Question

What spurred Europe to begin exploring the Atlantic Ocean and beyond after 1300? How did the goals of Portuguese change over time? What impact did the expansion of European influence in Asia and the Americas have on European economy?

Answer 1

The Crusades provided the religious ideology for the Reconquista, which in turn inspired Atlantic colonization. The Reconquista, or reconquest, refers to the 800 years of violence and expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula after the failed Crusades. The Crusades and the Reconquista cemented religious intolerance, and the Christians looked to colonization partly as a means of continuing religious conquests. Particularly in the strongly Catholic nations of Spain and Portugal, religious zeal motivated the rulers to convert Native Americans and sanctify Christian global dominance.

The Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Exploration and the Great Navigations, was a period in European history from the early 15th century to the early 17th century. During this period, Europeans engaged in intensive exploration and early colonization of many parts of the world, establishing direct contact with Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania. Historians often refer to the Age of Discovery to mean the pioneering period of the Portuguese and Spanish long-distance maritime travels in search of alternative trade routes to the Indies. The contact between the “Old World” of Europe and the so-called “New World” of the Americas produced what is called the Columbian Exchange: the wide transfer of plants, animals, foods, communicable diseases, people (including slaves), and culture between the Eastern and Western hemispheres.

While Christopher Columbus has been hailed in United States history for “discovering” America in 1492, there is growing archaeological evidence of cross-continental travel and trade for centuries prior to Columbus’ travels. In addition to the travel and settlement of the Vikings in North America over 500 years before Columbus, several theories have been proposed of extensive trade and travel to the Americas dating back thousands of years by Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and Polynesia. While a great deal of Western history centers on Europeans as the earliest and most advanced explorers of the world, growing evidence suggests extensive transoceanic travel had been well underway long before the European Age of Discovery.

As European nations grew more powerful—especially Portugal, Spain, France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands—they began vying for control of the African slave trade, with little effect on local African and Arab trading. Great Britain’s existing colonies in the Lesser Antilles and its effective naval control of the Mid-Atlantic forced other countries to abandon their enterprises due to inefficiency in cost. The English crown provided a charter giving the Royal African Company monopoly over the African slave routes until 1712.

The Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves was captured on raiding expeditions into the interior of West Africa. The expansion of European colonial powers to the New World increased the demand for slaves and made the slave trade much more lucrative to many West African powers, leading to the establishment of a number of West African empires that thrived on the slave trade.

Historians have widely debated the nature of the relationship between the African kingdoms and the European traders. Some researchers argue that it was an unequal relationship in which Africans were forced into a colonial trade with the more economically developed Europeans, exchanging raw materials and slaves for manufactured goods, and one that led to Africa being underdeveloped. Other researchers claim the Atlantic slave trade was not as detrimental to various African economies as some historians purport, and that African nations at the time were well-positioned to compete with pre-industrial Europe.