European Exploration

• In May 1453, the Ottomans captured Constantinople, beheaded the Byzantine emperor, and established control over much of southeastern Europe
• Ottoman domination led European kingdoms and empires to seek different paths to Afroeurasian trading routes, which ultimately helped spark the voyages of explorers from the Iberian peninsula
• Prince Henry the Navigator


  Funded and encouraged exploration, the study of navigation, and the development of new tools to aid in navigation
• The Portuguese ventured southward along the Atlantic coast of Africa, where they expected to find vast wealth in food, salt, gold, and slaves
• The Portuguese kidnapped local people to sell into European slave markets and began dotting the coast with stone fortresses that doubled as trading stations
• Many European men partnered with African women and started families, as these women were often traders and provided essential connections to trade
• In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and the Portuguese ventured further afield into the Indian Ocean
• When Vasco Da Gama reached India in 1498, he found a highly developed Indian Ocean commerce with trading posts run by sophisticated Muslim merchants
• The Portuguese reached Southeast Asia and China, finding a cornucopia of goods that Europeans came to crave, including colorful, washable cottons, finely crafted porcelain, and tea
• By the seventeenth century, the Portuguese were importing millions of pieces of porcelain into Europe along with lots of delicious spices
• Portuguese "empire"


  A trading empire, with small and agile ships known as caravels patrolling ports and collecting large fees
• Spanish empire


  Based on colonies, controlling the land itself and the people who lived there, and extracting wealth from them to enrich the empire
• Columbus's crews found signs of gold but not great quantities of it, but they did find people to enslave
• From the perspective of indigenous people, colonization meant impoverishment in many forms, including the loss of land, life, religious beliefs, and community assets
• In 1519-22, Ferdinand Magellan's Spanish ships circumnavigated the globe, opening the world up to global transportation, exchange, settlement, and global slavery, warfare, pandemics, and conquest
• Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro relied on help from rival indigenous communities to take control from the Aztecs and Incas, and they married the princesses and other noble women they had raped as a ritual of domination
• Iberian caravels were nimble and could be loaded with cannons, and Iberians employed a range of navigational instruments, including astrolabes, quadrants, compasses, and portolan charts
• Early European explorers almost always had to enlist local people to advise them how to navigate the seas, and local, non-European traders served as intermediaries for the artisans in porcelain, cotton, and other crafted products
• Go-betweens like translators, such as Malinche, facilitated the passage of European conquerors and helped them gather allies and warn them of impending danger
• The Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 and another treaty in 1529 settled disputes between Spain and Portugal over territory, but did not prevent the death at the hands of European weaponry and diseases that contact entailed
• Colonization proved extremely lucrative for Spain and Portugal, which went from being poor kingdoms to astonishingly rich ones, especially after the discovery of a huge silver deposit in Potosi, Bolivia in 1545
• Colonists


  People who decided to stay in the New World permanently and call it home
• Colonization of the New World

  1. Colonists came by the shipload

  2. Harsh trip across the Atlantic

  3. Setting up tiny settlements in the New World called colonies
• English colonists


  • Roanoke
  • Jamestown
  • Plymouth
• Roanoke


  • First English settlement in 1585 in modern-day North Carolina
  • Neglected to bring enough farmers, resulting in food shortages
  • Violent conflict with local Native American tribes
  • Colonists disappeared mysteriously
• Jamestown


  • Second English settlement, established in 1607 in Virginia
  • Located on a peninsula, easy to defend
  • Wet marsh environment bred mosquitoes with deadly diseases
  • Violent conflict with local Native American tribes
  • Experienced the "starving time" where most colonists died
  • Survived and later found wealth by cultivating tobacco
  • Established the House of Burgesses, an early democratic governing body
• Plymouth


  • Third wave of English colonists, established in 1620 in modern-day Massachusetts
  • Colonists were religious dissenters seeking freedom to worship
  • Harsh winter conditions, many colonists froze to death
  • Made peace with the local Wampanoag tribe
  • Celebrated the first Thanksgiving with the Wampanoag
• Peaceful coexistence with Native Americans

  Led to positive outcomes for the Plymouth colonists
• Many other European colonists did not follow the peaceful example of the Plymouth colonists