European Voyages of Exploration

I

Introduction

European Voyages of Exploration, period of extensive exploration by the European powers of the 15th and 16th centuries that transformed the world. Expeditions from countries on the Atlantic fringes of Europe crossed the oceans to reveal distant lands and peoples, and this expansion of knowledge had fateful consequences. Exploration was followed by exploitation and subjugation, a revolution in the economies of western Europe, and the establishment of colonial empires that survived until the 19th and 20th centuries (see Colonies and Colonialism). In many respects, the oceanic voyages of discovery gave birth to the modern world.

II

The World in the 15th Century

Until the 15th century the countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa had some trading and other exchanges with each other, but little in the way of direct contact. Occasionally, travellers made journeys far outside their homelands. The Italian merchant Marco Polo travelled from Venice eastward as far as China in the late 13th century; the Arab traveller Ibn Batuta reached many parts of Africa as well as China in the early 14th century; and in the early 15th century the Chinese navigator Zheng He led fleets across the Indian Ocean as far as the east coast of Africa. However impressive these ventures were, contemporary knowledge of them was sketchy and confused. Even when travellers circulated accounts of their exploits, these were often misunderstood and sometimes disbelieved. There was no realization of the existence of the Americas or Australia, and world maps of the late 15th century were dominated by the three known continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa. These filled a globe (for in the world of learning at least there was a general recognition that the world was round) the overall dimensions of which, especially the size of its oceans, were seriously underestimated. Even Europe’s knowledge of its two sister continents was fragmentary. Geographies based on Polo’s travels exaggerated the east-west extent of Asia, while little of Africa beyond its Mediterranean north was known to Europeans unless they had access to Arab accounts.

III

The Tools of Discovery

A

Ships

European curiosity about the great ocean to the west was frustrated by the lack of ships and instruments that could be used on long sea voyages. There were exceptions, notably the enterprising Viking seamen from Scandinavia who sailed into the North Atlantic in open boats in the 10th and 11th centuries, but although they reached the eastern shores of North America knowledge of their exploits was not disseminated through Europe at large. Not until the 15th century were there technical developments that enabled seafarers to make long voyages with some confidence, and even then their routes were mostly in local waters, from the Baltic in the north to the Mediterranean in the south. New ship designs brought together the techniques of northern and southern European shipbuilders. In northern waters the standard trading vessel was the broad-beamed cog, with its mast or masts carrying a square sail; in the Mediterranean the norm was a narrow vessel with lateen (triangular) sails that enabled it to sail close to the wind. Neither was suitable for oceanic voyages, but over the course of the 15th century Spanish and Portuguese shipbuilders combined some of the characteristics of both types to produce a sea-going vessel, the caravel, the hull shape of which, as well as its rig of square and lateen sails, provided extra cargo capacity and manoeuvrability. In time a larger and stouter vessel, the carrack, was developed with the same rig, and became the standard ocean-going vessel. Although not primarily a fighting ship its timbers were strong enough to bear the weight of cannon.

B

Navigational Instruments

Before return ocean-going voyages could be undertaken with any confidence, improved navigational instruments were necessary. The magnetic compass, which gave a ship’s bearing or course, had been in use since the 13th century —although there was little knowledge of the distortion caused by magnetic variation —and in the 15th century this was accompanied by better methods of celestial navigation. The cross-staff, astrolabe, and quadrant enabled navigators to take noon-sights of the Sun or to observe the altitude of the Pole Star, and so fix their latitude. Determining longitude at sea, on the other hand, was largely a matter of guesswork. A ship’s position on an east-west course could be estimated only in the most approximate way by dead-reckoning, that is, by measuring a vessel’s courses in terms of its speed through the water, and then plotting the result on a chart. By the early 16th century log-lines and half-hour time glasses were in use to estimate a ship’s speed, but given the element of human error and the hidden influence of currents, these gave only an approximate reading. To modern eyes such methods of navigation seem crude and hazardous, but they were enough to encourage seamen to venture out into open waters.

IV

The Sea Road to the East