HISTORY

• Causes of the Age of Exploration

  • Silk and jewels came from China to Turkey
  • Spices came from the Spice Islands
  • Italians controlled the trade
  • Other countries wanted to find new routes to Asia to break the Italians control
  • Rulers hoped the lands would gain them power and wealth to their country
  • Three Gs-gold, glory and God
  • Leaders of the voyages hoped they would gain new riches and titles
  • Marco Polo inspired explorers to explore the great wealth of the East
  • Explorers brought missionaries to the new lands to convert them to Christianity
  • Information from Ptolemy's Geographia encouraged explorers to learn new ideas to discover new information
  • Improvements in ship construction and navigation made possible the long voyages
• Prince Henry the Navigator


  Led the Portuguese explorations
• Portuguese explorations


  • Aimed to find a route to the riches of Asia and the Spice Islands
  • Vasco de Gama sailed as far as India
  • Pedro Cabral reached the coast of Brazil
  • Portuguese empire stretched around the coast of Africa to India
  • Portuguese controlled the sea trade between Europe and Africa and Asia, which included spices from the east and gold and slaves from Africa
• Columbus


  • Got helped from the queen and king of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella
  • Sailed with three ships westwards because he believed the world was round and he wanted to reach Asia and the Spice Islands from this side
• Spanish explorations


  • Columbus was followed by conquistadors such as Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro
  • Cortes conquered the great Aztec Empire in Mexico
  • Pizarro conquered the empire of the Incas in Peru
  • Spain claimed land in the East, including modern-day Philippines
• Treaty of Tordesillas


  • All land to the east of the line was Spanish, and all the land to the West was Portuguese
  • As the line ran down through South America Brazil Became Portuguese while the rest of the continent belonged to Spain
  • Spain and Portugal created their own empires out of the lands they conquered
• Hernan Cortes


  • Responsible for the defeat of the great empire the Aztecs, based in Mexico
  • Aztec emperor, Montezuma, came to greet Cortes as he approached the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan
  • Cortes later rebuilt Tenochtitlan as modern day Mexico City
• Spanish colonization of Aztec lands


  • Spaniards brought cattle, plants and ploughs and hundreds of priests to establish a colony in the Aztec lands and renamed them New Spain
  • Spaniards discovered gold and silver mines
  • The population of New Spain (modern-day Mexico) fell from 25 million in 1492 to 1.25 million in 1600