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World explorer ship2/28/2024 ![]() A symbol of these global links was the porcelain produced in China bearing the words E PLURIBUS UNUM made specially for the American market. ![]() They still depended on the resources and supply lines of the inhabitants of the lands they visited, even as they created routes across the entire globe that brought Chinese porcelain and silk from Manila through Mexico to Havana and then on to Spain, or through Macao and then on past southern Africa all the way to Europe. When European sailors - from Portugal, Spain, Holland, England, Denmark and France - entered the Pacific and the Indian Ocean starting in the 16th century, they found a lively maritime world that they could never truly dominate. Portugal also founded the slave trade, bringing captives from West Africa to Europe and later to the Americas without consideration for their humanity. That interest had resulted in the settlement of uninhabited islands including Madeira, which began to export phenomenal quantities of sugar. Even without written records, the Polynesians transmitted exact knowledge of how to sail these apparently boundless waters from generation to generation.īy 1500 AD, the Portuguese had begun to show interest in what the Atlantic might offer. And in the open Pacific, hundreds of scattered islands from Hawaii to Easter Island were settled over many centuries - the Polynesians only reached New Zealand around AD 1300. Later, Marco Polo would bear witness to this vigorous commercial life, with its use of paper money and its links to Java and beyond. But in the 12th century AD, when the coasts of China were open to the world, Hangzhou was at the peak of its prosperity. Early compasses were used for feng shui, not navigation. The Chinese emperors tended to discourage uncontrolled trade, though prohibitions often did more to provoke traders into finding ways around the rules. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. Greek merchants from Egypt exploited the monsoon winds to ensure a swift passage to south India.įor your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. The Indian Ocean became one of the great channels of trade between nations. ![]() Accumulating and re-investing profits, they were the first capitalists. En route, they acquired copper from Oman and brought precious objects such as carnelian and lapis lazuli from India. These were the people who really mastered the oceans and brought the continents into contact.Īlready around 2500 BC, merchants were setting out from what is now Iraq, the seat of the ancient Sumerian civilization, carrying silver ingots to India, which was the seat of another even more mysterious civilization, that of the Indus Valley. But while these men did give the Age of Discovery its name, they didn’t start the exploration of the world’s oceans - and there were also scores of merchants who followed in their wake, taking full advantage of new knowledge about the open ocean to develop trade links across the world that were the precursors of modern globalization. These were sailors such as Christopher Columbus, who chanced upon unsuspected lands that blocked the expected sea route from Europe to China and Japan. We tend to think that the opening of the oceans was the work of the great explorers, especially the 15th century pioneers who edged their way through uncharted waters to southern Africa, the Indian Ocean and the spice lands of the Indies.
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