I'm going to write a series of articles about European explorers from the 1400s to the 1700s, such as Marco Polo, Magellan, Vasco de Gama, Christopher Columbus, Hernan Cortes, and others.
I first learned about these explorers in junior high school, and their names keep coming up in the history I study. But I have never sat down to learn specifically what each explorer is famous for doing. I know that Christopher Columbus "discovered the Americas," that Cortez "conquered" the Aztec, that someone crossed the Pacific ocean, and that someone sailed around the whole world. But I wanted to learn about each person in more detail.
In this post, I am going to start with some background information about the time period. In the following posts, I will start with the first explorer, Marco Polo, who made a famous journey to Mongolian China in the late 1200s and inspired a generation of explorers, including Christopher Columbus who read Marco Polo's book of travels.
The Age of Discovery and Exploration
The time period of the European sea explorers is known as the "Age of Discovery" or the "Age of Exploration." These explorers are famous for the places they "discovered" - they were the first modern Europeans to arrive in the Americas (especially in the Caribbean islands and Central America) and sub-Saharan Africa. They are also famous for the sea routes they took - across the Atlantic, around the southern tip of Africa, and around the southern tip of South America.
Their voyages also had very large consequences for others. Unfortunately, many of these consequences were very negative. For example, Christopher Columbus's discovery of the Caribbean islands largely started the interest in colonizing and looting the Americas, and it eventually led to sugar plantations and slavery. Hernan Cortes basically destroyed the Aztec civilization, both through disease and violence, and the Spanish colonized much of South America for its mineral wealth and for the spread of Christianity.
Many positive things also happened. Europeans increased their skill in long-distance ocean navigation through a better understanding of oceanic currents, they created the magnetic compass and other navigational technologies, ship-building technology improved, world maps became more detailed, international trade expanded beyond the Mediterranean Sea, Europeans learned about other cultures, and Europe basically became a more innovative and enlivened place. Unfortunately, yes, this prosperity relied on conquered territory, stolen mineral wealth, slavery, and violence, but it also helped usher in the modern scientific revolution and the internationally-connected world.
Venice and Constantinople
Starting in about the year 700, the city of Venice became a rich and powerful center of international trade. The city initially started as a center of trade, but it eventually expanded its influence and started to control other nearby cities along the Adriatic Sea, including Dubrovnik (Croatia), Durres (Albania), and Thessalonica (Greece), so Venice eventually became an empire that lasted 1100 years (until Napoleon conquered it).
The image below shows the shipping routes Venice and its rival Genoa (also in Italy) developed all over the Adriatic, Mediterranean, and Black Seas.
At the same time, silks, spices, and many other products from China and India arrived in Constantinople (now called Istanbul, Turkey) through the Great Silk Road, both by land and by sea. But the Mongolian Empire in Asia and the Ottoman Empire in the Arabian peninsula disrupted long-time trade routes of the Great Silk Road and made travel unsafe for Europeans.
The Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople in 1453, and it entered the Balkans and southern Europe (Serbia, Bulgaria, and Hungary) by the mid-1500s. The map below shows the Ottoman Empire in Europe and surrounding territories in 1588.
Constantinople was the middle-point of trade between the West (Europe) and the East (India and China). So, when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, European and Christian merchants from Venice and other European cities could no longer conduct international business in the same way. Essentially, Europe became isolated from its long-time trading partners in the East.
As the Ottoman Empire expand north into Europe, European countries in northern Italy, Spain, France, and Portugal had no way to travel east. Instead, they started to explore the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and they tried to find new routes to China and India by sailing around the Ottoman Empire. As you know, they tried to sail to the East by going west, but they "discovered" totally unknown lands in the Americas and southern Africa.
Who discovered what new territory during this time? That's what I wanted to know! I'll let you know what I have learned in the next series of posts. I'll start with the first modern traveler to China, Marco Polo. Marco… Marco… Polo…
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My name is Lirim Neziri, and I am an educator and a writer. I love to read and learn, and this newsletter (which I call Lirim’s Learning Club) let’s me share interesting things I am learning. I write about History, Literature, Writing, Education, Technology, Leadership, and Personal Productivity. Please join my learning adventure.