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EUROPE, 1201 to 1500 CE

The Black Death had encouraged the development of sailing ships that would not require a lot of manpower. The Portuguese built such ships -- three-masted ships with stern rudders that could sail forty-five degrees into the wind, carry more cargo and sail the high seas. These ships carried cannon that fired stone or iron balls, which could demolish a ship at a distance, reducing the need for armed marines. [note]

The sea captains benefited from pilot books -- first created around the year 1280. Away from shore they benefited from use of a magnetic compass and from an astrolabe for measuring the angle of celestial bodies from the horizon, the astrolabe enabling sea captains to determine their location north and south. Positions east and west were calculated from speed and time.

The Portuguese were interested in trade. They reached the Canary Islands in 1415, off the coast of northwestern Africa. They discovered the Azores Islands in 1419, about 900 miles west of Portugal. Of concern to the Portuguese was Islam. They wished to find a route to India that outflanked Muslim dominated trade routes. They also wished to convert the "heathen" and to establish Christian colonies. In 1424 they began to colonize Madeira Island. They warred against Muslims at Ceuta and Tangier. In 1441 a ship brought back to Portugal the first slaves and some gold dust. In 1443 the Portuguese discovered the four by two-mile Arguin (Arguim) Island -- a 1,600 kilometer sail from the Canaries. An increase in slave trading followed, with the Portuguese buying more slaves from Africans, while believing that they were giving the slaves an opportunity to become Christians.

Aiming toward the Riches and the Saving of Souls

The kingdom of Castile had expanded to Cordoba and Seville in 1236, and since then it had been forcing Grenada to pay tribute. In 1469 Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon married, more or less unifying these two kingdoms, creating what looks like the modern map of the Iberian peninsula -- except for Islamic kingdom of Grenada in the south and the small kingdom of Navarre in the northeast.

Pursuing what they believed was God's will, Isabella and Ferdinand moved against Judaism and Islam within their realms -- an effort toward creating Christianity as the universal faith. It was the time of Tomás de Torquemada, Inquisitor General under Isabella and Ferdinand. Converted Jews and Muslims as well as Catholic intellectuals were among the persecuted. Of the 200,000 or so Jews who had lived in Spain, perhaps as many as 150,000 fled. And in 1482 Castile launched a war of conquest against Grenada.

Meanwhile, the Portuguese had reached the equator, and in 1487 a Portuguese explorer, Bartolomew Diaz, sailed as far as the southern tip of Africa -- the Portuguese having overcome fears of monsters at sea and boiling water at the equator.

In 1492, after having defeated Grenada, Isabella and Ferdinand backed Christopher Columbus's dream of reaching India by sailing westward. Columbus believed, as did many literate Europeans, that the world was round. He had calculated that a couple thousand miles of ocean lay between his point of departure and Japan. He promised to bring back gold, spices and silks, to spread Christianity and to lead an expedition to China. If a more accurate calculation of the size of the planet were known, he might have tried to reach India by going east.

Christopher Columbus and his crew were at sea for seventy days, his crew saying their vespers and singing a hymn to the Virgin Mary every night before sleeping. The island they came upon Columbus called Hispaniola (the island that today includes the Dominican Republic and Haiti). If people on this island had known what was coming their way they would have been praying to their gods and sharpening their spears.

In 1498 a Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, did make it to India. He sailed around Africa, stopping at four places in eastern Africa along the way and picking up a guide. He dropped anchor at Calicut in India (modern Kozhikode), and he returned to Portugal in 1499 with a load of spices which brought him a huge profit. This inspired a mad scramble for more voyaging across the sea. From his king he received the rank of an untitled noble, a pension and property. Portugal then sent a fleet of thirteen ships to make another voyage south around Africa. The fleet was blown off course and ended in what is today called Brazil, which the Portuguese claimed as theirs.

Christendom's penetration of the "New World" had begun, with the excuse that they had an opportunity to convert heathens to Christianity -- a motivation that had been lacking in the Chinese. Also unlike the Chinese, the Spanish, Portuguese and English were far from isolationism. They did not see themselves at the center of the world; they saw Jerusalem as the center of the world.

Another motive for their penetration of the New World was the search for gold -- the monetary value of gold had risen relative to the price of other things with the recovery of Europe's population. But Europeans venturing overseas cannot be said to have been any more greedy than the Mongols had been, or any more greedy than other Asians, or Arabs and Africans who also traded. Islam still had its trade routes in Africa and across the Indian Ocean, and its slave trade.

The Portuguese, Spanish, English and Dutch had the technology needed to sail across the Atlantic and around the world. Technology had shrunk the world -- the voyage of Columbus and that of Vasco da Gama being the first of what was to be called "globalization." Also in the second half of the 1400s printing with movable type had come into being in Europe -- printing on paper. A new age was dawning.

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