european exploration wiki

These were modified by the Treaty of Tordesillas, ratified by Pope Julius II.[8][9]. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias and his pilot Pêro de Alenquer, after putting down a mutiny, turned a cape where they were caught by a storm, naming it Cape of Storms. King John II of Portugal's experts rejected it, for they held the opinion that Columbus's estimation of a travel distance of 2,400 miles (3,860 km) was undervalued,[101] and in part because Bartolomeu Dias departed in 1487 trying the rounding of the southern tip of Africa, therefore they believed that sailing east would require a far shorter journey. After they had navigated for nearly 300 km (186 mi) to round the cape, they again sighted the continent on the other side, and steered towards the northwest, but a storm prevented them from making any headway. Matterhorn Bobsleds is an attraction in Disneyland. The real exploration of the African interior would start well into the 19th century. Philip's troops conquered the important trading cities of Bruges and Ghent. In 1533, Pizarro invaded Cuzco with indigenous troops and wrote to King Charles I: "This city is the greatest and the finest ever seen in this country or anywhere in the Indies ... it is so beautiful and has such fine buildings that it would be remarkable even in Spain." The Chinese export porcelains were held in such great esteem in Europe that, in English, china became a commonly-used synonym for porcelain. An agreement was reached in 1494, with the Treaty of Tordesillas that divided the world between the two powers. (New York: Dutton), p. 72. Under his direction, in 1471, the Portuguese reached modern Ghana and settled in A Mina (the mine), today's Elmina. The occupation of Algiers by France in 1830 put an end to the piracy of the Barbary states. Soon after, the equator was crossed by Europeans . [157][158], In 1643 Kurbat Ivanov led a group of Cossacks from Yakutsk to the south of the Baikal Mountains and discovered Lake Baikal, visiting its Olkhon Island. [154] Luis Váez de Torres, a Galician navigator working for the Spanish Crown, proved the existence of a passage south of New Guinea, now known as Torres Strait. [166][167] Alfred W. Crosby speculated that increased production of maize, manioc, and other New World crops led to heavier concentrations of population in the areas from which slavers captured their victims.[168]. He successfully carried out the voyage to collect taxes from Zabaykalye Buryats, becoming the first Russian to step in Buryatia. In the early 17th century the eastward movement of Russians was slowed by the internal problems in the country during the Time of Troubles. Exact longitude, however, remained elusive, and mariners struggled to determine it for centuries. That year John Cabot, also a commissioned Italian, got letters patent from King Henry VII of England. In 1503, Binot Paulmier de Gonneville, challenging the Portuguese policy of mare clausum, led one of the earliest French Normand and Breton expeditions to Brazil. This is a TL about the article Early Exploration This TL only covers notable events in the Early Exploration TL. The board met several times, without reaching an agreement: the knowledge at that time was insufficient for an accurate calculation of longitude, and each group gave the islands to its sovereign. [88] From the east coast, the fleet then turned eastward to resume the journey to the southern tip of Africa and India. Between the 12th and 15th centuries the European economy was transformed by the interconnecting of river and sea trade routes, causing Europe to become one of the world's most prosperous trading networks. He taught the Chinese how to construct and play the spinet, translated Chinese texts into Latin and vice versa, and worked closely with his Chinese associate Xu Guangqi (1562–1633) on mathematical work. It started the global silver trade from the 16th to 18th centuries and led to direct European involvement the Chinese porcelain trade. From December 1680 to 29 August 1682, the Portuguese occupied Fort Christiansborg. [5] Later, it was called America after the explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who realized that it was a "new world". Soon after Magellan's expedition, the Portuguese rushed to seize the surviving crew and built a fort in Ternate. In 1592, Cornelis de Houtman was sent by Dutch merchants to Lisbon, to gather as much information as he could about the Spice Islands. [177], The arrival of the Portuguese to Japan in 1543 initiated the Nanban trade period, with the Japanese adopting several technologies and cultural practices, like the arquebus, European-style cuirasses, European ships, Christianity, decorative art, and language. He states that they paused each year to sow and harvest grain. European exploration outside the Mediterranean started with the Portuguese discoveries of the Atlantic archipelagos of Madeira and Azores in 1419 and 1427 respectively, then the coast of West Africa after 1434 until the establishment of the sea route to India in 1498 by Vasco da Gama. By 1580 Stroganovs and Yermak came up with the idea of a military expedition to Siberia, in order to fight Kuchum in his own land. The Phoenicians explored North Africa, establishing a number of colonies, the most prominent of which was Carthage. The fleet explored the rivers and bays as it charted the South American coast until it found a way to the Pacific Ocean through the Strait of Magellan. These “extremophile” life for… Dutch, French, and English sent ships which flouted the Portuguese monopoly, concentrated mostly on the coastal areas, which proved unable to defend against such a vast and dispersed venture. Based on much later stories of the phantom island known as Bacalao and the carvings on Dighton Rock some have speculated that Portuguese explorer João Vaz Corte-Real discovered Newfoundland in 1473, but the sources cited are considered by mainstream historians to be unreliable and unconvincing.[73]. [20] The fleets visited Arabia, East Africa, India, Maritime Southeast Asia and Thailand. Antonio Pigafetta, a Venetian scholar and traveller who had asked to be on board and become a strict assistant of Magellan, kept an accurate journal that become the main source for much of what we know about this voyage. It began to establish its rule over the Canary Islands, located off the West African coast, in 1402, but then became distracted by internal Iberian politics and the repelling of Islamic invasion attempts and raids through most of the 15th century. Pope Alexander VI decreed the Inter caetera bull, dividing the non-Christian parts of the world between the two rival Catholic powers, Spain and Portugal. The members of these expeditions, the "conquistadors", came from a variety of backgrounds including artisans, merchants, clergy, lawyers, lesser nobility and freed slaves. All their kochi and most of their men (including Popov himself) were lost in storms and clashes with the natives. He founded the first Russian settlement there, Rybinsky ostrog. Much of the treasure looted was lost during this panicked escape. On October 31 of 1527 Saavedra sailed from New Spain, crossing the Pacific and touring the north of New Guinea, then named Isla de Oro. The Americas were named in 1507 by cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann, probably after Amerigo Vespucci. Northwest Africa (the Maghreb) was known as either Libya or Africa, while Egypt was considered part of Asia. The place names bestowed along their route, Puerto deseado (desired port), Puerto del hambre (port of hunger) and Puerto quemado (burned port), attest to the difficulties of their journey. [78] On 4 May 1493, two months after Columbus's arrival, the Catholic Monarchs received a bull (Inter caetera) from Pope Alexander VI stating that all lands west and south of a pole-to-pole line 100 leagues west and south of the Azores or the Cape Verde Islands should belong to Castile and, later, all mainlands and islands then belonging to India. [99] Christopher de Haro, a Flemish of Sephardic origin (one of the financiers of the expedition along with D. Nuno Manuel), who would serve the Spanish Crown after 1516, believed that the navigators had discovered a southern strait to west and Asia. France also set her eyes on Madagascar, the island that had been used since 1527 as a stop in travels to India. In 1497, newly crowned King Manuel I of Portugal sent an exploratory fleet eastwards, fulfilling his predecessor's project of finding a route to the Indies. With three ships and one hundred and eighty men they landed near Ecuador and sailed to Tumbes, finding the place destroyed. Those were mainly skilled craftsmen, rich merchants of the port cities and refugees that fled religious persecution, particularly Sephardi Jews from Portugal and Spain and, later, the Huguenots from France. His hunch paid off, and he hit the coast near Cape Mendocino, California, then followed the coast south. Two years later they began a second expedition with reluctant permission from the Governor of Panama. [94] It was soon understood that Columbus had not reached Asia but had found a new continent, the Americas. In the 12th century the region of Flanders, Hainault and Braband produced the finest quality textiles in northern Europe, which encouraged merchants from Genoa and Venice to sail there directly. There were reports of great African Sahara, but the factual knowledge was limited for the Europeans to the Mediterranean coasts and little else since the Arab blockade of North Africa precluded exploration inland. The po was capable of carrying 700 people together with more than 10,000 hú (斛) of cargo (250–1000 tons according to various interpretations). [39], The voyages had a significant and lasting effect on the organization of a maritime network, utilizing and creating nodes and conduits in its wake, thereby restructuring international and cross-cultural relationships and exchanges. In 1521, a force under António Correia conquered Bahrain, ushering in a period of almost eighty years of Portuguese rule of the Gulf archipelago. [182] Centred in Antwerp first and then in Amsterdam, "Dutch Golden Age" was tightly linked to the Age of Discovery. They set off on May, and on June discovered Bear Island and Spitsbergen, sighting its northwest coast. But only a century later, between 1613 and 1619, did the Portuguese explore the island in detail. Under the direction of Henry the Navigator, the Portuguese developed a new, much lighter ship, the caravel, which could sail farther and faster,[3] and, above all, was highly maneuverable and could sail much nearer the wind, or into the wind. [189] After noting the variety of silk goods traded to Europeans, Ebrey writes of the considerable size of commercial transactions: In one case a galleon to the Spanish territories in the New World carried over 50,000 pairs of silk stockings. The commander of the expedition, Captain Blonk, signed agreements with the chieftains of the Gold Coast. [169] Between 1600 and 1800 China received 100 tons of silver on average per year. Columbus also explored the northeast coast of Cuba (landed on 28 October) and the northern coast of Hispaniola, by 5 December. Although he was the first to land on Lintin Island in the Pearl River Delta, it was Rafael Perestrello—a cousin of the famed Christopher Columbus—who became the first European explorer to land on the southern coast of mainland China and trade in Guangzhou in 1516, commanding a Portuguese vessel with crew from a Malaccan junk that had sailed from Malacca. In 1643, Vasily Poyarkov crossed the Stanovoy Range and reached the upper Zeya River in the country of the Daurs, who were paying tribute to the Manchu Chinese. Meanwhile, considerable changes had been made in other parts of the continent. [108] With few resources and using information given by caciques, he journeyed across the Isthmus of Panama with 190 Spaniards, a few native guides, and a pack of dogs. The Dano-Norwegian colonized the Danish Gold Coast, from 1674 to 1755 the settlements were administered by the Danish West India-Guinea Company. However, small bodies of conquistadors, with large armies of Indigenous Americans groups, managed to conquer these states. ; Massive wealth accrued to European colonizers due to trade in goods, spices, and precious metals. During the voyage across the Barents Sea, Willoughby thought he saw islands to the north, and islands called Willoughby's Land were shown on maps published by Plancius and Mercator into the 1640s. He is thought to have been the first known European to have set foot on continental North America (excluding Greenland), approximately half a millennium before Christopher Columbus. [12], Christian embassies were sent as far as Karakorum during the Mongol invasions of the Levant, from which they gained a greater understanding of the world. In Tenochtitlán one of Cortés's lieutenants committed a massacre in the Great Temple, triggering local rebellion. Each crown appointed three astronomers and cartographers, three pilots and three mathematicians. [24] Although the Mongols had threatened Europe with pillage and destruction,[clarification needed] Mongol states also unified much of Eurasia and, from 1206 on, the Pax Mongolica allowed safe trade routes and communication lines stretching from the Middle East to China. [87] Some historians have suggested that the Portuguese may have encountered the South American bulge earlier while sailing the "volta do mar", hence the insistence of John II in moving the line west of Tordesillas in 1494—so his landing in Brazil may not have been an accident; although John's motivation may have simply been to increase the chance of claiming new lands in the Atlantic. Balboa's main purpose in the expedition was the search for gold-rich kingdoms. Top This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale. In July his men took over Veracruz and he placed himself under direct orders of new king Charles I of Spain. Europeans had a constant deficit in silver and gold,[49] as coin only went one way: out, spent on eastern trade that was now cut off. In 1498, a Portuguese expedition commanded by Vasco da Gama reached India by sailing around Africa, opening up direct trade with Asia. The fleet of seven ships and 450 men was led by García Jofre de Loaísa and included the most notable Spanish navigators: Juan Sebastián Elcano and Loaísa, who lost their lives then, and the young Andrés de Urdaneta. Dias's return from the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, and Pêro da Covilhã's travel to Ethiopia overland indicated that the richness of the Indian Sea was accessible from the Atlantic. Only late in the century, following the unification of the crowns of Castile and Aragon and the completio… In 1642–1644 Abel Tasman, also a Dutch explorer and merchant in the service of the VOC, circumnavigated New Holland proving that Australia was not part of the mythical southern continent. Yermak was wounded and tried to swim across the Wagay River (Irtysh's tributary), but drowned under the weight of his own chain mail. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 there was a huge expansion of maritime trade even though the defeat of the English Armada would confirm the naval supremacy of the Spanish navy over the emergent competitors. [124] They explored down the coast reaching Biscayne Bay, Dry Tortugas and then sailing southwest in an attempt to circle Cuba to return, reaching Grand Bahama on July. Egypt forms its own government. The pattern of territorial aggression was repeated by other European empires, most notably the Dutch, Russian, French and British. In 1895, the British South Africa Company hired the American scout Frederick Russell Burnham to look for minerals and ways to improve river navigation in the central and southern Africa region. 10 February 2021. In 1648, they were expelled from Luanda by the Portuguese. They founded Anadyrsk and were stranded there, until Stadukhin found them, coming from Kolyma by land. Simultaneously Pêro da Covilhã, sent out travelling secretly overland, had reached Ethiopia having collected important information about the Red Sea and Quenia coast, suggesting that a sea route to the Indies would soon be forthcoming. In 1649–50 Yerofey Khabarov became the second Russian to explore the Amur River. Despite initial hostilities, by 1549 the Portuguese were sending annual trade missions to Shangchuan Island in China. [165] They are now important staple foods, replacing native African crops. Du Chaillu had previously, through journeys in the Gabon region between 1855 and 1859, made popular in Europe the knowledge of the existence of the gorilla, whose existence was thought to be as legendary as that of the Pygmies of Aristotle. For celestial navigation the Portuguese used the Ephemerides, which experienced a remarkable diffusion in the 15th century. To ensure their monopoly on trade, Europeans (beginning with the Portuguese) attempted to install a mediterranean system of trade which used military might and intimidation to divert trade through ports they controlled; there it could be taxed. [132] This included vast directions on how to navigate between Portugal and the East Indies and to Japan. [140] He also landed on San Miguel, one of the Channel Islands, and continued as far as Point Reyes. This westbound return route was hard to find, but was eventually discovered by Andrés de Urdaneta in 1565. In 1519, an expedition sent by the Spanish Crown to find a way to Asia was led by the experienced Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan. The Duchy also took other local lands including St. Mary Island (modern-day Banjul) and Fort Jillifree. Arab navigational tools like the astrolabe and quadrant were used for celestial navigation. However, very soon the exploration and colonization of the huge territories of Siberia was resumed, led mostly by Cossacks hunting for valuable furs and ivory. They headed to Tenochtitlan and on the way made alliances with several tribes. Native South Americans told him about a gold-rich territory on a river called Pirú. The limit of Ptolemy's knowledge in the west is. The new trans-oceanic links and their domination by the European powers led to the Age of Imperialism, where European colonial powers came to control most of the planet. In 1626, the French Compagnie de l'Occident was created. [3]:162–3 There is some uncertainty as to how far precisely Hanno reached; he clearly sailed as far as Sierra Leone, and may have continued as far as Guinea or even Gabon. This time he was met with armed resistance. On 21 April 1500 a mountain was seen and was named Monte Pascoal, and on 22 April Cabral landed on the coast. A major advance was the introduction of the caravel in the mid-15th century, a small ship able to sail windward more than any other in Europe at the time. It did not mention Portugal, which could not claim newly discovered lands east of the line. Delftware depicting Chinese scenes, 18th century. Portuguese explorer Prince Henry, known as the Navigator, was the first European to methodically explore Africa and the oceanic route to the Indies. Although Dutch potters did not immediately imitate Chinese porcelain, they began to do it when the supply to Europe was interrupted, after the death of Wanli Emperor in 1620. In 1500, a second, larger fleet of thirteen ships and about 1500 men were sent to India. Although this was not a realistic alternative to the Portuguese route around Africa[113] (the Strait of Magellan was too far south, and the Pacific Ocean too vast to cover in a single trip from Spain) successive Spanish expeditions used this information to explore the Pacific Ocean and discovered routes that opened up trade between Acapulco, New Spain (present-day Mexico) and Manila in the Philippines. [136], In 1524, Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed at the behest of Francis I of France, who was motivated by indignation over the division of the world between Portuguese and Spanish. Meanwhile, from the 1580s to the 1640s, Russians explored and conquered almost the whole of Siberia, and Alaska in the 1730s. To this end, he crossed through the lands of caciques to the islands, naming the largest one Isla Rica (Rich Island, today known as Isla del Rey). In 1615, Jacob le Maire and Willem Schouten's rounding of Cape Horn proved that Tierra del Fuego was a relatively small island. Around 1577, Semyon Stroganov and other sons of Anikey Stroganov hired a Cossack leader called Yermak to protect their lands from the attacks of Siberian Khan Kuchum. There were fewer than 200 Spanish to his 80,000 soldiers, but Pizarro attacked and won the Incan army in the Battle of Cajamarca, taking Atahualpa captive at the so-called ransom room. [citation needed] The close Italian links to the Levant raised great curiosity and commercial interest in countries which lay further east. His account provided the first recorded use of the name "California". In the same year Lourenço de Almeida landed in Sri Lanka, the eastern island named "Taprobane" in remote accounts of Alexander the Great's and 4th-century BC Greek geographer Megasthenes. Antonio de Noli e l'inizio delle scoperte del Nuovo Mondo. Portugal intervened militarily in these conflicts, creating the basis for their colony of Angola. East and west exploration overlapped in 1522, when a Castilian (Spanish) expedition, led by Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and later by Spanish Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, sailing westward, completed the first circumnavigation of the world,[11] while Spanish conquistadors explored the interior of the Americas, and later, some of the South Pacific islands. [134] This was never discovered, but other possibilities were found, and in the early 17th century colonists from a number of Northern European states began to settle on the east coast of North America. On Earth, life forms have been found thriving near subterranean volcanoes, deep-sea vents and other extreme environments. He invested in sponsoring voyages down the coast of Mauritania, gathering a group of merchants, shipowners and stakeholders interested in new sea lanes. The Portuguese presence in Africa soon interfered with existing Arab trade interests. From there, overland routes led to the Mediterranean coasts. Indeed, Alexander the Great, according to Plutarchus' Lives, considered sailing from the mouths of the Indus back to Macedonia passing south of Africa as a shortcut compared to the land route. For centuries slave and gold trade routes linking West Africa with the Mediterranean passed over the Western Sahara Desert, controlled by the Moors of North Africa. The following is a list of explorers. Savona, 2013. As shipping between Seville and the West Indies grew, knowledge of the Caribbean islands, Central America and the northern coast of South America grew. In 1513, about 40 miles (64 kilometres) south of Acandí, in present-day Colombia, Spanish Vasco Núñez de Balboa heard unexpected news of an "other sea" rich in gold, which he received with great interest. He reasoned that the trade winds of the Pacific might move in a gyre as the Atlantic winds did. These Data Files explain the basic controls of Pikmin 3, as well as what to do in some special events. [86] However, the land was too far east for the Castilians to claim under the Treaty of Tordesillas, but the discovery created Castilian (Spanish) interest, with a second voyage by Pinzon in 1508 (an expedition that coasted the northern coast to the Central American coastal mainland, in search of a passage to the East) and a voyage in 1515–16 by a navigator of the 1508 expedition, Juan Díaz de Solís. It was depicted on the mid-16th-century Dieppe maps, where its coastline appeared just south of the islands of the East Indies; it was often elaborately charted, with a wealth of fictitious detail. In 1627 Pyotr Beketov was appointed Yenisei voevoda in Siberia. [107] In the Red Sea, Massawa was the most northerly point frequented by the Portuguese until 1541, when a fleet under Estevão da Gama penetrated as far as Suez. In the Americas the Spanish found a number of empires that were as large and populous as those in Europe. To his surprise, it carried textiles, ceramic and much-desired gold, silver, and emeralds, becoming the central focus of the expedition. Rome, Gallia, Hispana, Slavia, The Byzantine Empire, Tunis and Germany. They dubbed the enterprise the "Empresa del Levante": Pizarro would command, Almagro would provide military and food supplies, and Luque would be in charge of finances and additional provisions. A Age of Discovery ships‎ (22 P) Arctic exploration vessels‎ (59 P) Austronesian ships‎ (26 P) E Exploration ships of England‎ (11 P) N From 1858 to 1864, the lower Zambezi, the Shire River and Lake Nyasa were explored by Livingstone. Subcategories. In July 1499 news spread that the Portuguese had reached the "true indies", as a letter was dispatched by the Portuguese king to the Spanish Catholic Monarchs one day after the celebrated return of the fleet.[83]. In 1553 English explorer Hugh Willoughby with chief pilot Richard Chancellor were sent out with three vessels in search of a passage by London's Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands. [170] Altogether, more than 150,000 tons of silver were shipped from Potosí by the end of the 18th century. Since the last meeting, the Inca had begun a civil war and Atahualpa had been resting in northern Peru following the defeat of his brother Huáscar. Forced to reduce their activities in the Black Sea, and at war with Venice, the Genoese had turned to North African trade of wheat, olive oil (valued also as an energy source) and a search for silver and gold. Pizarro was then able to convince many friends and relatives to join: his brothers Hernándo Pizarro, Juan Pizarro, Gonzalo Pizarro and also Francisco de Orellana, who would later explore the Amazon River, as well as his cousin Pedro Pizarro. The Mongol Empire collapsed almost as quickly as it formed and soon the route to the east became more difficult and dangerous. The emergence of Dutch maritime power was swift and remarkable: for years Dutch sailors had participated in Portuguese voyages to the east, as able seafarers and keen mapmakers. By the Roman imperial period, the Horn of Africa was well-known to Mediterranean geographers. Dutch navigators were the first Europeans known to have explored and mapped the Australian coastline. They decided to sail south and, by April 1528, reached the northwestern Peruvian Tumbes Region and were warmly received by local Tumpis. Aboriginal peoples were living in North America at this time and still do today. Cabral was the first captain to touch four continents, leading the first expedition that connected and united Europe, Africa, the New World, and Asia.[89][90]. The increase in prices as a result of currency circulation fuelled the growth of the commercial middle class in Europe, the bourgeoisie, which came to influence the politics and culture of many countries. The Red Sea was barely known and only trade links with the Maritime republics, the Republic of Venice especially, fostered collection of accurate maritime knowledge.[19]. In 1482 the Congo River was explored by Diogo Cão,[71] who in 1486 continued to Cape Cross (modern Namibia). "I learnt a proverb here", said a French traveller in 1603: "Everything is dear in Spain except silver". On November 18, 1605, the Duyfken sailed from Bantam to the coast of western New Guinea. The efforts of Vasco da Gama to get favorable trading conditions were hampered by the low value of their goods, compared with the valuable goods traded there. It was over 50 m in length and had a freeboard of 4–7 meters. They headed for La Isla Gorgona, where they remained for seven months before the arrival of provisions. Striking farther inland to the Lualaba, he followed that river down to the Atlantic Ocean—which he reached in August 1877—and proved it to be the Congo.