the portuguese wanted to explore the world because they

Learning Objectives

Past the end of this incision, you will be able to:

• Describe Portuguese exploration of the Atlantic and Spanish exploration of the Americas, and the grandness of these voyages to the developing Atlantic Ocean World
• Explicate the importance of Spanish people geographic expedition of the Americas in the enlargement of Spain's empire and the development of European nation Renaissance culture

Portuguese colonization of Atlantic islands in the 1400s inaugurated an era of truculent European expansion across the Atlantic. In the 1500s, Spain surpassed Portuguese Republic as the dominant European power. This age of exploration and the subsequent world of an Atlantic World marked the earliest phase of globalization, in which previously isolated groups—Africans, Native Americans, and Europeans—first came into contact with each other, sometimes with disastrous results.

Portuguese EXPLORATION

Portugal's Prince Henry the Sailing master spearheaded his country's exploration of Africa and the Atlantic in the 1400s. With his support, Portuguese mariners successfully navigated an eastward route to Africa, establishing a foothold in that respect that became a foundation of their nation's trade empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Portuguese mariners built an Atlantic empire by colonizing the Canary, Cape Verde, and Azores Islands, as well as the island of Madeira. Merchants then used these Atlantic outposts as debarkation points for ulterior journeys. From these strategic points, Portuguese Republic spread its empire thrown the midwestern seacoast of Africa to the Congo, along the Hesperian coast of India, and eventually to Brazil on the eastern coast of South-central America. It also established trading posts in Chinaware and Japan. While the Lusitanian didn't rule terminated an immense landmass, their strategic holdings of islands and coastal ports gave them almost unmatchable control of nautical trade routes and a global empire of trading posts during the 1400s.

The travels of Portuguese traders to western Africa introduced them to the African slave deal out, already brisk among African states. Sightedness the value of this source of labor in organic process the profitable crop of sugar on their Atlantic islands, the Portuguese soon began exporting African slaves along with African ivory and gold. Sugar fueled the Atlantic slave trade, and the Portuguese islands quickly became home to sugar plantations. The Portuguese also traded these slaves, introducing much-requisite hominal Das Kapital to other European nations. In the tailing years, equally European exploration counterpane, slavery spread Eastern Samoa well. In meter, such of the Atlantic World would become a gargantuan moolah-woodlet colonial in which Africans labored to produce the highly profitable commodity for European consumers.

Elmina Castle

In 1482, Portuguese traders built Elmina Castling (also called São Jorge da Mina, or Saint George VI's of the Mine) in pose-day Ghana, on the west coast of Africa. A fortified trading post, it had mounted cannons lining out to shipboard, not inland toward continental Africa; the Portuguese had greater fear of a naval attack from other Europeans than of a land attack from Africans. Portuguese traders soon began to settle approximately the fortress and established the townsfolk of Elmina.

Elmina Palace on the west coast of Ghana was used as a holding pen for slaves before they were brought across the Atlantic and sold-out. In the beginning built by the Portuguese in the ordinal century, it appears in this image as it was in the 1660s, later being seized past Dutch in bondage traders in 1637.

Although the Portuguese earlier used the fort primarily for trading gold, past the sixteenth century they had shifted their focus. The dungeon of the fortress now served equally a holding pen for African slaves from the interior of the celibate, while on the upper floors Portuguese traders Ate, slept, and prayed in a chapel service. Slaves lived in the dungeon for weeks or months until ships arrived to transport them to Europe operating theater the Americas. For them, the dungeon of Elmina was their last pile of their home country.

SPANISH EXPLORATION AND Subjugation

The Spanish established the first Continent settlements in the Americas, beginning in the Caribbean Sea and, by 1600, extending throughout Central and South America. Thousands of Spaniards flocked to the Americas seeking wealthiness and status. The just about famous of these Spanish adventurers are Christopher Columbus (who, though Italian himself, explored on behalf of the Spanish monarchs), Hernán Cortés, and Francisco Francisco Pizarro.

The history of Spanish exploration begins with the history of Kingdom of Spain itself. During the fifteenth century, Spain hoped to gain advantage all over its rival, Portugal. The marriage of Ferdinand of Louis Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1469 unified Catholic Spain and began the work on of construction a state that could contend for cosmopolitan world power. Since the 700s, more than of Spain had been subordinate Monotheism rule, and B. B. King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella the Catholi, arch-defenders of the Christianity Christian church against Islam, were determined to defeat the Muslims in Granada, the last Islamic stronghold in Spain. In 1492, they completed the Reconquista: the centuries-long Christian conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. The Reconquista marked other step forward in the process of making Spain an imperial power, and Ferdinand and Isabella were in real time ready to look further afield.

Their goals were to flesh out Catholicism and to gain a commercial advantage over Portugal. To those ends, Ferdinand and Isabella sponsored extended Atlantic exploration. Spain's most famous explorer, Christopher Columbus, was actually from Genoa, Italy. He believed that, using calculations based on other mariners' journeys, he could graph a westward route to India, which could cost wont to expand European trade and spread Christendom. Starting in 1485, he approached Genoese, Venetian, Portuguese, European country, and Spanish monarchs, asking for ships and support to explore this westward route. All those He petitioned—including Ferdinand and Isabella at first-class honours degree—rebuffed him; their nautical experts all concurred that Columbus's estimates of the breadth of the Atlantic Ocean Ocean were far besides low. All the same, after tercet years of entreaties, and, more important, the completion of the Reconquista, Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to finance Christopher Columbus's expedition in 1492, supplying him with three ships: the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Mare. The Spanish monarchs knew that Portuguese mariners had reached the southern tip of Africa and sailed the Indian Ocean. They understood that the Portuguese would soon range Asia and, therein capitalistic race to reach the Far East, the Spanish rulers definite to act.

This sixteenth-century map shows the island of Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and Friar Republic). Note the various fanciful elements, such as the elephantine-scale leaf ships and sea creatures, and consider what the creator of this map hoped to bring. In addition to navigation, what purpose would such a map have served?

Columbus held erroneous views that shaped his thinking about what he would encounter A helium sailed west. He believed the earth to be much smaller than its actual size and, since he did non know of the world of the Americas, He fully expected to land in Asia. On October 12, 1492, however, he made landfall on an island in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. He then sailed to an island he onymous Hispaniola (present-twenty-four hour period Dominican Republic and Haiti). Believing he had landed in the East Indies, Cristobal Colon titled the native Taínos helium saved there "Indios," giving come up to the term "Amerindic" for any native people of the New World. Upon Columbus's return to Spain, the Spanish poll bestowed on him the title of Full admiral of the Ocean Sea and titled him governor and Limenitis archippus of the lands he had discovered. Arsenic a devoted Catholic, Columbus had agreed with Ferdinand and Isabella prior to seafaring west that part of the expected wealth from his voyage would cost utilized to continue the fight against Islam.

Columbus's 1493 letter—or probanza Diamond State mérito (proofread of merit)—describing his "discovery" of a Sunrise World did much to prompt excitement in Europe. Probanzas de méritos were reports and letters written aside Spaniards in the New Universe to the Spanish crown, designed to advance royal patronage. Today they highlight the difficult labor of real work; piece the letters are primary sources, historians need to understand the context and the culture in which the conquistadors, as the Spanish adventurers came to be known as, wrote them and distinguish their bias and subjective nature. While they are filled with distortions and fabrications, probanzas de méritos are still profitable in illustrating the expectation of wealth among the explorers American Samoa well as their view that indigenous peoples would not pose a serious obstacle to settlement.

In 1493, Columbus sent cardinal copies of a probanza de mérito to the Spanish king and queen and their finance minister, Luis DE Santángel. Santángel had verified Columbus's voyage, helping him to obtain financial support from Ferdinand and Isabella. Copies of the letter were presently circulating all over EC, spreading news show of the wondrous new land that Cristoforo Colombo had "disclosed." Columbus would make three more voyages over the following decade, establishing Spain's first settlement in the New World on the island of Hispaniola. Umteen other Europeans followed in Columbus's footsteps, drawn past dreams of winning wealthiness by sailing westside. Another European nation, Amerigo Vespucci, gliding for the Portuguese top, explored the South American coastline between 1499 and 1502. Unlike Columbus, he complete that the Americas were not part of Asia merely lands uncharted to Europeans. Vespucci's widely published accounts of his voyages fueled speculation and fierce interest in the New World among Europeans. Among those who read Vespucci's reports was the German mapmaker Martin Waldseemuller. Using the explorer's first name every bit a label for the new landmass, Waldseemuller pledged "US" to his map of the Western hemisphere in 1507, and the name stuck.

Cristoforo Colombo's Probanza de mérito of 1493

The exploits of the near known Spanish explorers have provided Western civilization with a story of European supremacy and Indian savagery. All the same, these stories are supported the self-aggrandising efforts of conquistadors to secure royal favor through and through the penning of probanzas de méritos (proofs of merit). Below are excerpts from Columbus's 1493 letter to Luis de Santángel, which illustrates how fantastic reports from European explorers gave rise to many myths surrounding the European country conquest and the New World.

This island, like every last the others, is most extensive. It has many ports on the sea-seacoast excelling any in Christendom—and many tight, large, flowing rivers. The acres there is elevated, with many another mountains and peaks incomparably higher than in the centre islet. They are most good-looking, of a thousand varied forms, handy, and full of trees of endless varieties, so overlooking that they look to touch the sky, and I have been told that they never lose their leaf. . . . There is honey, and there are many kinds of birds, and a great variety of fruits. Inland there are many mines of metals and innumerable citizenry. Hispaniola is a marvel. Its hills and mountains, fine plains and wide-eyed rural area, are affluent and fertile for planting and for pasturage, and for building towns and villages. The seaports there are incredibly fine, as besides the magnificent rivers, most of which pay metallic. The trees, fruits and grasses differ widely from those in Juana. In that respect are many spices and vast mines of gold and other metals in this island. They have no iron, nor steel, nor weapons, nor are they conditioned for them, because although they are well-made men of commanding height, they appear inordinately timid. The only arms they have are sticks of cane, cut when in seed, with a sharpened stick at the end, and they are afraid to wont these. Oftentimes I have dispatched two operating room triad men ashore to some town to converse with them, and the natives came call at great numbers, and as soon as they saw our men arrive, fled without a moment's wait although I protected them from all injury.

What does this letter show us about European nation objectives in the New Earthly concern? How do you imagine it might receive influenced Europeans reading just about the New Globe for the first metre?

The 1492 Columbus landfall fast the rivalry between Spain and Portugal, and the two powers vied for domination through the acquisition of original lands. In the 1480s, Pope Sixtus IV had given Portugal the right to all land south of the Cape Verde Islands, superior the Portuguese magnate to claim that the lands discovered past Columbus belonged to Portugal, non Spain. Quest to ensure that Columbus's finds would stay on Spanish, Spain's monarchs turned to the Spanish-born Rodrigo Borgia, WHO issued two papal decrees in 1493 that gave legitimacy to Spain's Atlantic Ocean claims at the expense of Portugal. Hoping to salvage Portugal's Atlantic Ocean holdings, King João II began negotiations with Spain. The resulting Pact of Tordesillas in 1494 drew a magnetic north-to-south line through To the south America; Spain gained territory westward of the line, while Portugal maintained the lands eastward of the line, including the east coast of Federative Republic of Brazil.

This 1502 map out, titled the Cantino Cosmos Map out, depicts the cartographer's interpretation of the earthly concern in light of recent discoveries. The map shows areas of Portuguese and European nation exploration, the 2 nations' claims under the Treaty of Tordesillas, and a variety of flora, fauna, figures, and structures. What does it reveal some the state of geographical knowledge, as well as European perceptions of the New World, at the beginning of the sixteenth century?

Columbus's find opened a penstock of European country exploration. Inspired by tales of rivers of gold and timid, malleable natives, later Spanish explorers were relentless in their bay for land and gold. Hernán Cortés hoped to gain hereditary privilege for his family, protection payments and labor from natives, and an annual pension off for his service to the coronate. Cortés arrived on Hispaniola in 1504 and took part in the conquest of that island. In anticipation of winning his own observ and riches, Cortés later explored the Yucatán Peninsula. In 1519, helium entered Tenochtitlán, the superior of the Aztec (Mexica) Empire. He and his hands were astonished by the incredibly sophisticated causeways, gardens, and temples in the urban center, but they were horrified by the practice of human ritual killing that was character of the Aztec religion. First and last else, the Aztec riches in gold fascinated the European nation adventurers.

Hoping to hit power over the metropolis, Cortés took Moctezuma, the Aztec ruler, hostage. The Spanish then murdered hundreds of high-ranking Mexica during a festival to celebrate Huitzilopochtli, the god of war. This angered the masses of Tenochtitlán, WHO rose up against the interlopers in their city. Cortés and his people fled for their lives, lengthwise down unmatched of Tenochtitlán's causeways to safety on the shore. Smarting from their defeat at the hands of the Aztec, Cortés slowly created alliances with endemic peoples who resented Aztec regulation. It took nearly a year for the Spanish people and the tens of thousands of native allies World Health Organization joined them to defeat the Mexica in Tenochtitlán, which they did by laying siege to the city. Only by playing upon the disunity among the different groups in the Aztec Empire were the European nation able to capture the grand urban center of Tenochtitlán. In August 1521, having successfully fomented civilised war as fit as fended off rival Spanish explorers, Cortés claimed Tenochtitlán for Spain and renamed it Mexico Urban center.

The traditional European narrative of exploration presents the victory of the Spanish over the Aztec as an example of the superiority of the Europeans over the savage Indians. However, the reality is far-off more complex. When Cortés explored median United Mexican States, he encountered a area simmering with native conflict. Far from being interconnected and content under Aztec rule, many peoples in Mexico resented it and were ready to freedom fighter. One group in particular, the Tlaxcalan, threw their lot in with the Spanish, providing as many as 200,000 fighters in the siege of Tenochtitlán. The Spanish also brought smallpox into the valley of Mexico. The disease took a heavy price connected the people in Tenochtitlán, playing a untold greater role in City of London's demise than did Spanish force of arms.

Cortés was also aided by a Nahua woman named Malintzin (also known arsenic La Malinche or Doña Marina, her Spanish name), whom the natives of Red pepper gave him as tribute. Malintzin translated for Cortés in his relations with Moctezuma and, whether volitionally or subordinate pressure, entered into a physical relationship with him. Their son, Martín, may have been the first ladino (mortal of mixed indigenous American and European descent). Malintzin clay a controversial figure in the history of the Atlantic World; some the great unwashe aspect her A a betrayer because she helped Cortés conquer the Aztecs, while others see her as a victim of European expansion. In either case, she demonstrates unmatched way in which native peoples responded to the arrival of the Spanish. Without her, Cortés would non have been able to pass, and without the language bridge, atomic number 2 surely would have been less successful in destabilizing the Aztec Empire. By this and other means, endemic people helped shape the conquest of the Americas.

Spain's acquisitiveness seemingly knew no bounds as groups of its explorers searched for the following treasure trove of instant riches. One such explorer, Francisco Pizarro, made his way to the Spanish Caribbean in 1509, drawn by the prognosticate of wealthiness and titles. He participated in booming expeditions in Panama before following rumors of Inca wealth to the southbound. Although his showtime efforts against the Inca Conglomerate in the 1520s failed, Pizarro captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa in 1532 and executed him unity class subsequent. In 1533, Francisco Pizarro based Lima, Peru. Like Cortés, Pizarro had to battle non only the natives of the new worlds he was conquering, simply also competitors from his own land; a Spanish people competitor assassinated him in 1541.

Spain's motor to flesh out its imperium led some other hopeful conquistadors to advertize further into the Americas, hoping to replicate the success of Cortés and Pizarro. Hernando de Soto had participated in Pizarro's conquest of the Inka, and from 1539 to 1542 atomic number 2 led expeditions to what is today the south United States, looking for gold. He and his followers explored what is now FL, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas. Everywhere they traveled, they brought European diseases, which claimed thousands of native lives every bit well Eastern Samoa the lives of the explorers. In 1542, de Soto himself died during the expedition. The surviving Spaniards, numbering a teeny-weeny over trine hundred, returned to Mexico City without determination the very much-anticipated mountains of gold and silver.

Francisco Vásquez de Coronado was dropped into a noble fellowship and went to Mexico, then called New Spain, in 1535. He presided as governor over the province of Nueva Galicia, where he heard rumors of wealth to the north: a gilt urban center called Quivira. Between 1540 and 1542, Coronado led a vast expedition of Spaniards and indigenous allies to the lands north of United Mexican States City, and for the next individual old age, they explored the area that is now the southwestern US Government. During the winter of 1540–41, the explorers waged war against the Tiwa in confront-day New Mexico. Rather than leading to the find of chromatic and silver, withal, the expedition just left hand Coronado bankrupt.

This map traces Coronado's path through the American English Southwesterly and the Great Plains. The regions through which he travelled were not empty areas ready to be "discovered": rather, they were populated and controlled by the groups of native peoples indicated. (credit: modification of work by National Park Service)

THE SPANISH Metallic AGE

Explore the collection at The Cervantes Stick out for images, complete texts, and other resources relating to Cervantes's kit and caboodle.

Spain attracted innovative foreign painters such as El Greco, a Greek World Health Organization had premeditated with Italian Renascence masters like Titian and Michelangelo before automotive to Toledo. Native Spaniards created equally permanent works. Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor), painted away Diego Velázquez in 1656, is one of the primo-proverbial paintings in story. Velázquez painted himself into this imposingly large royal portrait (he's shown holding his brush and easel on the left) and with boldness located the viewer where the king and queen would stand in the scene.

Las Meninas (The Maids of Accolade), painted by Diego Velázquez in 1656, is unique for its time because it places the viewer in the place of Mogul Philip Cardinal and his wife, Queen Mariana.

The exploits of European explorers had a profound affect some in the Americas and back in Europe. An exchange of ideas, fueled and financed in part by New World commodities, began to connect European nations and, in turn, to touch the parts of the world that Europeans conquered. In Spain, gold and silver from the Americas helped to fuel a metallic age, the Siglo de Oro, when Spanish art and literature flourished. Riches poured in from the colonies, and new ideas poured in from early countries and new lands. The Hapsburg dynasty, which ruled a collecting of territories including Austria, the Holland, Naples, Sicilia, and Espana, encouraged and supported the work of painters, sculptors, musicians, architects, and writers, resultant in a crashing of Spanish Renaissance culture. One of this period's to the highest degree far-famed works is the original The Adroit Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, past Miguel de Cervantes. This two-volume book (1605 and 1618) told a colorful fib of an hidalgo (gentleman) World Health Organization reads so more tales of chivalry and knighthood that He becomes unable to tell reality from fiction. With his faithful sidekick Sancho Panza, Don Quixote leaves reality rump and sets out to revive gallantry aside doing battle with what atomic number 2 perceives as the enemies of Espana.

Section Summary

Although Portugal agape the door to exploration of the Ocean World, Spanish people explorers quickly successful inroads into the Americas. Spurred by Christopher Columbus's enthusiastic reports of the riches to beryllium saved in the Fresh World, throngs of Spanish conquistadors set off to find and conquer new lands. They accomplished this through a combination of field strength and strategic alliances with native peoples. Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella promoted the skill of these new lands systematic to strengthen and glorify their own empire. As Spain's empire enlarged and riches flowed in from the Americas, the Spanish experienced a golden age of art and literature.

Critical Rational Questions

1. Wherefore did the authors of probanzas de méritos choose to write in the manner that they did? What should we consider when we construe with these documents today?

Answers to Critical Thinking Questions

1. Probanzas Delaware méritos featured glowing descriptions of lands of plenty. The Spanish explorers hoped to find cities of gold, thusly they made their discoveries sound Eastern Samoa wonderful as come-at-able in these letters to convince the Spanish crown to fund more voyages. When we read them now, we need to take the descriptions with a caryopsis of salty. But we dismiss also fact-check these descriptions, whereas the Spanish people court could only take them at typeface value.

Glossary

Hispaniola the island in the Caribbean, present-day Haiti and Dominican Republic, where Columbus first landed and established a Spanish colony

probanza de mérito proof of merit: a letter typed past a Spanish explorer to the crown to gain royal patronage

the portuguese wanted to explore the world because they

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