Origins of European exploration in the Americas

When we think about European exploration in the Americas, we tend to start at 1492, with Christopher Columbus showing up at the island of Hispaniola. But in this video, I want to take a step back a few decades and talk about the conditions that led to Christopher Columbus's voyage in the first place. What was he doing there?

So let's zoom in a little bit and take a look at what the world would have looked like to someone in Western Europe around the year 1450. To a European, this would have been about the extent of the known world. Now, they wouldn't have had anything like the level of detail we have today, but they certainly knew that there were very good things to be had in India, China, and the Middle East—excellent trade goods like silk and spices. They knew there was quite a lot of world outside of Europe and Africa, but they didn't think that there was much out there. They expected there would be some small islands on the range of Iceland, perhaps, but they had no conception that there were two gigantic continents on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

It's a frequent misconception that people in this time period thought that the world was flat. Learned people of the era knew that the world was round; in fact, they had known so since the time of the Greeks. What they did know was that the world was pretty large. In fact, they correctly estimated that the circumference of the globe was about 25,000 miles. They knew that, given the shipping technology they had, it would be impossible to go west and arrive at the east while still having enough food and water to supply the crew.

Now, why would anyone have dreamt of going west to get east when they could have simply gone east to get east? Well, the answer is that the overland route was long and expensive. The Middle East, North Africa, and even parts of Spain were controlled by Muslim empires, like the Ottomans and the Moors. Anytime trade came from the east—China, India, the Middle East itself—it went through a series of traders and a series of empires along the way, picking up taxes and markups. This meant that, by the time a good reached Western Europe, it was pricey indeed.

Since Muslim traders were in control of the Mediterranean, taking a ship through there caused pretty much the same problem. So, why not go around the coast of Africa? Well, that was certainly something that Europeans were keen to do. The only problem was that the wind blew in the wrong direction; it was very treacherous sailing around the tip of Africa to come up into the Indian Ocean.

So, what changed? How did this overland trade route become an oversea trade route? Well, for that, we have to look a little bit closer at the Iberian Peninsula. This land mass here is the Iberian Peninsula, and at the time, it was controlled by a number of different groups. The southern part was under Muslim control of the Moors, as they were called, or Moroccan Muslims, and they called this area Al-Andalus. We're talking about this area here, and the Spanish called it Granada. The western part here was under the control of Portugal, as it is today. The eastern part, this area here, is the Kingdom of Aragon, and then the central part here was the Kingdom of Castile.

As far as Europeans were concerned, this was kind of the end of the world. This was as far southwest as you could go on the European continent, and heaven knows what was out here. Until, in the early 1400s, Portugal's Prince Henry the Navigator began investing in navigation. One of the important discoveries made by the Portuguese was a new kind of ship, and this ship was called the caravel.

So, what's cool about the caravel is that caravels are ocean-worthy, but they're also very easy to maneuver, and they can sail into the wind. That means that the problems of sailing around Africa begin to get a little bit easier. Thus, in this early era of the 1400s, the Portuguese began expanding their exploration farther and farther down the coast of Africa, and they came across these islands. Now that they didn't have to hug the coast, they discovered the Canary Islands and farther west—this is so small you can barely see it here, Madeira and the Azores. They quickly discovered that these islands were ideal places to grow cash crops, specifically sugar.

They also discovered that some of the people who lived on these islands—in fact, the Canary Islands had a native population called the Guanche—they immediately attempted to enslave these native people and then quickly discovered that they would die of disease. We'll talk more about why native people seemed to be so susceptible to European diseases a little bit later.

So now they had great places to grow sugar, but they didn't have a workforce. Well, they were discovering another workforce along the coast of Africa. As they began to set up—this is the Portuguese, we're talking about here—trading posts on the west coast of Africa, they were purchasing slaves from African traders or Arab traders who had a long history of trading slaves from the interior of Africa out to its coast.

In the early 1400s, Portugal was doing very well for itself. It seemed that they were leading this colonial game. They had pretty much invented the plantation system and were getting quite wealthy off of it. So the eyes of Europe turned to Portugal, and they thought, "All right, how can we replicate their success?"

Meanwhile, back on the Iberian Peninsula, there was a political and religious shakeup. The kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were united when Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile (and I recognize that my Spanish pronunciation is terrible) got married in 1469, uniting their two kingdoms into what becomes the Kingdom of Spain. So what had been Castile and Aragon became Spain.

Then united, these two Catholic monarchs turned their attentions to what's called the "Rei Conquista," which was the re-conquering of the territories that had been controlled by Muslims for Christians. I would call this kind of an extension of crusader thinking, and Ferdinand and Isabella completed the Rei Conquista, expelling the Moors from the territory that is today Spain in 1492.

So now we've reached 1492, and we've got a will—that is, a desire for luxury goods. We also have a little bit of good old-fashioned nationalism here. Spain's closest neighbor is Portugal, who are currently very powerful and wealthy, so they've got perhaps some rivalry in their hearts. And we've got a way, which is the caravel, that is making more and more ocean sailing possible.

Into this exciting moment steps Christopher Columbus, and we'll talk more about him in the next video.