Pacific Ocean). Despite a series of storms and mutinies, the expedition reached the Spice Islands in 1521; they later returned home via the Indian Ocean to complete the first circuit of the globe.
After Magellan’s expedition, Spain, under Charles V, sent an expedition to colonize the Maluku islands in 1525. With this move by Spain, conflict with the Portuguese was inevitable. When García Jofre de Loaísa reached the islands it started nearly a decade of skirmishes. A peace accord was reached in 1529 when the Treaty of Zaragoza attributed the Maluku to Portugal and the Philippines to Spain.
How Portugal became the first European imperial sea power: Pick your adjective for the monster wave McNamara rode in January just off the Portuguese coast near Nazare. The Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, came to Nazare, too, to pray before he set out in 1497—and again after a successful return from his voyage to find a sea route to India with its rich spice trade. He did what Christopher Columbus had tried to do but failed. Casimiro said that as a country, Portugal turns to the sea: “Our backs are turned to the land, and we are always looking at the sea. We have that kind of impulse to see what is after that.” Even if it’s frightening? “Yeah.” Portugal is a country where the sea is and always has been regarded as a living being—to be stared down, confronted. In the process of becoming an imperial sea power Portugal established trading ports at far-flung locations like Goa, Ormuz, Malacca, Kochi, the Maluku Islands, Macau, and Nagasaki. Guarding its trade from both European and Asian competitors, it dominated not only the trade between Asia and Europe, but also much of the trade between different regions of Asia, such as India, Indonesia, China, and Japan. Jesuit missionaries followed the Portuguese to spread Roman Catholic Christianity to Asia, with mixed success.
Spanish Exploration
The voyages of Christopher Columbus initiated the European exploration and colonization of the American continents that eventually turned Spain into the most powerful European empire.
While Portugal led European explorations of non-European territories, its Iberian rival Castile embarked upon its own mission to create an overseas empire. Castile began to establish its rule over the Canary Islands, located off the West African coast, in 1402; however, Castile became distracted from exploration through most of the 15th century because of internal Iberian politics and the repelling of Islamic invasion and raid attempts. Only late in the century, following the unification of the crowns of Castile and Aragon and the completion of the reconquista, did an emerging modern Spain become fully committed to the search for new trade routes overseas. In 1492, the joint rulers, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile, conquered the Moorish kingdom of Granada, which had been providing Castile with African goods through tribute. Then, they decided to fund Christopher Columbus’s expedition. King John II of Portugal rejected Columbus’s plan two times, in 1485 and 1488, before the Spanish rulers later financed it in the hopes of reaching “the Indies” (east and south Asia) by traveling west and bypassing Portugal’s monopoly on west African sea routes.
Learning Objectives
Identify the dynamics of trade and political power that led to European exploration of the New World.
Describe the significance of great explorers such as da Gama, Columbus, and Magellan and how their voyages changed Europe’s conception of the globe and of their world.
Understand the impact of the arrival of Europeans on native cultures and how the native rulers in the Americas tried to use the arrival of the Europeans for their own political ends.
Assess the impact of the Columbian Exchange on both the New World and the Old from an environmental, demographic, ecological, social, and economic perspective.
Key Terms / Key Concepts
Christopher Columbus: Genoese explorer credited with the discovery of the Americas
Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile - Spanish monarchs who sponsored Columbus' 1492 expedition
Treaty of Tordesillas:1494 treaty that divided those parts of the world not yet explored purposefully by Europeans between Portugal and Spain
Ferdinand Magellan - Portuguese mariner who led the first European expedition to sail around the world, 1519-22
Columbus’s Voyages
On the evening of August 3, 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera with three ships: Santa María, Pinta (the Painted) and Santa Clara. Columbus first sailed to the Canary Islands, where he restocked for what turned out to be a five-week voyage across the ocean, crossing a section of the Atlantic that became known as the Sargasso Sea. Land was sighted on October 12, 1492. And Columbus, thinking he found the “West Indies,” called the island (now The Bahamas) San Salvador. He also explored the northeast coast of Cuba and the northern coast of Hispaniola. Columbus left 39 men behind and founded the settlement of La Navidad in what is now Haiti.
Following the first American voyage, Columbus made three more. During his second voyage in 1493, he enslaved 560 native Americans, despite the Queen’s explicit opposition to the idea. The transport of these enslaved natives to Spain resulted in the death and disease of hundreds of the captives. In 1498, Columbus left port again with a fleet of six ships. The object of this third voyage was to verify the existence of a continent that King John II of Portugal claimed was located to the southwest of the Cape Verde Islands. He explored the Gulf of Paria, which separates Trinidad from mainland Venezuela, and then the mainland of South America. Columbus described these new lands as belonging to a previously unknown new continent, but he pictured them hanging from China. Finally, the fourth voyage left Spain in 1502, nominally in search of a westward passage to the Indian Ocean. Columbus spent two months exploring the coasts of the modern nations of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, before arriving in Almirante Bay, Panama. After his ships sustained serious damage in a storm off the coast of present-day Cuba, Columbus and his men remained stranded on Jamaica for a year. Help finally arrived and Columbus and his men arrived back in Castile in November 1504.
The Treaty of Tordesillas
Shortly after Columbus’s arrival from the “West Indies,” a division of influence became necessary to avoid conflict between the Spanish and Portuguese. An agreement was reached in 1494 with the Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided the world between the two powers. In the treaty, the Portuguese received everything outside Europe east of a line that ran 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands (already in control of the Portuguese). This gave Portugal control over Africa, Asia, and eastern South America (Brazil). On the other hand, the Spanish (Castile) received everything west of this line; this included territory that proved to be mostly the western part of the Americas, plus the Pacific Ocean islands and the islands reached by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage—Cuba, and Hispaniola.
Further Explorations of the Americas
After Columbus, the Spanish colonization of the Americas was led by a series of soldier-explorers called conquistadors. The Spanish forces, with the help of significant armament and equestrian advantages, exploited the rivalries between competing indigenous peoples, tribes, and nations. Some of the indigenous tribes were willing to form alliances with the Spanish in order to defeat their more powerful enemies, such as the Aztecs and Incas. Creating these alliances with native tribes is a tactic that would be extensively used by later European colonial powers. The Spanish conquest was also facilitated by the spread of diseases common in Europe but never present in the New World (e.g., smallpox), which reduced the indigenous populations in the Americas. This caused labor shortages for plantations and public works, which led to the colonists initiating the Atlantic slave trade.
One of the most accomplished conquistadors was Hernán Cortés. Cortés led a relatively small Spanish force, but he achieved the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (present day Mexico) in the campaigns of 1519 – 1521. Of equal importance was the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. After years of preliminary exploration and military skirmishes, 168 Spanish soldiers under Francisco Pizarro, along with their native allies, captured the Sapa Inca Atahualpa in the 1532 Battle of Cajamarca. It was the first step in a long campaign that took decades of fighting, but the campaign ended in 1572 with Spanish victory and colonization of the region, which was later referred to as the Viceroyalty of Peru. The conquest of the Inca Empire led to spin-off campaigns into present-day Chile and Colombia, as well as expeditions towards the Amazon Basin.
In 1522 the Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan commanded a Castilian expedition that was the first to circumnavigate the globe. Magellan died while in the Philippines, but the Basque Juan Sebastián Elcano led the expedition to success. This led to Spain’s attempt to enforce their rights in the Moluccan islands, which led to a conflict with the Portuguese. The issue was finally resolved with the Treaty of Zaragoza in 1525.
Further Spanish settlements were progressively established in the New World: New Granada in the 1530s (later in the Viceroyalty of New Granada in 1717 and present-day Colombia); Lima in 1535 as the capital of the Viceroyalty of Peru; Buenos Aires in 1536 (later in the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1776); and Santiago in 1541. Florida was colonized in 1565 by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés.
In 1565, the first permanent Spanish settlement in the Philippines was founded by Miguel López de Legazpi and the service of Manila Galleons was inaugurated. The Manila Galleons shipped goods from all over Asia across the Pacific to Acapulco on the coast of Mexico. From there, the goods were transshipped across Mexico to the Spanish treasure fleets then later shipped to Spain. The Spanish trading post of Manila was established to facilitate this trade in 1572.
English Exploration
Throughout the 17th century, the British established numerous successful American colonies and dominated the Atlantic slave trade, which eventually led to creating the most powerful European empire.
The foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot (Venetian born as Giovanni Caboto) to discover a route to Asia via the North Atlantic. Spain put limited efforts into exploring the northern part of the Americas, as its resources were concentrated in Central and South America, where more wealth had been found. Cabot sailed in 1497, five years after Europeans reached America; although Cabot successfully made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland there was no attempt to found a colony. He mistakenly believed, as Columbus had, that he had reached Asia. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year, but nothing was heard of his ships again.
Learning Objectives
Identify the dynamics of trade and political power that led to European exploration of the New World.
Describe the significance of great explorers such as da Gama, Columbus, and Magellan and how their voyages changed Europe’s conception of the globe and of their world.
Understand the impact of the arrival of Europeans on native cultures and how the native rulers in the Americas tried to use the arrival of the Europeans for their own political ends.
Assess the impact of the Columbian Exchange on both the New World and the Old from an environmental, demographic, ecological, social, and economic perspective.
The Early Empire
No further attempts to establish English colonies in the Americas were made until well into the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, during the last decades of the 16th century. In the meantime, the Protestant Reformation had turned England and Catholic Spain into implacable enemies. In 1562, the English Crown encouraged the privateers John Hawkins and Francis Drake to engage in slave-raiding attacks against Spanish and Portuguese ships off the coast of West Africa, with the aim of breaking into the Atlantic trade system. Drake carried out the second circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition from 1577 to 1580, and he was the first to complete the entire voyage as captain. With his incursion into the Pacific, he inaugurated an era of privateering and piracy off the western coast of the Americas—an area that had previously been free of piracy.
In 1578, Elizabeth I granted a patent to Humphrey Gilbert for discovery and overseas exploration. That year, Gilbert sailed for the West Indies with the intention of engaging in piracy and establishing a colony in North America, but the expedition was aborted before it had crossed the Atlantic. In 1583, he embarked on a second attempt to the island of Newfoundland whose harbor he formally claimed for England, although no settlers were left behind. Gilbert did not survive the return journey to England; he was succeeded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, who was granted his own patent by Elizabeth in 1584. Later that year, Raleigh founded the colony of Roanoke on the coast of present-day North Carolina, but lack of supplies caused the colony to fail.
Empire in the Americas
In 1603, James VI of Scotland ascended to the English throne as James I of England. In 1604 James I negotiated the Treaty of London, ending hostilities with Spain. Now at peace with its main rival, England’s attention shifted from preying on other nations’ colonial interests to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies. The Caribbean initially provided England’s most important and lucrative colonies. Colonies in Guiana, St Lucia, and Grenada failed, but settlements were successfully established in St. Kitts (1624), Barbados (1627), and Nevis (1628). The colonies soon adopted the system of sugar plantations, successfully used by the Portuguese in Brazil, which depended on slave labor. And they initially relied on Dutch ships to sell the slaves and buy the sugar. To ensure that the increasingly healthy profits of this trade remained in English hands, Parliament established the 1651 Navigation Acts, in which they decreed that only English ships would be able to ply their trade in English colonies. In 1655, England annexed the island of Jamaica from the Spanish; and in 1666 it succeeded in colonizing the Bahamas.
In 1672, the Royal African Company was inaugurated, receiving from King Charles a monopoly of the trade to supply slaves to the British colonies of the Caribbean. From the outset, slavery was the basis of the British Empire in the West Indies and later in North America. Until the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, Britain was responsible for the transportation of 3.5 million African slaves to the Americas.
Passage of the Navigation Acts by the English Parliament during the Commonwealth period led to war with the Dutch Republic. During the Commonwealth period, 1649-60, England was under the rule of Oliver Cromwell who had led opponents of King Charles I in his overthrow, as part of the English Civil War. In the early stages of this First Anglo-Dutch War (1652 – 1654), the superiority of the large, heavily armed English ships was offset by superior Dutch tactical organization. English tactical improvements resulted in a series of crushing victories in 1653, bringing peace on favorable terms. On the English side, this was the first war fought largely by purpose-built, state-owned warships. After the English monarchy was restored in 1660, at the conclusion of the Commonwealth period, Charles II re-established the navy, which became a national institution but carried the title of “The Royal Navy.”
England’s first permanent settlement in the Americas was founded in 1607 in Jamestown, led by Captain John Smith and managed by the Virginia Company. Bermuda was accidentally settled and claimed by England in 1609 because the Virginia Company’s flagship had shipwrecked there. Soon after, English colonies were created, mainly due to a desire for freedom of religion. The Virginia Company’s charter was revoked in 1624 and direct control of Virginia was assumed by the crown, thereby founding the Colony of Virginia. In 1620, Plymouth was founded as a haven for puritan religious separatists, later known as the Pilgrims. Fleeing from religious persecution would become the motive of many English would-be colonists to risk the arduous trans-Atlantic voyage: Maryland (1634) was founded as a haven for Roman Catholics; Rhode Island (1636) as a colony tolerant of all religions; and Connecticut (1639) for Congregationalists. The Province of Carolina was founded in 1663. With the surrender of Fort Amsterdam in 1664, England gained control of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, renaming it New York. In 1681, the colony of Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn. The American colonies were less financially successful than those of the Caribbean, but they had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far larger numbers of English emigrants who preferred their temperate climates.
From the outset, slavery was the basis of the British Empire in the West Indies. Until the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, Britain was responsible for a third of all slaves transported across the Atlantic. In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population of African descent rose from 25% in 1650 to around 80% in 1780. And in the 13 Colonies it rose from 10% to 40% over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies). For the slave traders, the trade was extremely profitable, and it became a major economic mainstay.
Although Britain was relatively late in its efforts to explore and colonize the New World, lagging behind Spain and Portugal, it eventually gained significant territories in North America and the Caribbean.
French Exploration
France established colonies in North America, the Caribbean, and India in the 17th century. While it lost most of its American holdings to Spain and Great Britain before the end of the 18th century, it eventually expanded its Asian and African territories in the 19th century.
Learning Objectives
Identify the dynamics of trade and political power that led to European exploration of the New World.
Describe the significance of great explorers such as da Gama, Columbus, and Magellan and how their voyages changed Europe’s conception of the globe and of their world.
Understand the impact of the arrival of Europeans on native cultures and how the native rulers in the Americas tried to use the arrival of the Europeans for their own political ends.
Assess the impact of the Columbian Exchange on both the New World and the Old from an environmental, demographic, ecological, social, and economic perspective.
The French in the New World: New France
France began to establish colonies in North America, the Caribbean, and India in the 17th century. The French first came to the New World as explorers, seeking wealth and a route to the Pacific Ocean. Major French exploration of North America began under the rule of Francis I of France. In 1524, Francis sent Italian-born Giovanni da Verrazzano to explore the region between Florida and Newfoundland for a route to the Pacific Ocean. Verrazzano gave the names Francesca and Nova Gallia to the land between New Spain and English Newfoundland, thus promoting French interests.
In 1534, Francis sent Jacques Cartier on the first of three voyages to explore the coast of Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence River. Cartier founded New France by planting a cross on the shore of the Gaspé Peninsula. He is believed to have accompanied Verrazzano to Nova Scotia and Brazil, and he was the first European to travel inland in North America. He claimed what is now Canada for France and named the Gulf of Saint Lawrence “The Country of Canadas,” using an Iroquois word. In 1541 he attempted to create the first permanent European settlement in North America at Cap-Rouge (Quebec City) with 400 settlers, but the settlement was abandoned the next year. A number of other failed attempts to establish French settlement in North America followed throughout the rest of the 16th century.
Through alliances with various Native American tribes, the French were able to exert a loose control over much of the North American continent, but areas of French settlement were generally limited to the St. Lawrence River Valley. Prior to the establishment of the 1663 Sovereign Council, the territories of New France were developed as mercantile colonies. It was only after 1665 that France gave its American colonies the proper means to develop populated colonies comparable to that of the British.
By the first decades of the 18th century, the French created and controlled such colonies as Quebec, La Baye des Puants (present-day Green Bay), Ville-Marie (Montreal), Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit (modern-day Detroit), La Nouvelle Orléans (New Orleans), and Baton Rouge. However, there was relatively little interest in colonialism in France, which instead concentrated on dominance within Europe. For most of its history, New France was far behind the British North American colonies in both population and economic development.
In 1699, French territorial claims in North America expanded, with the foundation of Louisiana in the basin of the Mississippi River. The extensive trading network throughout the region connected to Canada through the Great Lakes and was maintained through a vast system of fortifications, many of them centered in the Illinois Country and in present-day Arkansas.
New France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Spain and Great Britain in 1763. At its peak in 1712, the territory of New France extended from Newfoundland to the Rocky Mountains, and from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, including all the Great Lakes of North America.
The West Indies
As the French empire in North America grew, the French also began to build a smaller but more profitable empire in the West Indies. Settlement along the South American coast in what is today French Guiana began in 1624, and a colony was founded on Saint Kitts in 1625. Colonies in Guadeloupe and Martinique were founded in 1635 and on Saint Lucia in 1650. The food-producing plantations of these colonies were built and sustained through slavery and was dependent on the African slave trade.
France’s most important Caribbean colonial possession was established in 1664, when the colony of Saint-Domingue (today’s Haiti) was founded on the western half of the Spanish island of Hispaniola. In the 18th century, Saint-Domingue grew to be the richest sugar colony in the Caribbean. The eastern half of Hispaniola (today’s Dominican Republic) also came under French rule for a short period, after being given to France by Spain in 1795.
In the middle of the 18th century, a series of colonial conflicts began between France and Britain; these conflicts ultimately resulted in the near complete expulsion of France from the Americas and the destruction of most of the first French colonial empire.
Africa and Asia
French colonial expansion wasn’t limited to the New World. In Senegal in West Africa, the French began to establish trading posts along the coast in 1624. In 1664, the French East India Company was established to compete for trade in the east. In 1830, with the decay of the Ottoman Empire, the French seized Algiers, thus beginning the colonization of French North Africa. Colonies were also established in India at Chandernagore (1673) and Pondichéry (1674). Later colonies were added at Yanam (1723), Mahe (1725), and Karikal (1739). Finally, colonies were founded in the Indian Ocean, on the Île de Bourbon (Réunion, 1664), Isle de France (Mauritius, 1718), and the Seychelles (1756).
While the French never rebuilt its American gains, their influence in Africa and Asia expanded significantly over the course of the 19th century.
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