The Age of Exploration

1. The Age of Exploration

2. Causes of Exploration • Renaissance ideas of humanism and intellectual progress • God: Reformation and Counter-Reformation create desires to convert people to religions • Gold: Desire for Luxury Goods and Wealth • Glory: Stood to become famous (and rich!) off of exploration • Advances in Technology • Better navigation devices (compass) • Shipbuilding improved (larger, faster ships)

3. Who Started the Age of Exploration? • Portugal: Prince Henry the Navigator funded many expeditions to the Atlantic Ocean and Africa • Main Goal: Find a water route around Africa to India • Spain: Supported by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella • Main Goal: Wanted to seek new routes to the East (India and China) • Other European Countries will eventually start exploration • England • The Netherlands • France

4. Consequences of the Age of Exploration • Colonialism • one country taking over and settling in land in another region • Starts a larger trend of Europeans moving to the Americas • Columbian Exchange • Global exchange of goods, plants, animals and diseases between the Americas and Europe

5. The Columbian Exchange From Europe, Africa, and Asia to the Americas From the Americas to Europe Guinea Pigs Turkeys Beans Chocolate Corn Potatoes Pecans Pineapples Rubber Tobacco Tomatoes Vanilla • Cattle • Chickens • Donkeys • Horses • Pigs • Bananas • Sugar • Coffee • Diseases: Smallpox, Influenza, Measles, Cholera

6. Mercantilism • Theory that a state’s power depended on its wealth • Mercantilism fueled colonialism under the belief that a large empire was the key to wealth • Sought to export more than import- balance of trade

8. 2 ways to gain wealth/power • Extract gold/silver from your (or others who you have conquered) mines • Sell more goods to other countries to get their gold - Balance of Trade: difference in value between imports and exports over time

9. Results of the Columbian Exchange • Crops native to Americas became key parts of the European Diet (Potato in Ireland  later Potato Famine causes many to die) • Improves health of Europeans and Asians b/c of better food choices  Increase life expectancy and population growth • New economic activities in Americas (coffee plantations, cattle ranches) • Introduction of New Diseases dramatically decreases Native American population

10. Additional Consequences of the Age of Exploration • Impact on Native American Population • New diseases killed millions of Native Americans • 90% of population dies • Colonization leads to need for more workers • Creation of the Atlantic Slave Trade • Caused by decline in Native American population • Needed greater work force  look to Africa • 15-20 million Africans to Americas

11. CCOT Question (choose one) 1) Pick ONE of the following regions and analyze the continuities and changes in the region’s connections to the world trading systems from 1450 to 1750. Be sure to explain how alterations in framework of international trade interacted with regional factors to produce continuities & changes throughout the period. • China, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, or Middle East 2) Analyze the social and economic transformations that occurred in the Atlantic world as a result of new contacts among Western Europe, Africa, and the Americas from 1492 to 1750.