What was age of exploration

The issue of defining areas of influence became critical. It resolved by Papal intervention in when the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the world between the two powers. The Spanish received everything west of this line, territory that was still almost completely unknown.

Columbus and other Spanish explorers were initially disappointed with their discoveries. Unlike Africa or Asia the Caribbean islanders had little to trade with the Spanish ships. The islands thus became the focus of colonization efforts. It was not until the continent itself was explored that Spain found the wealth it had sought in the form of abundant gold. In the Americas the Spanish found a number of empires that were as large and populous as those in Europe.

However, the Spanish conquistadors, with the aid of the pandemics of disease their arrival unleashed, managed to conquer them with only a handful of men. Once Spanish suzereignancy was established the main focus became the extraction and export of gold and silver. The nations outside of Iberia refused to acknowledge the Treaty of Tordesillas. France, the Netherlands, and Britain each had a long maritime tradition and, despite Iberian protections, the new technologies and maps soon made their way north.

The first of these missions was that of the British funded John Cabot. It was the first of a series of French and British missions exploring North America. Spain had largely ignored the northern part of the Americas as it had few people and far fewer riches than Central America.

The expeditions of Cabot, Cartier and others were mainly hoping to find the Northwest passage and thus a link to the riches of Asia. This was never discovered but in their travels other possibilities were found and in the early seventeenth century colonist from a number of Northern European states began to settle on the east coast of North America. During the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the combination of compass and sundial became an aid for travelers.

The ivory diptych sundial was a specialty of manufacturers in Nuremberg. It also has a small opening for inserting a weather vane in order to determine the direction of the wind, a feature useful for navigators. However, its primary use would have been meteorological. Voorhies, James. Levenson, Jay A. Circa Art in the Age of Exploration. Exhibition catalogue. Washington, D.

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Share Flipboard Email. Table of Contents Expand. The Birth of the Age of Exploration. The Discovery of the New World. Opening the Americas. The End of the Era. Contributions to Science. Long-Term Impact. Amanda Briney. Geography Expert. Amanda Briney, M. Updated January 24, Impact of the Age of Exploration Explorers learned more about areas such as Africa and the Americas and brought that knowledge back to Europe.

Massive wealth accrued to European colonizers due to trade in goods, spices, and precious metals. Methods of navigation and mapping improved, switching from traditional portolan charts to the world's first nautical maps. New food, plants, and animals were exchanged between the colonies and Europe. Indigenous people were decimated by Europeans, from a combined impact of disease, overwork, and massacres.

The workforce needed to support the massive plantations in the New World, led to the trade of enslaved people , which lasted for years and had an enormous impact on Africa.

The impact persists to this day , with many of the world's former colonies still considered the "developing" world, while colonizers are the First World countries, holding a majority of the world's wealth and annual income.

Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Briney, Amanda. A Brief History of the Age of Exploration. Major Events and Eras in American History.