By the early fifteenth century Europe was an intellectual, spiritual, and economic powder-keg waiting to be ignited, and sparks could be seen in abundance.  The motive forces of profit, territorial expansion, and religious zeal combined with a long-standing ideological conflict with Islam made an explosion imminent.  Hidden beneath the veneer of medieval beliefs and institutions a new order was preparing to emerge.  By the early years of the sixteenth century this new order was both active and well-defined. It was an Age of Geographic Exploration, as sea-faring pioneers literally doubled the size of the known world in a few short years.  It was an Age of Religious Reformation, seeing the institutions  that had endured since the fall of the Roman Empire fractured by the forces of individuality. It was an Age of Scientific Discovery, and the heavens gave forth their secrets to the inquiries of frail human beings.  It was also an Age of Political Consolidation, where dynastic marriages forged feuding territories into coherent and powerful states.  Lastly, it was an Age of Economic Expansion, witnessing for the first time the emergence of a true world market.           How did such a world order come into being?  And how was it able to triumph so throughly over ideas and institutions protected by such ancient and powerful traditions?  To answer these, and many other questions, we must back up several centuries and explore the cultural matrix in which this new order was conceived.                                                                     PRELUDE TO CHANGE           The most significant contributing factor in the emergence of this new world order was the ongoing ideological conflict between the Church in the West and the forces of Islam in the East.  The catalyst that brought the modern world into being was the ancient question of who shall rule in Jerusalem.           The fall of Rome had initiated a period of stagnation in the West.  A brief glimpse of the world of the possible had been obtained four hundred or so years later with the consolidation of Central Europe under the rule of Charlemagne.  By co-operation with the pope, Charlemagne had brought about a fusion of secular and sacred power in Europe which had not been seen in almost half a millennia.  Though the Holy Roman Empire began its decline shortly after the death of Charles the Great, the cooperation of Church and State had generated a new sense of hope throughout Europe.  This belief that Europe could regain something of the glory that had been lost following the fall of Rome, combined with the Y1K factor, initiated a religious awakening throughout the West.            The revival began in the monasteries, and quickly spread among the parishioners.  New church construction intensified, and more importantly, at least from the historian's point of view, there was a marked increase in the number of European pilgrims to the Holy Land.           The revival was accompanied by a rebirth of European commerce, especially among the cities of the Italian coast.  Florence in particular had fought an intense war to free the western Mediterranean of Islamic pirates, with some degree of success.  For the first time in three hundred years the sea  between Rome and Constantinople, as well as the northern coast of Africa, was friendly to commercial endeavors.           In Islamic lands, however, the need for military strength had resulted in the recruitment of a new group of mercenaries from among a number of Turkish tribes known as Saracens.  These mercenaries had established a powerful state along the eastern border of the Byzantine Empire. (DISCUSS CONSTANTINOPLE) The Byzantine Emperor realized the threat, and requested aid from the Christian West, but help was slow in coming.  It was not until the holy city of Jerusalem was over-run by Islamic forces that the Pope saw fit to act.           Pope Urban III declared a "holy war for the holy land," the Christian equivalent of the Islamic Jihad, and the first of  Crusades was underway.  There would be eight major Crusades, and this era of Western History would last from 1096 until around 1270.  The impact of these religious/military expeditions on the Western world-view was immense.                                                                    Results of the Crusades           One of the great, though perhaps inevitable, tragedies of the Crusades was the impact of the armies on the city of Byzantium.  Although the eastern Empire was substantially reduced in size by the year 1000, that portion which remained had accumulated a vast amount of wealth, particularly in the capital city of Constantinople.  As the Crusaders passed through Byzantine territory on their way to fulfill their holy mission, they did not hesitate to participate in the unholy acts of theft and pillage.  The Fourth Crusade finished with purpose what had occurred incidently on the earlier Crusades.  Those who supposedly came to the Byzantine Empire to secure its well-being became, ironically, the agents of its destruction.  Though Constantinople would enjoy another two centuries of freedom, it had been severly weakened and would never recover, falling to Turkish forces in 1456.           The Crusades also gave the medieval Europeans their first direct trade contact with the East. New foods and textiles began to appear in European markets. Cane sugar, buckwheat, rice, apricots, watermelons, oranges, limes, lemons, cotton, damask, satin, velvet, and unusual dyes, though still a luxury, whetted European appetites for more.  The East also showed the crusaders a civilization superior in many ways to that of Europe. Large cities, splendid buildings,  highly developed arts and crafts, medical skills, and scientific knowledge had planted seeds in the European imagination, and these seeds would soon grow into plants yielding abundant fruit.           The Crusades failed to regain the Holy Land, but their contact with the East awakened Europe to new ways of living and to new thinking. This would eventually lead to the Renaissance, and thence to modern Europe. The Muslims had successfully kept Europeans from expanding to the east, but in doing so they drove the Europeans westward and finally discovered the New World.

THE COLUMBIAN EXCHANGE

It is the opinion of many modern global historians that cultural interaction is the fundamental motive force of human progress.  Cultural interaction, however, is a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, there is the exchange of goods that leads to an exchange of ideas, to the mutual enrichment of both cultures.  On the other, there are many negative cultural interactions which usually act in the interest of only one party.  War, for instance, is certainly a cultural interaction, but benefit from war is reaped only by the victors, and then only at great cost.           The discovery of the Americas brought about cultural interaction on an unparalleled level of magnitude, and the resultant changes in both the Old and the New World challenge human comprehension.  This particular cultural interaction has been aptly entitled The Columbian Exchange.                                                      THE IMPACT OF DISEASE            The last glacial age saw the advance of multiple waves of migration across the Bering Strait and down a narrow, ice-free corridor on the western side of the Rocky Mountains.  The cold temperatures, combined with the process of natural selection, extinguished the great majority of the Old World diseases.  As a result, the people of the New World lacked any immunity to the diseases of the Old, and interaction between these two cultures resulted in numerous devastating epidemics among the Native Americans.           In the century following 1521, the population of Central Mexico decreased from 20 million to approximately 700,000.  Nearly 75% of the Mayan population was destroyed.  The same period saw the Inca population decline from 9 million to approximately 600,000.                                                            OLD WORLD                                       SMALLPOX-First appeared on the island of Hispaniola in 1519 and was then transmitted to Mexico by an infected member of the Cortes expedition in 1520              MALARIA-Arrived with the African slave populations; took a heavy toll on Europeans as well as the Native American Population.           YELLOW FEVER-Possibly imported from Africa, but other research indicates that the disease was already present before the conquest near Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico.  Large numbers of Europeans died in the Carribean Basin. BUBONIC PLAGUE, INFLUENZA, MEASLES, DYPTHERIA, TYPHUS.           The only significant disease to be transplanted from the New World to the Old was syphilis.           There is little evidence that Europeans consciously used disease as a weapon, (at least this early in their history) but the tremendous attrition rate certainly undermined the ability of indigenous peoples to resist the settlers.                                               EXCHANGE OF FOODSTUFFS           Generally speaking, latitude is the primary determinate of which plants can be grown where.           EUROPEAN CROPS TRANSPLANTED TO THE NEW WORLD:           Wheat was originally a Southwest Asian grass, yet today it dominates farming in the American Mid-West.  Similarly, rice was also an Asian grass, and is now an important crop in the American South, particularly in Louisiana.  Olives and grapes, of Mediterranean origin, are now important cash crops in Southern California.  In the past twenty years, the hills of Northern Georgia have been coaxed into producing a number of highly regarded wines.  Interestingly, the first "experimental laboratory" in the New World was established in Savannah when James Oglethorpe devoted approximately forty acres of farmland to the purpose of finding out exactly which Old World plants were suitable for cultivation in the Americas.  Appropriately, a four-star restaurant now occupies the site.           Other, less desirable, plants also made the voyage to the New World.  Dandelions (though a rich source of vitamin C, it is still considered a weed), crabgrass, and Kentucky bluegrass are all immigrants to the Americas.            A number of African crops also found a ready haven in the New World: Bananas, Coconuts, Breadfruit, Sugar Cane, Citrus Fruits, Melons, and Figs soon adapted to the climate and have become staples in the American diet.                                NEW WORLD CROPS TRANSPLANTED TO THE OLD           The Old World also reaped a bountiful harvest from this cultural exchange.  Maize, or Indian Corn, is now an essential part of the diet of people in Romania, Egypt, South Africa, and many other nations.   The white potato, a crop originally domesticated in the Andes mountains, now feed tens of millions of people in Europe, Russia, and China.  Tomatoes and peppers, so essential to virtually every contemporary Italian dish, were originally crops domesticated by the American Indians. To this list one might add manioc, squash, yams, peanuts, and various beans.  Two essential elements of civilization, chocolate and coffee, were unknown to the Europeans before the discovery of the Americas.                                                                THE ANIMAL EXCHANGE           In terms of livestock, the Colombian Exchange was a one-way street. Horses, cattle, goats, sheep, and poultry were all introduced from the Old World to the New.  House cats were also brought over from Europe.  The honeybee is also an immigrant.  Interestingly, its primary value to the American way of life comes less from its production of honey than from its pollination of crops.           Pests also made the Atlantic voyage.  Mice, rats, sparrows, and starlings were frequent stowaways on the long journey.  The Mediterranean fruit fly and the Japanese beetle have been tormenting Americans for centuries.           Several of the plants and animals brought to the New World for specific beneficent purposes have proven to be noxious.  In the American south, cotton, which seriously depletes the soil, and an excessive amount of timber farming led to severe soil erosion.  To prevent further erosion, and restore the fertility of the soil, an Asian vine was introduced, the infamous Kudzu plant.  We reap the benefits of such forethought today.           A second example is far more recent.  In the 1950s researchers in Brazil sought to improve the honeybee's ability to adapt to hot climates by crossbreeding it with the African honeybee.  The resultant hybrid possessed the heat resistant qualities for which it was bred, as well as other, less desirable characteristics.  When irritated, the bees tend to attack en masse.  Several swarms accidently got loose from the laboratory, and by 1976 they had made it to Venezuela.  In 1982 they made it across the Panama Canal, and in the early 1990s the immigrants arrived in Texas and Southern California.  Researchers hope that the pest will be stopped at the frost line, but the greater threat is that they will further hybridize with the American honeybee population.                                                                        IMPACT ON POPULATIONS           The discovery of the Americas had a major impact on three populations.  Obviously, the most significant impact was upon the Native Americans.  Disease, conquest, and exploitation decimated entire populations, and those which were not decimated were displaced.  There was also intense cultural transformation as Christianity displaced native religious systems and European cultural patterns were transplanted to alien soil.           During the first half of the seventeenth century approximately 10,000 slaves per year were brought to the New World from Africa.  The second half of the seventeenth century saw this figure rise to 25,000 per year, and by the second half of the eighteenth century the number was in excess of 75,000 per year.  Three centuries of slave trade saw over transport of over 10 million individuals.  This forced migration of so many Africans across the Atlantic has been aptly called the African Diaspora.  Though by the term "diaspora" the historian generally means only the spreading out of a people from their native land, linguistically and realistically the term has much deeper meaning.  The term itself is Greek, and it recalls a time of primitive agricultural practice, before crops were carefully sown in rows.  It literally means "to sow seeds by scattering."  When applied to a population, diaspora implies a transplantation of culture, as well as a transplantation of individuals.           Particularly in the Carribean, Africans far outnumbered European settlers, and the slaves on the sugar plantations literally transformed the West Indies into centers of African population and culture.  The Brazillian culture of today reflects its African roots nearly to the same degree that it reflects those of Europe.           An interesting, though ironic, effect the Columbian Exchange had on populations was that it stimulated population growth in the Old World.  One particular example from Ireland may be cited.           The American white potato is a remarkable crop, and will produce amazing yields even in poor soil, providing the rainfall is sufficient.  This one crop became the staple of the Irish diet, alleviated famine, and allowed the Irish population to grow at an unprecedented rate.  Unfortunately, an American potato fungus destroyed the Irish crop in the 1840s, and thousands of people starved.  Epidemics became widespread due to the famine, and many others died.  Due to this dietary catastrophe, thousands of Irish immigrated to the New World in the middle of the nineteenth century, producing extensive social repercussions in the United States.  Today, a large percentage of Americans can trace their lineage directly back to this particular ecological disaster.

THE AGE OF EXPLORATION

The 'Pinta' and the 'Santa Maria,' exploring vessels used by Christopher Columbus during his first visit to the New World

TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO AND THE CIRCULATION OF HIS REPORTS           In the middle of the thirteenth century Venice was the commercial center of the Mediterranean world.  In 1269, as the final crusade was in process, Nicolo Polo and his brother, Maffeo, returned from a nine-year voyage to the East where they had met with Kublai Khan.  The Great Khan had received the travelers with the greatest of honors, and when the time came for their departure he asked them to be his ambassadors to the Pope.  He asked them to request the Pope to send 100 well-educated missionaries to his court, to teach his people about Christianity and the West.  He also asked the Pope to provide him with a bit of oil from the lamp at the tomb of Christ in Jerusalem.  Upon their return, they learned that the Pope had died.  His successor, Pope Gregory X, refused to allow 100 scholars to be led into the unknown East.  In Gregory's mind, two Dominican Friars would be more than sufficient.

The two monks, the Polo brothers, and their seventeen year old nephew, Marco, departed on their voyage in 1271.  The two friars made it as far as the eastern coast of the Mediterranean before they decided to exercise the better part of valor and return to the safety of the familiar.  The three Polos went on alone.            Rather than taking a ship from India to the more distant East, the Polos turned north, across Pamir, the "Roof of the World," a glacier-covered region where many of the peaks were in excess of twenty-thousand feet.  They then crossed the Gobi Desert, heedless of warnings that the wasteland was filled with treacherous spirits.  They passed through Mongolia, entered northern China, and arrived at the court of the Great Khan after three-and-a-half years of traveling.

An older Marco Polo

The Khan welcomed the returning Venetians, and was immediately impressed with the abilities of Marco, now a young man of twenty-one.  At once the Great Khan enlisted him in his diplomatic corp and sent Marco on a journey to a country six months distant.  When he returned, unlike the Mongol members of the embassy that had accompanied them, Marco was able to recount the story of his travels in detail.  On several occasions Kublai was heard to have remarked that "Marco Polo was the only man who had learned how to use his eyes."           The Great Khan came to rely heavily on the insight of Marco Polo, and the Italian became a loved and trusted advisor to the Mongol emperor.  For seventeen years Marco served the Khan, until a situation developed that facilitated his departure.           An escort was needed for a Tartar Princess who was to be wed to the Mongol ruler of Persia, a distant relative of Kublai Khan. Previous efforts had failed, and Persian envoys came to Kublai Khan for aid.  Only the Venetian servants of the Great Khan possessed enough knowledge of the sea to successfully deliver the bride, the ambassadors argued.  Kublai finally consented.           Marco Polo had just returned from a trip to India, and the Great Khan told him of his decision.  Reluctantly, the Polos agreed.  Fourteen ships and an entourage of 600 were to accompany them on their journey.  Only one ship, three Polos, a princess, and eighteen Mongol sailors survived the journey.  The Princess was successfully delivered.           The Polos continued their journey from Persia, along the coast of the Black Sea, through Constantinople, finally arriving in Venice in the winter of 1295.  They had been away for twenty-four year.  Their families had given them up for dead, and when the three shabbily dressed strangers showed up, their noble relatives would have nothing to do with these "impostors."  Opinions quickly changed, however, when the ragged travelers ripped open the seams of their clothing, and a king's ransom in gemstones came tumbling out of hidden pockets.  It was enough to jog every failing memory in the room, and a homecoming banquet was quickly produced.           Three years later Marco Polo was the commander of a Venetian galley.  Venice and its rival city, Genoa, had been involved in an ongoing conflict over trade routes.  In 1298 a battle off the Dalmatian coast left the Genoans victorious and placed seven thousand Venetian prisoners in their custody.  Among that seven thousand was Marco Polo.           In prison, Marco met one Rustichello, a citizen of Pisa who had been taken by the Genoans.  As fate would have it, Rustichello was a romance writer of some repute.  He had produced a well-received version of the King Arthur cycle, and immediately saw the potential of Marco's stories-an entirely new genre of literature-"A Description of the World."  Turning a disadvantage into an advantage, the Venetian traveler, working in concert with the writer of romances produced The Travels of Marco Polo.  Originally written in French, it was quickly translated into most of the languages of Europe.  It is safe to say that there has never been a book, either before or since, that brought so much new information into the public consciousness in such a short period of time.

THE PORTUGUESE MARITIME REVOLUTION           More than any other European population, that of the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal, had long-standing issues to settle with Islam.  Muslims known as the Moors had ruled Spain and Portugal, and the last remaining Islamic presence in the Peninsula would not be driven out until the time of Ferdinand and Isabella.  The nation of Portugal was born out of this conflict in the mid-twelfth century.  Henry, a son of the Duke of Burgundy, had fought for Henry of Navarre against the Moors, and as a result he was given a principality and the title Count of Portucale.  His son, Afonso Henriques (1128-1185), sought and won independence from the Crown of Navarre, by petitioning the Pope.  He was subsequently awarded the title King of Portugal.           Roughly two centuries later, after a series of Portueguese monarchs had built a substantial navy in order to secure her independence, a young visionary prince took steps that would alter the shape of the world forever.

Prince Henry the Navigator

Bartholomew Diaz

HENRY THE NAVIGATOR(1394-1460)           This visionary was Prince Henry, third surviving son of King John I of Portugal.  His mother was Philippa, daughter of the Englishman John, duke of Gaunt.  Like so many today, Henry felt himself a child of two worlds; the one dying, the other powerless to be born.  Though the last of the Crusades had taken place in 1270, the legacy of the Crusades was still very much alive in the minds of the Portuguese and Spanish due to the Reconquista, the re-conquering of territory in the Iberian Peninsula held by the Moors.  This particular struggle with Islam would continue throughout Henry's life, and 32 years beyond, for the Muslims would not be driven from Granada until 1492.           As Henry was coming to manhood, however, the Portuguese were at peace with their Islamic neighbors to the east, and in 1411, King John I concluded a peace treaty with the Kingdom of Castile, in which hostilities would be outlawed for the next one hundred and one years.  In a time when Knighthood was a necessary element of noble manhood, this pacified environment left Henry and his brothers without a proper channel through which to establish their virility.

King John suggested that Portugal host a jousting tournament, a public forum in which the three brothers could be tested against the finest knights in all Europe.  For the young princes, however, a tournament was a saccharine solution to their dilemma.  A true knight, they believed, should win his spurs in combat, not in sport, and the heirs to the throne of Portugal proposed an alternate plan.           Across the Straits of Gibraltar, on the northern coast of Africa, lay the Muslim stronghold of Ceuta (sy-oo'ta).  The princes, and the Royal Treasurer, persuaded King John that here, rather than in a staged tournament, was the place in which their Christian valor should be tested.  The king agreed, and preparations began at once.  After two years, the expedition was ready.  Henry's mother, Queen Philipa, had become mortally ill as a result of a fast she had undertaken to secure the success of the campaign, and she called her husband and sons to her deathbed.  To each she presented a piece of the True Cross which they were to wear in combat against the infidel forces, as well as a fine sword.  With her dying breath the Queen gave her blessing to the expedition.           In 1415 Henry and his brothers attacked the Moroccan citadel.  Only eight Portuguese soldiers died in the conflict, but the thriving commercial port was littered with the bodies of dead Muslims.  Henry won his spurs, but the conquest of Ceuta instilled in the young prince something far more enduring than knighthood.  As a Muslim city, Ceuta had been a terminus of the West African caravan trade, a thriving commercial city boasting over 24,000 shops.  With the arrival of the Portuguese, the caravans stopped, but the tales told by the merchants of happier days captured the young knights imagination.  Henry became fascinated by the continent of Africa and determined that the Portuguese would lead the way in the exploration of its coasts.  One of the benefits of capturing Ceuta was that the Portuguese came into possession of maps, produced by Jews from Majorca, that were far more reliable than those they had previously possessed.  Maps produced by Christians during this time tended to be fanciful, more concerned with locating the Garden of Eden or the mythical realm of Prester John than accurately conveying the lay of the land.  These maps had been produced by merchants, concerned with the most efficient way to traverse unknown territory in the pursuit of profit, and the desire for precision was therefore highly motivated.

Through the capture of Ceuta, Henry also became aware of "The Silent Trade."  The young prince was curious how commerce could take place between individuals who did not understand one another's language.  Muslim traders explained how they would journey with their caravans for twenty days, crossing the Atlas Mountains, and finally arriving at the shores of the Senegal River.  There they would lay out piles of salt, beads made of coral, and other inexpensive manufactured goods.  They would then retreat out of sight and wait.           Eventually, groups of tribesmen would arrive, and beside each pile left by the Moroccan merchants, the tribesmen would leave a pile of gold.  The tribesmen would then retreat from view, and the Moroccans would return, either taking the gold that had been offered, or reducing the offering of goods to a point commensurate with the offering.  They would then retire from sight, and the process would continue until both parties were satisfied.           At such stories, Henry's intellectual curiosity and missionary zeal knew no bounds.  The Portuguese had to seize control of Gibraltar from the Muslim infidels and gain control of this marvelous trade.           Henry immediately set out to organize a military venture, but as his troops set out an order came from Henry's father, King John, forbidding the expedition.  The young prince was deeply offended.  Instead of returning to Lisbon and joining his family in the government of the nation, Henry moved south.  There, at Sagres, the westernmost point of continental Europe, Henry gathered about himself a community of scholars, cartographers, shipbuilders and explorers that was destined to change the world forever.  It was there that he became Henry the Navigator.           From this base of operations Henry sent out his vessels of discovery.  Henry realized that the bulky, broad-in-the-beam cargo vessels in common usage at this time were unsuitable for voyages of exploration.  Though capable of transporting vast amounts of goods, they could only travel in a windward direction.   A new type of ship, the caravel, was developed under the watchful eyes of the team at Sagres, and production of the vessel began in the nearby port of Lagos.  Henry's shipbuilders incorporated shallow draught technology in to the caravels, adapted from the river boats of northern Portugal, which would enable the vessels to explore inlets and shallow bays.  From the Chinese, they took the axial rudder, and from Arab vessels they used the lateen sails, giving them the ability to tack into the wind.  The caravel was large enough to carry a crew of twenty and a two-year store of supplies.           Henry knew that the primary obstacle to the further exploration of Africa was fear of the unknown.  About half-way down the first great bulge of the African coast was Cape Bojador, and beyond this cape no European had ever traveled.  Located just north of the 26 parallel and just south of the Canary Islands, the Cape was more of a mental barrier than physical obstruction.  Between 1424 and 1433 Henry sent fifteen different missions to the ominous cape, and each returned, failing to forge further down the African coast.  Finally, Henry recruited an able captain from his own household, one Gil Eannes, who returned and reported that the cape was impassable.  Henry, however, had more confidence in his captain than the captain had in himself, and sent him out again the following year, with a promise of substantial reward should he prove successful.  Eannes took the challenge.  As his vessel drew near to the cape, Eannes swung to the west, out into the open sea, and when he cut to the east again he found that the cape was behind him.  He had not fallen off the edge of the world, nor had he steered his ship into the gates of hell.            Ten years later, in 1444, the first page in one of the darkest chapters in European history was turned, for this same Eannes traveled further down the African coast and brought back a marketable commodity, 200 human beings to be sold in the markets of Lisbon.           With this incident, the motive force behind Henry's exploration shifted from intellectual curiosity and missionary enthusiasm to profit.  There was money to be made in Africa.  Public sentiment, which to this time had been critical of Henry, maintaining that he was wasteful of the public trust, changed virtually overnight.  Everyone wanted a piece of the Africa trade.           Henry died in 1460, but Portugal's position as a world commercial power was just beginning.  Soon various segments of the African coast had been given the names by which it would be known for centuries to come:  The Ivory Coast, The Gold Coast, The Slave Coast, The Grain Coast, etc.           Henry's successor as the patron of Portuguese trade was King John II.  While Henry had been hampered by lack of financial resources (He died at Sagres in debt), King John had no such problems.  The public coffers had been restored by the African trade and was now self-sustaining.

BARTHOLOMEW DIAZ           John II decided to expand the Portuguese interest in the West Africa trade, and felt that the best way to do this was to take several of the Africans that had been captured on previous trips, educate them as emissaries, and deposit them along the African coast with samples of gold, silver, and spice; articles for which the Europeans would be willing to trade.  Six of these native trade ambassadors were left along the coast, and after the last of them was bid farewell, Diaz found his ship caught in a storm.  He and his men were driven out to sea, where the storm turned into a northerly wind of gale force.  The Portuguese were driven before this storm for the next thirteen days,  and they noticed that the sea and the wind had begun to turn cold.  Diaz and his crew were convinced that their day of reckoning had arrived, when suddenly the storm abated.

Lost at sea, the captain knew of only one thing to do.  He unfurled his sails, and headed east.  After several days there was still no sign of land, so Diaz turned his ship due north.  Finally he sighted mountains high in the distant.  What no amount of planning could accomplish had been secured by a providential wind.  Diaz had been driven around the point of Africa, landing 230 miles north of Cape Town.  Still not satisfied with his success, he drove his vessel another 300 miles up the African coast, intent on reaching India.  But his men had had enough.  Presented with a document signed by his entire crew, the courageous captain was compelled to turn around.           Diaz returned to Lisbon in 1488.  Standing nearby as Diaz gave his report to king John II was another captain who had thus far been unsuccessful in his efforts to gain the king's favor.  He a proposed a western route to the Indies in 1484, and now, again in 1488.  With the return of Diaz, Portugal would have no need of such a route, for the Indies could be reached by sea to the east.  The disappointed seaman's  name was Christopher Columbus.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS           Though frustrated by Diaz's success, Columbus refused to give up on his plan.  Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, around 1451.  He had spent the first twenty or so years of his life in that city working with his brother, Bartholomew, as a map-maker.  His brother, however, had left for Lisbon in search of greener pastures, and Christopher had found employment with the Flemish fleet.  In 1476 he was on a Flemish ship off the coast of Portugal that was attacked by the French.  The vessel sank, and Christopher, as luck would have it, was thrown up on the coasts of Lagos, just a few miles from Henry the Navigator's citadel.  After a time among the friendly people of the port, he decided to make Portugal his home, and headed to Lisbon to join his brother.           During the next several years, the two Columbus brothers came to believe that the shortest sea route to the Indies would be found by travelling westward across the Atlantic, rather than around the tip of Africa.  It proved to be something of a hard sell.  Columbus was turned down in 1484 by King John  II of Portugal, and again in 1488 subsequent to the success of Diaz.  His brother fared no better, and was rejected by both England and France, though he did take a position as a mapmaker with the French court as a result of his proposition.            Christopher had better luck in Spain, for at the last minute Ferdinand and Isabella decided that they would underwrite the expedition.  In all likelihood, this decision was motivated by fear that Columbus could successfully sell his plan to the French rather than genuine enthusiasm for the project.

Columbus left the ports of Spain on 2 August 1492, which, incidently, was the day Ferdinand and Isabella had designated as the deadline for all Jews to have either converted to Catholicism or departed from Spanish territory.  The journey of Columbus was a considerably less-impressive feat of seamanship than previous Portuguese expeditions around the tip of Africa.  The sea was calm, the winds were friendly, and since the voyage lasted only 33 days, the crew remained reasonably docile.  Columbus did anticipate problems, and purposefully misled his crew, daily underestimating the distance they had traveled, by deceit making the sea seem less imposing than it actually was.  His pilot plan was simple enough.  He would steer his ships south to the Canary Islands, then head due west.  The reasoning behind such a course was that Marco Polo, upon whose records Columbus relied quite heavily, had established the location of Japan at the same latitude as the Canaries, and also indicated that Japan lay 1500 miles off the easternmost coast of China.  Had the ocean been considerably smaller and two continents not been in the way, in all liklihood Columbus would have been greeted by sword-wielding samurai rather than cigar-smoking Indians, but that was not to be the case.            Midway through the journey, 21-22 September, Columbus and his crew were the first Europeans to encounter the Sargasso Sea, a large area in the mid-Atlantic covered with bright yellow and green seaweed.  Finally, on 12 October 1492, the lookout on the Pinta sighted land,  and earned a substantial reward from his captain for doing so.           Columbus was convinced that he had reached the easternmost islands of Asia, and named the first of these San Salvador.  Sixteen days later, he steered his small fleet into a harbor on the eastern coast of Cuba, and designated the area Alpha and Omega.  It was here, Columbus was convinced, that the West began and the East ended.  When the natives there informed Columbus that gold could be found at Cubanacan, the term sounded close enough to Kubalai Khan for the European explorer, and a diplomatic party was dispatched.  Unfortunately, Cubanacan simply means "mid-Cuba" in the dialect of the local Indians.  On their way back to the ship, the ambassadors did make one history altering discovery when they encountered a party of Indians enjoying the smoke of a certain herb.  Tobacco would soon be recognized across Europe and Asia as either the most wonderful, or wretchedly sinful, commodity the New World had to offer, depending on one's point of view.  For three months after the first sighting of land, Columbus and his fleet cruised the Carribean, leaving for Spain on 16 January 1493.  Even after three subsequent journeys to the area in the next twelve years, Columbus remained convinced that he had simply discovered the easternmost islands of Asia.

Two contemporary portraits of Columbus

THE TREATY OF TORDESILLAS           The initial voyage of Columbus resulted in a significant diplomatic dispute between the sovereigns of Spain and Portugal.  On his way westward, Columbus had claimed certain islands in the vicinity of the Azores for the Spanish crown.  For several decades the Portuguese had claimed all of these islands as their own, and hostilities were inevitable.  Further complicating the situation, both ruler were Catholic, and were rivals for the favor of the Pope.  At this time the Holy Father was Alexander VI, a powerful player in the secular politics of the day.  Alexander felt that it would be expedient to extend his blessings to the Spanish in their endeavors, and in a series of 4 proclamations he asserted that any lands west of a line drawn 100 leagues west of the Azores belonged to Spain.  This line was proposed by Columbus himself,  and was quickly met with disapproval by the Portuguese.  John II insisted that the line be drawn further to the west, and with his navy behind him he went to Spain to argue his case.  Since the Reformation had not yet fractured Christendom, the two monarchs were quick to work out a compromise.  Known as the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), this agreement stipulated that all territories west of a line 370 leagues, or roughly 1200 nautical miles, that were not governed by a Christian monarch, would belong to Spain, while all territories to the east of that line would belong to Portugal.  Besides preventing a war between the two Iberian powers, this treaty maintained Portuguese control of the trade route around the tip of Africa, while simultaneously guaranteeing Spanish ascendancy in the New World.  The one interesting exception to this was that Brazil lay predominately on the eastern side of the line, and therefore fell under the Portugese sphere of influence.  To this day Brazil is the only country in South America where the official language is anything other than Spanish.           At the time of the Treaty of Tordesillas, however, the continents of North and South America had yet to be discovered, and the attention of the Portuguese was still directed toward the East.

VASCO DE GAMA           In 1492, Portuguese exploration received an added impetus when Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain gave the Jewish population the option of conversion or exile.  Just as happened following the Nazi occupation of Austria, there was a rapid exodus of intellectual talent from Spain, and just as the United States welcomed the fleeing Austrian Jewish intellectuals, those who fled Spain found a home in Portugal.  Among these refugees was the brilliant astronomer Abraham Zacuto.           One of the difficulties encountered by the Portuguese as they sailed into the southern hemisphere was loss of the ability to determine latitude once they passed the equator.  The North Star was no longer visible, so an alternative method had to be devised.  Zacuto solved the problem by measuring the declension of the sun down the coast of Africa and constructing a reference table.

Vasco de Gama

The death of John II in 1495 brought new life into the Portuguese explorations.  Manuel I, called "Manuel, the Fortunate" because of the vast potential he had inherited, decided it was time to follow up on Diaz's expedition and complete the journey around the African coast all the way to India.  Vasco de Gama was chosen to lead this expedition, based on his experience both as an explorer and as a diplomat.  Preparation for the journey took two years, and when he left Portugal it was with a crew if 170 occupying four ships provisioned for three years.  The crew included a large number of expendable convicts, as well as priests.           De Gama's expedition made it to Calicut, on the south-western portion of the Indian peninsula.  There he was greeted by several Moorish traders, who were astonished to find the Portuguese so far from their homes.  When ask what he was looking for in this distant land, De Gama replied "Spices and Christians," emphasizing both the economic and spiritual motivation for exploration.           Though De Gama  did not find Prester John, he did prove that a viable sea route existed between the East and West, and established the basis for a Portuguese maritime empire.  His return voyage took 13 months, and was fraught with considerably greater difficulty than his journey to Calicut.  Contrary winds, conflict with Muslim rulers, and scurvy took a heavy toll on his crew.  Two ships and 55 seamen survived to return to Lisbon in 1499.

Three years later, in 1502, De Gama left Lisbon on his second journey to the East.  This however, was not a journey of exploration, but of conquest.  A Muslim ship returning a group of pilgrims from Mecca to India was seized, and a substantial cargo was confiscated.  The ship was then burned, sending 380 men, as well as a number of women and children to their deaths.  Less than a month later, the Portuguese fleet arrived off the coast of Calicut, demanded the surrender of the city, and the expulsion of every Muslim from the territory.  When the ruler of Calicut hesitated to meet his demands, De Gama seized a number of Indian fishermen and dismembered them.  Their hands, feet, and heads were placed in a boat, and sent to the reluctant ruler, telling him that he may as well take these pieces of his people to make a stew.  Before the decade had expired, the Portuguese had taken Malacca and were the principle naval power in the Indian Ocean.           This first decade of the sixteenth century completely revolutionized the way in which man viewed his world.  The Mediterrenean- The Sea in the Middle of the Earth-was now simply a land-locked lake.  De Gama's voyage destroyed in a decade a commercial network that had existed since the first Phoenician traders set out in their fragile vessels some 2500 years earlier.  It was just the beginning.                                                                    AMERIGO VESPUCCI           The Treaty of Tordesillas created a substantial amount of excitement on the part of both the Spanish and the Portuguese.  Europeans believed that the Pope, as the vicar of Christ on earth, had the right to assign secular authority over any territory that was not already claimed by a Christian sovereign.  In essence, the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the entire planet between the two rival powers of the Iberian peninsula.  Since the line extended through the North and South Poles, around through Asia, the Spanish hoped that this would place the lucrative spice trade within their realm.  The Portuguese, on the other hand, were curious as to exactly how much of the newly-discovered lands to the west lay within their domain.  To determine these matters, European explorers had to discover exactly how far it was from the islands of the Caribbean to Asia. Further exploration was needed.           In 1501, Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine seaman, left  Lisbon in command of three Caravel ships, beginning a sixteen-month journey of exploration in the Southern Hemisphere. Vespucci had conducted a previous voyage for the Spanish crown, but the Treaty of Tordesillas and the need for secrecy had compelled the Spanish to insist that further exploration of the Spanish holding should be conducted by Spanish nationals.  The able Vespucci was quickly recruited by the Portuguese.           After a journey of sixty-four days, Vespucci noted in his log, that he arrived at a new land which seemed to be a continent.  In order to verify this assertion, he led his vessels along the South American coast for 2400 miles.  Columbus had not discovered the Indies, but the vanguard islands of an entirely new continent, whose existence had been speculated by Plato two thousand years earlier, and Seneca several centuries later, but concerning which no shred of evidence had been presented.  It was a German map-maker who eventually bestowed a name on this New World . . . America, after Amerigo Vespucci.           Vespucci's discoveries created more problems than it solved.  The size of the earth had virtually doubled as far as the Europeans were concerned in the past decade.  To make matters worse, there was a continent standing between Europe and Asia.  Initially, this "America" was seen as the greatest of impediments by the Iberian powers.  No one was concerned with what it had to offer, only how to get around or through the unfortunate obstacle.

BALBOA           By this time the Spanish had managed to establish several colonies on the islands of the Carribean, governed by Diego Columbus, son of Christopher, from Santo Domingo.  In 1500, at the age of twenty-five, Vasco Balboa left Spain to seek his fortune as a planter in the new Carribean capital.  Ten years later there were Spanish colonies on the eastern coast of what is now Panama, and Balboa was encouraged by his accumulated debt to flee his creditors and set up a residence on the mainland.           When he arrived at the Gulf of Darien, he found that the settlement had been decimated by famine, and the poisonous arrows of the neighboring natives. The government of Spain placed a well-to-do lawyer named Fernando Enciso over the fledgling colony, yet he proved to be woefully inadequate. Seeing the colony on the verge of failure, Balboa siezed command with the blessing of Diego Columbus.  Balboa shipped Enciso and his supporters back to Spain, and moved the settlement to a more hospitable environment; more food, as well as less disagreeable natives.  He then began to establish alliances with the natives.

Balboa

Balboa married the daughter of a local chieftain, and assisted his new father-in-law against his tribal enemies.  The Chieftain responded to Balboa's assistance with a substantial gift of gold.           Squabbling broke out as the Spaniards measured the gold, attempting to seperate the king's portion.  Shocked at such avarice among supposedly religious men, the chieftain's son overturned the table that held the scales, and roundly abused the Spaniards with a sermon against the evil of greed.  If the Spaniards desired gold so ravenously, the young man said, then he could lead them to a region that flowed with gold, and perhaps their appetites could be satisfied.  Moreover, this region bordered upon another ocean, upon which other races of men sailed in ships as large as the Spanish caravels.  Balboa needed no further enticement.           Accompanied by one hundred and ninety of his own men as well as several thousand native porters, Balboa left Darien, moving south and westward across the Isthmus of Panama.  The way was fraught with peril.  Steep mountains, snakes, and dense jungle blocked their way.  At one point in the journey the party came across a native village in which the nobility dressed as women and apparently practiced a sexual preference the Spanish found overwhelmingly offensive.  600 Native American cross-dressers were killed as a consequence, most of them by trained attack dogs.           After trekking for twenty-five days through the rain forest, Balboa and his party crested a hill and beheld his objective.  Another four days of travel, and Balboa was standing on the shore of the Pacific.  After prayer, he raised the Spanish flag and took possession of the ocean, and all the countries that bordered it, in the name of Spain.           Unfortunately for Balboa, news of his coup against Enciso reached the Spanish authorities before news of his remarkable discovery, and a new governor returned with a powerful force to assist his assertion of power.  Balboa moved to the other side of the Isthmus and began an enterprise of ship construction.  By 1517 he had completed four ships when the new governor, Pedrarias Davila, ordered a force to bring him into custody.  Balboa was accused of attempting to throw off the sovereignty of the Spanish Crown and set himself up as the Emperor of Peru.  Before he could mount a defense, Balboa and four of his supporters were beheaded.           The death of Balboa foretold extensive reforms of the Spanish policy in the New World.  Among those who brought Balboa into custody was Francisco Pizarro, who would later have his own place among the conquistodors.  With twenty ships and fifteen hundred men at his command, Davila initiated the first oppressive policies against the Native Americans.

MAGELLAN           Ferdinand Magellan began his career in the employ of the Portuguese.  Though born in the highlands, where, in his own words, life was "nine months of winter and three months of hell," he was raised as a page in the Portuguese court.  He spent a substantial amount of his early life as a commercial agent in the Spice Islands, and by the age of 32 he had been promoted to captain.  Shortly thereafter, Magellan was lamed for life in combat against the Moors of North Africa.  His life then took an unexpected turn.

Ferdinand Magellan

Charges were brought against Magellan for trading with the enemy, and the Captain quickly lost his favor with King Manuel of Portugal.  Deeply offended by both the accusations, and the fact that King Manuel was so quick to hear them, Magellan renounced his allegience to Portugal, and offered his services to the Spanish Crown.  It was readily accepted.           Spain was in an unusual position at this time.  The Treaty of Tordesillas had established a line which divided the earth between the two Iberian powers, yet it was impossible to determine the exact location of this line on the Asian side of the globe.  No one knew either the circumference of the earth nor how far the Asian continent extended to the east.  If the distance between Asia and the American continent was sufficiently small, then the line of demarcation would be located sufficiently westward on the Asian side of the globe to cause the all important spice trade would fall into the Spanish sphere of influence.  If such should be the case, Spain could legitimately take control of that which the Portuguese had exerted such efforts to achieve.

Charles V, King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, saw the potential in such a venture, and decided to support Magellan's quest for a westward passage to the Spice Islands.  Far and away, this would be the most dangerous sea-voyage ever undertaken.  The five ships with which Magellan began his voyage were barely seaworthy, and, though the journey was being made under the auspices of Spain, the 250-man crew was made up of Portuguese, Italians, Greeks, Frenchmen, and even an Englishman.  There were, however, three Spanish national captains accompanying Magellan, all of which were dissatisfied that the decision-making responsibilities on the voyage had been granted to a Portuguese defector.  Magellan, therefore, faced two overwhelming challenges: one of command and the other of seamanship.           The Portuguese captain-general was tested before his ships ever left the Atlantic ocean.  Off the coast of South America, the crews on three of his five ships (the Conception, San Antonio, and Victoria), mutinied, intending to return their vessels to Spain.  Only his own ship, the Trinidad, and the Santiago, smallest of the five, remained loyal to Magellan.  Magellan knew that he had a number of loyal men on the Victoria, so he sent a party of his own men on board the ship, supposedly to discuss terms under which they would be allowed to return to Spain. When on board, they immediately put the mutinous captain to death and convinced the rebellious crew to return to duty.  With his three loyal ships Magellan blocked the entrance to the bay.  The San Antonio made a break for the open sea, but it was quickly overcome, and the crew of the Conception, seeing the futility of their endeavor, quickly surrendered.           Only one of the mutineers was executed, and this as a disciplinary measure.  The leader of the conspiracy, as well as a priest who had been instrumental in the revolt were marooned on the coast.  Though a number of mutineers were sentenced to death, Magellan later wisely granted pardons to them all.           A short time later the Santiago, Magellan's smallest vessel, was wrecked while exploring the coast.  The survivors had to make a strenuous overland journey in order to join the other vessels which were wintering in a bay.  During the course of this journey, the shipwrecked wanderers came across the largest man any of them had ever seen--a Native American so tall that the most robust Spaniard came to his waist.  Such a curiousity could not be left behind, so the survivors of the ruined vessel captured the Patagonian giant and led him back to Magellan.           When the survivors were taken on board the other vessels, Magellan ordered an inventory of his supplies.  Much to his surprise, and probably at the instigation of Portuguese saboteurs, the suppliers at Seville had provisioned his ships for only six months at sea, rather than the anticipated eighteen, then falsified the records.  Short tempers would now be joined by short rations.           The following month, Magellan and his men arrived at what appeared to be a bay.  Upon closer inspection it was found that the bay was actually a well-hidden strait, the long-sought passage to the Pacific.  Magellan and his crew had been searching for a passage similar to the Strait of Gibraltar--simply an opening from one ocean to another.  What they actually found was the most devious and complicated water-way in the world, a narrow maze filled with deceptive dead ends and ice-capped crags.  It took Magellan 38 days to weave his way through the 334 mile passage.  Perhaps the passage would have been quicker had it not been for certain complications.           As he sought his way through, he sent his largest vessel, the San Antonio, ahead to investigate a possible passage to the open sea.  When the ship did not return, Magellan retraced his course for 250 miles, seeking some sign of the errant vessel and finding no trace.  He finally asked his astrologer (a necessity part of any dangerous voyage) for information on the whereabouts of the San Antonio.  The tidings of the star-gazer were grim:  the crew of the San Antonio had mutinied, and the ship was now well on its way back to Spain.  Without entering into a discussion on the validity of horoscopes, suffice it to say that the astrologer was not far from the mark.  The pilot of the San Antonio despised Magellan for not giving him a command of his own, and at the first opportune moment he imprisoned his captain and turned the vessel towards home.  Magellan would now be forced to continue his task with only 3 ships at his command.           When he finally arrived at the western entrance to the Strait, he found himself confronted with nightmarish winds.  Later sailors would call these gale-force gusts the "williwaws," contending that these are the most treacherous bursts of air on the planet.           He did, however, survive the passage, and unknown to the captain and his crew, before him stood the widest open expanse of water on the earth.  Magellan had expected to find that only a narrow waterway separated the western coast of the Americas from Asia; Japan should only be a few weeks sailing away.  Instead, he and his crew found themselves cast out on the open sea for a period of 100 days and a passage of 12,000 miles with no source of fresh food or water.  All became dangerously ill, and 19 men, including the Patagonian giant, died during the course of the journey.  The leather sail-covers were taken down, softened in sea-water, and eaten, and rats were considered a delicacy.  What little provision remained was found to be filled with maggots.           After three months and twenty days at sea, the mariners came across the island of Guam, where they were able to lay in a fresh store of rice, fruit, and water.  Unfortunately for the Europeans, the natives of Guam had no concept of private property.  They swarmed upon the boats, removing everything that wasn't nailed down.  Though today we call these islands the Marianas, to Magellan and his men they were the Islas de Ladrones, the Isles of Thieves.           After leaving Guam, Magellan reached the Phillipines within a week.  Here he was finally on familiar territory.  As a Portuguese agent he had traded in these waters, and he could now state with confidence that he was the first human being ever to travel all the way around the world.  It was there, however, that a clash between primitive tribes did what the sea, the wind, mutiny, and starvation could not accomplish:  Magellan was killed by the poisoned arrows of the natives while covering the retreat of his crew on the tiny island of Mactan.           Of the three remaining ships, only the Victoria was judged sufficiently sea-worthy to complete the journey back to Spain.  Traveling around the Cape of Good Hope, the lone ship made its way northward along the coast of Africa.  When they stopped to pick up supplies in the Cape Verde Islands, the Portuguese captured and imprisoned half the crew.  When the Victoria finally returned to the port of Seville, there were only 18 out of an original crew of 250 remaining.  They had been at sea only 12 days short of three years.  Though sick and feeble, these men had piloted their vessel around the globe, and the way in which man viewed his world was transformed forever.

">

">

">

">

">

">

">

">