Concept

Age of Discovery

Overview

The Age of Discovery (c. 1418 – c. 1620), also known as the Age of Exploration, was part of the early modern period and overlapped with the Age of Sail. It was a period from approximately the 15th to the 17th century, during which seafarers from European countries explored, colonized, and conquered regions across the globe. The Age of Discovery was a transformative period when previously isolated parts of the world became connected to form the world-system, and laid the groundwork for globalization. The extensive overseas exploration, particularly the opening of maritime routes to the East Indies and European colonization of the Americas by the Spaniards and Portuguese, later joined by the English, French, and Dutch, spurred international global trade. The interconnected global economy of the 21st century has its origins in the expansion of trade networks during this era. The exploration created European colonial empires and marked an increased adoption of colonialism as a government policy in several European states. As such, it is sometimes synonymous with the first wave of European colonization. This colonization reshaped power dynamics causing geopolitical shifts in Europe and creating new centers of power beyond Europe.

Portuguese oceanic exploration began with maritime expeditions to the Macaronesian islands, including the Canary Islands, as well as Madeira and the Azores. It continued with voyages along the coast of West Africa in 1434, and culminated in the establishment of a sea route to India in 1498 by Vasco da Gama, which initiated Portugal's maritime and commercial presence in Kerala and the Indian Ocean. Spain made the transatlantic voyages of Christopher Columbus (1492–1504), which marked the beginning of colonization in the Americas, the Magellan expedition (1519–1522), which opened a route from the Atlantic to the Pacific and, under Juan Sebastián Elcano, completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. Spain also undertook other major early voyages, including the conquest of Mexico (1519–1521), the conquest of Peru (1532–1533), and the Manila galleon trade route (1565–1815), which linked the Americas and Asia across the Pacific. These Spanish expeditions significantly impacted European perceptions of the world and eventually led to numerous naval expeditions across the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans, and land expeditions in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Oceania that continued into the 19th century, followed by polar exploration in the 20th century.

European exploration initiated the Columbian exchange between the Old World (Europe, Asia, and Africa) and New World (Americas). This exchange involved the transfer of plants, animals, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases, and culture across the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. The Age of Discovery and European exploration involved mapping the world, shaping a new worldview and facilitating contact with distant civilizations. The continents drawn by European mapmakers developed from abstract "blobs" into the outlines more recognizable to us. Simultaneously, the spread of new diseases, especially affecting American Indians, led to rapid declines in some populations. The era saw widespread enslavement, exploitation and military conquest of Indigenous peoples, concurrent with the growing economic influence and spread of Western culture, science, and technology leading to a faster-than-exponential population growth world-wide.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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8. The mya also deposits nidamental capsules; those which are called limnostrea are the first to originate in muddy places, but the conchæ, chemæ, solens, and pectens find their subsistence in sandy shores; the pinnæ grow up from their byssus both in sandy and muddy shores. The pinnæ always contain a pinnophylax, either like a small caris or cancer, and soon die when this is extracted. On the whole, all the testacea…
Aristotle, Aristotle's History of Animals In Ten Books
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There is this analogy between the customs of the Lacedaemonians and the Cretans, the Helots cultivate the grounds [1272a] for the one, the domestic slaves for the other. Both states have their common meals, and the Lacedaemonians called these formerly not _psiditia_ but _andpia_, as the Cretans do; which proves from whence the custom arose. In this particular their governments are also alike: the ephori have the…
Aristotle, Politics
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In the mean time, one of the principal effects of those discoveries has been, to raise the mercantile system to a degree of splendour and glory which it could never otherwise have attained to. It is the object of that system to enrich a great nation, rather by trade and manufactures than by the improvement and cultivation of land, rather by the industry of the towns than by that of the country. But in consequence of…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
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Philosophers who discussed Age of Discovery

Renaissance

Related ideas

Opposing perspectives

Place in the tradition

Part of Post-classical history.

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