History: Protestant Reformation and Sixteenth Century
1
OLD WORLD, NEW WORLDS
THE CHAPTER IN PERSPECTIVE
Early modern Europe emerged from its isolation during the Middle Ages by conquering the world’s oceans—opening direct contact and commerce with Africa and Asia and rediscovering America. Before the end of the fourteenth century, western Europeans had relied on the mariners and merchants of the Muslim world for their access to the trade and technology of the rest of the known world, Africa and Asia. But during the fifteenth century, western Europeans mastered the world’s oceans. Thus, they threw off their dependence on Muslim middlemen for access to the learning and resources of distant continents. European mariners carved out new sea routes to Africa and Asia and laid claim to continents in the Americas. The results of those efforts at exploration and discovery transformed Western Europe from a backward society into a major world power.
OVERVIEW
The story of European exploration and discovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries starts with the international fishing community at Newfoundland, a group of fisherfolk mariners and merchants who swarmed to fish the waters off the Grand Banks and to swap supplies and gossip at St. John’s. The tales traded by these ordinary seamen and traders featured the exploits of “great men”—the Portuguese explorations of the coast of Africa and their charting of a new route to Asia; the efforts of John Cabot to find a northwest passage to the Orient; and, of course, Columbus’s discovery of America.
The Meeting of Europe and America
That conquest of the high seas began with the successful voyages of the Portuguese into the Atlantic in the late 1300s, when they colonized the Canary Islands and, a few decades later, Madeira and the Azores. By the early 1400s, the Portuguese had established sugar plantations on the Atlantic islands worked by enslaved Africans. The Portuguese also initiated a trade with West Africa, and by the end of the century their
OLD WORLD, NEW WORLDS
THE CHAPTER IN PERSPECTIVE
Early modern Europe emerged from its isolation during the Middle Ages by conquering the world’s oceans—opening direct contact and commerce with Africa and Asia and rediscovering America. Before the end of the fourteenth century, western Europeans had relied on the mariners and merchants of the Muslim world for their access to the trade and technology of the rest of the known world, Africa and Asia. But during the fifteenth century, western Europeans mastered the world’s oceans. Thus, they threw off their dependence on Muslim middlemen for access to the learning and resources of distant continents. European mariners carved out new sea routes to Africa and Asia and laid claim to continents in the Americas. The results of those efforts at exploration and discovery transformed Western Europe from a backward society into a major world power.
OVERVIEW
The story of European exploration and discovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries starts with the international fishing community at Newfoundland, a group of fisherfolk mariners and merchants who swarmed to fish the waters off the Grand Banks and to swap supplies and gossip at St. John’s. The tales traded by these ordinary seamen and traders featured the exploits of “great men”—the Portuguese explorations of the coast of Africa and their charting of a new route to Asia; the efforts of John Cabot to find a northwest passage to the Orient; and, of course, Columbus’s discovery of America.
The Meeting of Europe and America
That conquest of the high seas began with the successful voyages of the Portuguese into the Atlantic in the late 1300s, when they colonized the Canary Islands and, a few decades later, Madeira and the Azores. By the early 1400s, the Portuguese had established sugar plantations on the Atlantic islands worked by enslaved Africans. The Portuguese also initiated a trade with West Africa, and by the end of the century their