AP European History

Crash Course

The Age of Exploration and the Commercial Revolution

II. Portugal: East by Sea to an Empire of Spices

• A. Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460)
  • 1. Prince Henry organized voyages along the west coast of Africa.
  • 2. By the time of Prince Henry's death in 1460, the Portuguese had established a series of trading posts along the West African coast. These posts did a thriving business in gold and slaves.
• B. The Portuguese Trading-Post Empire
  • 1. Key explorers
    • a. Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope and returned to Portugal in 1488.
    • b. Vasco da Gama reached the Malabar coast of India in 1498 and returned to Portugal with a cargo of pepper and cinnamon worth 60 times the cost of the expedition.
    • c. Pedro Cabral accidentally discovered Brazil in 1500 while sailing to India. He returned to Portugal with 300,000 pounds of spices.
  • 2. Commercial trading posts
    • a. The Portuguese did not attempt to conquer territories. Instead, they built fortified trading posts designed to control trade routes.
    • b. The most important Portuguese trading posts were located at Goa on the Indian coast, at Malacca on the Malay peninsula, and at Macao on the southern coast of China.
• C. Consequences
  • 1. The Portuguese ended the Venetian and Muslim monopoly of trade with Asia.
  • 2. The center of European commerce shifted from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.
  • 3. The new sea routes reduced the importance of the Baltic Sea thus leading to the decline of the Hanseatic League.

III. Spain: West by Sea to a New World

• A. Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
  • 1. Although he believed he had reached Asia, Columbus had in fact discovered Caribbean islands that were part of a vast New World.
  • 2. Columbus's voyages helped to propel Spain into the forefront of European exploration, conquest, and settlement.
• B. The Spanish Conquests
  • 1. Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztec empire in Mexico (1519-1521).
  • 2. Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca empire in Peru (1532-1533).
• C. Spanish America
  • 1. By the end of the sixteenth century, Spain possessed an American empire twenty times its own size.
  • 2. The Aztecs and other indigenous peoples were converted to Christianity and became subjects of the Spanish king.
  • 3. The king of Spain governed his American empire through a Council of the Indies in Spain and through viceroys in Mexico City and Lima, Peru.