The Age of Exploration

Setting Sail into the Unknown

Imagine standing on a wooden ship as it leaves the harbour, the land slowly shrinking behind you until there is nothing but open ocean in every direction. You have no engine, no satellite maps and no radio. Ahead lie weeks or months at sea, with dangers you cannot even imagine. This took extraordinary courage, and it is exactly what sailors did during the Age of Exploration.

From the early 1400s to the 1600s, brave and ambitious sailors from Europe set out across the world's great oceans to reach lands they had never seen. They sailed down the coast of Africa, across the wide Atlantic, around the bottom of the world and out into the vast Pacific. In doing so, they connected continents that had been separated for thousands of years and changed the course of history forever.

This was a time of incredible discovery and daring. But it was also a time of conquest, suffering and cruelty, for the meeting of these worlds brought great harm as well as great change. In this book, you will discover why Europeans set out to explore, what new tools and ships made it possible, the famous voyages that opened up the world, and the enormous and lasting impact of this remarkable age.

Why Explore? The Search for Riches

Why would people risk their lives sailing into the unknown? The answer, more than anything else, was trade. For centuries, Europeans had treasured goods that came from distant Asia: silk, jewels, and especially spices like pepper, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, which were used to flavour and preserve food and were worth a fortune.

The problem was getting them. These goods travelled thousands of miles overland from Asia, passing through many hands along routes like the famous Silk Road, with each trader adding to the price. By the time spices reached Europe, they could cost as much as gold. Worse, the overland routes were controlled by powerful empires, which made trade difficult and expensive for Europeans.

So Europeans had a bold idea: if they could find a sea route directly to the riches of Asia, they could trade for spices and silk themselves and grow fabulously wealthy. Alongside the hunger for riches came other powerful motives. Kings and nations wanted new lands, power and glory. Many Europeans also wished to spread their Christian religion to other parts of the world. And some people simply burned with curiosity and a longing for adventure. Together, these desires for "God, gold and glory" launched the great age of exploration.

New Ships and Tools

Dreaming of distant lands was one thing. Actually crossing the oceans was another, and it only became possible because of important new technology that made long voyages safer and more reliable.

One of the most important was the compass, a device with a magnetic needle that always points roughly north. With a compass, sailors could tell which direction they were heading even far out of sight of land, under cloudy skies, day or night. They also used a tool called an astrolabe, and later the sextant, to measure the height of the sun or stars and work out how far north or south they were. Better maps and charts, slowly improved with each new voyage, helped captains record and share what they found.

Just as important were better ships. Europeans developed sturdy sailing vessels, such as the caravel, which were strong enough to survive ocean storms yet nimble enough to explore unknown coasts. Their clever sails could catch the wind from many directions, allowing them to sail not just with the wind but partly against it. These ships could carry enough food, water, crew and cargo for very long journeys. Without these tools and vessels, the great voyages of exploration could never have happened.

Portugal Leads the Way

The first European country to push boldly out across the oceans was Portugal, a small nation on the western edge of Europe with a long Atlantic coastline. In the 1400s, a Portuguese prince remembered as Henry the Navigator encouraged and funded sailors, mapmakers and shipbuilders, helping his country become a leader in exploration.

Portuguese sailors edged their way slowly down the long, unknown coast of Africa, going a little farther with each voyage. It was a dangerous and patient effort that took many years. At last, a captain named Bartolomeu Dias reached the southern tip of Africa, proving that ships could sail around the bottom of the continent. The way to Asia by sea seemed open.

Then, in 1497, the explorer Vasco da Gama set off to finish the job. He sailed all the way around the southern tip of Africa, up the eastern coast, and across the Indian Ocean, finally reaching India by sea in 1498. It was a triumph. Da Gama had opened a direct sea route between Europe and the rich markets of Asia, and Portugal grew wealthy and powerful from the spice trade. The age of ocean exploration was truly under way.

Columbus and the Americas

While Portugal sailed east around Africa, a sailor named Christopher Columbus had a different and daring idea. Since the Earth is round, he reasoned, why not reach Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean instead? Columbus was right that the world is round, but he badly underestimated how vast it really was, and he had no idea that two enormous continents lay in his path.

The king and queen of Spain agreed to pay for his voyage, hoping to win the riches of Asia for themselves. In 1492, Columbus set sail westward with three small ships. After many tense weeks at sea, his crew finally sighted land. Columbus believed he had reached the islands near Asia, and he called the people he met "Indians". In truth, he had landed on islands in the Caribbean, part of the Americas, lands completely unknown to Europeans.

Columbus never realised his mistake and made several more voyages, still convinced he was near Asia. It was later explorers and mapmakers who understood that he had reached a "New World", at least new to Europeans. The Americas were eventually named after another Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci. Of course, these lands were not really new at all. They were already home to millions of people in great and varied civilisations, who had lived there for thousands of years. Columbus's voyages were a turning point in history, opening the way to the Americas, but for the peoples already living there, they would bring devastating change.

Around the Whole World

After the Americas were reached, explorers realised that a huge ocean still lay beyond them, between the New World and Asia. Could a ship sail right around the entire globe? In 1519, an expedition led by the Portuguese captain Ferdinand Magellan, sailing for Spain, set out to try.

It was an astonishing and terrible journey. Magellan's five ships sailed across the Atlantic, down the long coast of South America, and at last found a stormy passage near its southern tip, now called the Strait of Magellan, leading into a vast new ocean. Because it seemed so calm and peaceful after the storms, Magellan named it the Pacific Ocean. But the Pacific was far wider than anyone had dreamed. The crew sailed for months with little food and fresh water, and many sailors died of hunger and disease.

Magellan himself was killed in a battle in the islands now called the Philippines and never completed the journey. But a handful of his men sailed on. In 1522, three years after setting out, a single battered ship with just eighteen surviving sailors finally arrived back in Spain. They had done what no one had ever done before: they had sailed all the way around the world. Their voyage proved beyond doubt that the Earth was round and that all its oceans were connected.

The Great Impact of Exploration

The Age of Exploration changed the world more dramatically than almost any other event in history, connecting continents that had been apart for thousands of years. The effects were enormous, and they were both remarkable and terrible.

On one hand, exploration linked the world together. Plants, animals, foods and ideas were carried between continents in what historians call the Columbian Exchange. Foods we now think of as everyday, like potatoes, tomatoes, maize and chocolate, came from the Americas to the rest of the world, while crops and animals such as wheat, horses and cattle travelled the other way. Trade, knowledge and maps spread, and Europe grew rich and powerful.

But the Age of Exploration also brought great suffering. European explorers and the conquerors who followed them, sometimes called conquistadors, seized lands and treasures and toppled mighty civilisations, including the Aztec and Inca empires of the Americas. Most devastating of all, they unknowingly carried diseases like smallpox, to which the peoples of the Americas had no resistance. These diseases killed millions, wiping out a huge portion of the population. The age also fed the cruel and growing trade in enslaved people, as millions of Africans were forced across the Atlantic to labour in the Americas. So while this age opened up the world, it did so at a tremendous and tragic human cost.

The World Made New

By the 1600s, the boldest age of ocean discovery was passing, but the world it had created was utterly transformed. The continents were now connected as never before, and European nations had built empires that stretched across the seas, competing for land, trade and power around the globe.

The voyages of this age reshaped maps, economies, foods and the lives of people on every continent. They laid the foundations of our connected, global world, where goods, people and ideas travel between distant lands as a matter of course. Many things we take for granted today, from the foods on our plates to the languages spoken across the Americas, are part of the legacy of these voyages.

The Age of Exploration is a story of breathtaking courage and curiosity, of sailors braving the unknown in tiny wooden ships. But it is also a story we must remember honestly, including the conquest, disease and slavery it brought to millions. It reminds us that great moments in history can be wonderful and terrible at the same time, and that the world we live in today was shaped by both.

What We Learned

We have crossed the world's great oceans during the Age of Exploration.

We discovered why Europeans set out to explore, driven above all by the search for direct sea routes to the riches of Asia, along with the hunger for glory, faith and adventure. We saw how new ships, the compass and better maps made these voyages possible. We sailed with the great explorers, as Portugal led the way down Africa, da Gama reached India, Columbus reached the Americas, and Magellan's crew became the first to circle the globe. Finally, we weighed the enormous impact of this age, which connected the continents but also brought conquest, disease and slavery.

The Age of Exploration opened up the whole world, for better and for worse, and the connected planet we live on today was born from these daring and fateful voyages.

Want to keep exploring how curiosity changed the world? Discover the breakthroughs that reshaped daily life in Great Inventions That Changed the World, or step into the age that came just before in Life in Medieval Times.