PREVIOUS GATEWAY TO THE EAST AND ASIA FOR THE SPICE TRADE WAS VIA MARCO POLO WHO ESTABLISHED THE SILK ROAD FROM VENICE TO CHINA 1271 HE WROTE DOWN HIS STORIES WHICH LATER INSPIRED COLUMBUS
THE AGE OF GLOBAL EUROPEAN MARITIME EXPORATION 14OO - 16OO
COLUMBUS AND THE NEW WORLD
MAPS & PREVIOUS EXPLORERS
Early Viking Exploration to the West
Viking Trade Routes in the Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages other than the Crusades and the Vikings there was very little interest in exploration. After the Renaissance there was a renewed curiosity about the world.
THE TECHNOLOGY
The ASTROLABE invented by the Greeks improved by the Arabs helped determine LATITUDE ie North or South of the Equator .
LONGITUDE is measured by a clock and calculated on a prime meridian in Greenich in LONDON - GMT 'Greenich Mean Time' was universally adopted in 1884.
An accurate CLOCK was essential to know your degree and therefore distance of longitude East or West of the Prime Meridian.
The first accurate CHRONOMETER was invented by John Harrison an Englishman in 1773.
WORLD TIME ZONES BASED ON GMT
The Compass invented in the 11OO's
The Sextant
A sextant inventured in 1731, measures angular distance between objects and the horizon used at night for celestial navigation. Used primarily to calculate distance a ship is away from the Equator.
With Latitude and Longitude the world as a globe can be mapped
Caravels
Portugese design in the 15th Century also adopted the Arabic triangular sail design to sail into the wind.
TRADE INSPIRES TRAVEL
&
CONQUEST
COLUMBUS
1. 3 ships the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria crew 9O men
2. 2 months at sea October 12th 1492 they made landfall on San Salvador an island in the Caribbean
3. Expedition financed by King Ferdinand II and Queen Iasabella of Castile
4. To find westerly passage to India
5. To bring spices
6. To claim lands for Spain
7. To spread Chistianity
8. The fall of Granada also in 1492 ended 8OO years of rule by the Moors on the Iberian peninsula. Spain could now assert itself as a global power.
Medieval Belief
The World is Flat
Eratosthenes
Born 276 BC, a Greek mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist is best known for being the first ever person on Earth who realised the world was round and calculated the circumference of the Earth at 25,2OO miles (24,9O1).
As Portugese sailors were also exploring the worlds oceans this intensified the global maritime competition between Spain and Portugal.
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR
Notice geographically how well situated Portugal & Spain is to exploring the world from their Atlantic ports
1. In 1419 Prince Henry the son of Portugals King John I, establishes a school of maritime exploration, bringing ship builders, navigators, mapmakers & sailors together from all over Portugal.
2. He oversaw 5O expeditions ( although he did not sail himself )
3. He died in 146O establishing Portugal as a major sea power - Bartolomeu Diaz was his first success sailing to the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of the African continent.
VASCO da GAMA
Went further East than Diaz all the way to India.
The principal trade commodity was spices - at one time worth more than gold
THE FIRST EXPEDITION TO CIRCUMNAVIGATE THE GLOBE -
FERDINAND MAGELLAN
1. In 1519 MAGELLAN set out with 5 ships and 27O men to find a westerly passage to the spice islands in Asia.
2. They weathered a cold Southern Hemisphere winter in Patagonia
3. Three of ship's crews planned a mutiny wishing to sail back to Spain, Magellan had the mutineers and one of the Captains killed.
4. It took 38 stormy days to sail below Cape Horn ( Straits of Magellan) and into the Pacific - the peaceful ocean. They lost 2 of their ships in the passage
5. Like COLUMBUS before him he did not have an acurate map and therefore could not be 1OO% certain that he would 1. make it to the spice islands 2. survive the mission - (think 1st man on the moon mission in 1969)
6. Magellan could have no way of knowing just how vast the Pacific ocean was.
On this part of the voayage they lost men due to scurvy sickness and hunger.
7. After crossing the pacific and reaching the Philippines with 15O men Magellan was killed by an island warrior in a battle , one of the ships was abandoned after the war because there was not enough sailors left to sail 3 vessels.
8. One of the 2 remaining ships decided to return via the Pacific Ocean it was captured by a Portuguese ship and the crew were killed the spices taken.
9. Only one ship made it back to Seville in 1522 with 18 survivors under the leadership of Juan Elcano.
1O. These men were the first sailors to circumnavigate the globe.
A sailors life onboard a Caravel
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