Age of Discovery

The Age of Discovery is a historical period of European global exploration that

started in the early 15th century with the first Portuguese discoveries in
the Atlantic archipelagos and Africa, as well as the discovery of America by Spain in
1492, and thediscovery of the ocean route to the East in 1498, and by a series of
European naval expeditions across the Atlantic and later the Pacific, which continued
until the 18th century. It is sometimes regarded as a bridge between the Middle
Ages and the Modern era, along with its contemporary Renaissance movement.
European overseas expansion led to the rise of colonial empires, with the contact
between the Old and New Worlds producing the Columbian Exchange: a wide
transfer of plants, animals, foods, human populations
(including slaves), communicable diseases and culture between
the Eastern and Western hemispheres. This represented one of the mostsignificant global events concerning ecology, agriculture, and culture in
history. European exploration allowed the global mapping of the world, resulting in a
new world-view and distant civilizations acknowledging each other, reaching the
most remote boundaries much later.
The Portuguese began systematically exploring the Atlantic coast of Africa from
1418, under the sponsorship of Prince Henry. In 1488 Bartolomeu Dias reached the
Indian Ocean by this route. In 1492 the Spanish monarchs funded Christopher
Columbus's plan to sail west to reach the Indies by crossing the Atlantic. He landed
on an uncharted continent, then seen by Europeans as a new world, America. To
prevent conflict between Portugal and Spain, the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed
dividing the world into two regions of exploration, where each had exclusive rights to
claim newly discovered lands.
In 1498, a Portuguese expedition commanded byVasco da Gama reached India by
sailing around Africa, opening up direct trade with Asia. Soon, the Portuguese sailed
further eastward, to the valuable spice islands in 1512, landing in China one year
later. Thus, Europe first received news of eastern and western Pacific within a one
year span around 1512. East and west exploration overlapped in 1522, when
Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan led a Spanish expedition West, achieving
the first circumnavigation of the world, while Spanish conquistadors explored inland
the Americas, and later, some of the South Pacific islands.
Since 1495, the French and English and, much later, the Dutch entered the race of
exploration after learning of these exploits, defying the Iberian monopoly on maritime
trade by searching for new routes, first to the north, and into the Pacific Ocean
around South America, but eventually by following the Portuguese around Africa into
the Indian Ocean; discovering Australia in 1606, New Zealand in 1642, and Hawaii in
1778. Meanwhile, from the 1580s to the 1640s Russians explored and conquered
almost the whole of Siberia.