Early Exploration

Columbian to Pre English Colonization

Early Early Explorers

• Leif Ericson• 11th Century• Why limited Exploration

prior to 1492? • Small Kingdoms• Merchants• Provincial• Subsistence• Roman Catholic Church

Nationalism/Commerce

• Population Growth• Rise in land values• Increase in wealth and

prosperity• What happened when

people started to become more wealthy?

• Merchant Class• Shipbuilding

• New Governments• Centralized Power

Marco Polo/Prince Henry the Navigator

Marco Polo and Exploration• Early 14th Century• Spices, Cloths, Dyes• Tough overland to Asia. • Expeditions in the late 15th

century are financed. How and Why?

• What Country is Prince Henry From?

• Portugal• PH Explored West coast of

Africa• Christian Empire

• Six years after PH’s death….

• Bartholomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope.

• Vasco da Gama to India in 1497-98

• Pedro Cabral Discovers• Brazil 1499

Diaz, DeGama, Cabral

Columbus

• West not East• Why did he think he

could sail West not East to get to China?

• Misconceptions– Small World– Big Asian Continent– Narrow Atlantic

Needed Dough

• If Portugal wouldn’t fund Columbus’s ideas he would go where?

• Spain• Queen Isabella of Castille

and Ferdinand of Aragon• Where did he set sail for? • Left for Japan• Ten Weeks later • Thought he had hit Japan

but really landed where?

• The Bahamas! • From there he thought he

had sailed to China but in reality where was he?

• Cuba• Captured Natives and

returned home in triumph! • Called them Indians

because he believed them to be from the East Indies in the pacific.

Ferdinand and Isabella

Columbus

Died in obscurity• Did not have much in America named after him.• After three voyages to the Americas • 1498 discovered a new continent How did he

determine that? • Orinoco River • Believed that he was fulfilling a mission from god. • But helped to ensure that Spain would invest more

money in exploration.

Vasco De Balboa

• 1513 • Picked up where

Columbus left off and • Cut across Panama to

be the first European to see the pacific for the first time

Ferdinand Magellan• Found the straits of Magellan• Struggled through the stormy

area at the bottom of South America and when he reached the ocean to the West he named it the….

• Pacific because it was so peaceful by contrast

• Killed in the Philippines by natives

• First Circumnavigation of the globe

Conquistadors

• What did the Spanish view the New World as initially?

• How did that viewpoint change?

• Early Spanish settlers to Caribbean

• Find Gold

• Cortes• 1518 • Leads 600 guys into

Mexico • What did he think he

would find?

Cortes

• How did Cortes successfully engineer the downfall of the Aztec Empire?

• Brutality

Discoveries of Mineral Wealth

• Lots of Explorers• Pizarro • Conquest of Peru• DeSoto• Florida and to the

Mississippi• Coronado• American Southwest• Subjugated and brutalized

and in some cases

• Coronado gave the plains Native Americans unexpected boost…

• How? • What did he leave

behind?

Horses

Pizarro,DeSoto, and Coronado

Sorry……. I meant this DeSoto