Years and Stuff

Cards (10)

From 1415 Henry the Navigator drove the Age of Discovery, financing Portuguese voyages down the West African coast.
1453 the fall of Constantinople to the Muslim Turks hindered the flow of trade from the Silk Roads into Europe.
1492 Christopher Columbus, sailing west to find a new sea route to India and China, made landfall in the Caribbean, believing he had actually reached the Indies.
1494 Treaty of Tordesillas divided the newly discovered (non -Christian) lands outside Europe between the empires of Portugal and Spain.
1498 Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut in India, establishing s sea route from Europe to Asia (round Africa via the Cape of Good Hope).
1521 Cortes conquered the Aztec Empire and claimed the area (now Mexico) for Spain.
1564 John Hawkins kidnapped 300 West Africans and sold them in Spanish colonies – the start of English involvement in the slave trade
1584 Elizabeth I gave Sir Walter Raleigh a royal charter to colonise the New World.
Jamestown in Virginia was the site of the first successful British colony in America, established in 1607.
In 1625 the British acquired Barbados from the Spanish. Sugar plantations (and a slave based economy) soon replaced tobacco plantations.