TTC Foundations of Western Civilization Course Gu

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C. The diplomatic/political scene changed, as well.
1. The Mongol Empire at first offered unprecedented opportunities for overland travel and trade between the Mediterranean world and China.
2. Then, the Mongols chose Islam (despite tremendous efforts to convert them to Christianity), their empire disintegrated, and the Ottoman Turks rose
to powe r and shut off the trade routes.
3. Because Italians, particularly Venetians, had a near-monopoly on Mediterranean trade, there were powerful incentives to find new routes to the
Orient.
D. Europeans may still have felt some vestiges of the old crusading ideology, as Pius II and Ignatius Loyola show.
E. Still, the question remains: Why was this globalization begun by Portugal and Spain (and not, let us say, France or England)?
II. Portugal led the way in the great era of European overseas expansion.
A. Rulers and adventurers wished to bring succor to Christians and to find access to the gold of the Niger River basin, long cut off from direct access by
Berber tribesmen of North Africa.
B. Already in the fourteenth century, some sailors had been going down the west coast of Africa and exploring the islands, such as the Azores and
Canaries.
C. In the early fifteenth century, Ceuta on the Moroccan coast was
captured, providing a secure base for voyages down the African coast.
1. The Portuguese crown began to colonize the islands.
2. The introduction of sugar into Madeira in the 1440s led to the introduction of slavery.
D. By the mid-fifteenth century, the Portuguese had secured their control of the west African coastal regions.
E. Now the crown began to dream of reaching Asia by going east.
1. In 1487, Bartolommeo Dias (c. 1450-1500) pushed farther along the western coast and used his knowledge of prevailing winds to catch favorable
breezes and round the cape of Africa.
2. In a voyage lasting from 1497 to 1499, Vasco da Gama (c. 1460 1524) sailed to Calicut in India. He had four ships and some 170 men. He
returned with only some of his seamen and one ship but with a cargo of spices worth fifty to sixty times the cost of the venture.
3. Alfonso da Alburquerque (1453 1515) armed his ships, captured bases, and developed the Portuguese strategy of a string of armed trading posts
in the Indian Ocean basin.
4. Because only a few Portuguese settled in the region, they were not resented too much, and trade was eagerly promoted by many rulers.
F. The Portuguese government built elaborate institutions to manage and control trade with the Indies.
III. The Spanish had many of the same incentives as the Portuguese but were, for decades, distracted from overseas ventures by the completion of the
Reconquista.
A. Granada fell in 1492, and by then, there was some concern in Spain, occasioned by Portugal s successes along the African coast.
B. Ferdinand and, especially, Isabella financed the Genoese Cristoforo Colombo (1451 1506) but did so somewhat reluctantly and stingily.
1. Columbus was a brilliant sailor, a successful self-promoter, and a keen, but we might say selective, student of geography.
2. We need to avoid romanticizing his voyages.
3. He got three small vessels and some ninety men.
C. Columbus s first voyage was promising enough that he made three more in 1493, 1498, and 1502. He died wealthy and famous but far short of his own
dreams.
1. The difference in scale of his later voyages is striking. On the second, he had seventeen ships and 1,700 men.
2. He always believed that he had discovered islands lying just off the coast of Japan.
3. In 1501, Amerigo Vespucci, sailing along the coast of Brazil, realized that Columbus had discovered a New World.
4. In 1507, Martin Waldseem�ller published a map on which he labeled two new continents America.
D. Exploration did not stop with Columbus.
1. In 1513, Vasco Nu�ez de Balboa crossed Central America at the isthmus of Panama and viewed the Pacific Ocean.
2. In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan set out to circumnavigate the globe. He died in 1521 in the Philippines, but one of his ships returned in
1522.
E. Spurred on by the Iberian example, north Europeans began to make voyages, too. With the southern routes to Asia cut off, the French and English went
north.
1. John Cabot (1450-1499) sighted Newfoundland in 1497, but serious English exploration and colonization did not begin for another century, largely
because the country was distracted by the religious and political convulsions of the Reformation.
2. In 1534, the French explorer Jacques Cartier (1491 1557) sailed up the St. Lawrence River. France, too, was distracted and did not begin its [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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