The age of exploration

started in Portugual

Portugual begins in the 12th century as a County of Leon-Castile

Henry and Teresa of Portugual take the County and claim that they are the King and
Queen
They have a son named Afonso I of Portugaul
The Pope grants him the title of King
Portugual gains a reputation for good merchants and sailors
they want to get around the Ottoman Empire and Venice to get to India and China
This desire, as well as their desire to find Prestor John and their desire to get
allies against the Ottomans, brought them to invest in navigation
Prestor John was supposed to be a descendent one of the Three Kings. They believe
that he began a Christian Kingdom in Africa, and wanted to open relationships with
them
Prince Henry the Navigator especially pushes for investments in navigation
Portugaul begins to expand into Africa as well
His nephew John II of Portugal invests a whole lot of money into navigation
Dom Vasco de Gama 1498 he goes around Africa
By 1510 they begin setting up trading colonies so they can trade with people
Portugal gains a lot of wealth by trading with India
Castilla begins expanding as well in order to compete
In 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella take over all of Spain, and then expell all the Jews
(except the wealthy ones)
Christopher Columbus (excelent sailor, terrible mathmatician) made his own
calculations about the size of the world (and got it wrong)
he thought he could make it around the world. Ferdinand and Isabella give him 3
terrible ships and a mutinous crew, and he accidentally stumbles upon the Americas
He reaches St Salvador (and thinks it is Japan)
Columbus is arrested after his fourth trip because he's mistreating the natives and
taking them as slaves
ferdinand and isabella don't want the natives to be mistreated, but wanted them
converted
within Columbus's lifetime, people knew Columbus was wrong
He was sure he was going to find the lost tribe of Israel, and continued to believe
that he had found Japan
Ferdinand Magellan sains around the world in 1419
Treaty of Tordesillas the Pope divided the world in half, spain gets west of Brazil
and Portugal gets Brazil and everything to the east of it
he does this to keep them from going to world
the spanish want gold. natives tell them that there is gold in Mexico
by 1573, maps accurately depict europe, africa, and southern asia, and the caribean
Hernand Cortes, 2nd in command in Cuba, asks to go to Mexico, they say no, he goes
anyway. Leaves with 11 ships, and 500 men
Dona Marina is a translator for Cortes
Cortes finds a Fransican, who had shipwrecked, Fr Geronimo de Aguilar, who also
acts as a translator (he wanted to convert people, ended up as a slave)
Tenochtitlan, city of the Aztecs, mesmerizes them. Cortes decides to take the city
they gain the aid of the surrounding natives, and together they conquor
Tenochtitlan
The Silver mines in mexico are better than anywhere the Spanish were familiar with
Francisco Pizarro (worse than Cortes) decides to go south, and bumps into the Inca
Empire, and with the help of other natives takes it
they found a new silver mines there, and brought in German metallurgists

The Columbian Exchange

within 100 years the native population of the Caribian had been wiped out due to
heavy labor, violance, and disease
the beginning of the trans-atlantic slave trade. Most of the slaves were from
Africa, and Europeans began to treat them as less than human
slaves were used to grow and refine sugar in the Caribean
Increase in overall food supply, new types of food gained from the New World
You can plant New World foods among Old World fields without depleting the soil any
more
The Irish population more than doubled due to the import of Potatoes
The population and life expectancy in Africa rises as the new foods are introduced,
as with Asia