Europe Enters

Modern Age
 01
The Age of
Exploration
 The Causes of European Exploration
For early explorers, one of the primary motives for exploration was the desire to establish new trade
routes to Asia. By the 1400s, merchants and Crusaders had brought numerous goods to Europe from Africa, the Middle
East, and Asia. Demand for these goods increased the desire for trade.
Trade with the East, however, was difficult and very expensive, in part because Muslims and Italians
controlled the flow of goods. Problems arose when Muslim rulers sometimes closed the trade routes from Asia to
Europe. Also, the goods passed through many hands, and each trading party increased the price.
European monarchs and merchants wanted to break the hold that Muslims and Italians had
on trade. One way to do so was to find a sea route to Asia. Portuguese sailors looked for a route that went around Africa,
and Christopher Columbus tried to reach Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic.
Other motives also came into play. Many people were excited by the opportunity for new knowledge,
while explorers sought the chance to earn fame and glory, as well as wealth. As new lands were
discovered, nations wanted to claim the lands' riches for themselves.
A final motive for exploration was the desire to spread Christianity beyond Europe. Both Protestant and
Catholic nations were eager to make new converts, with missionaries of both faiths following the paths blazed by explorers.
Christopher Columbus Voyage routes
 Advances in Knowledge and Technology

The Age of Exploration began during the Renaissance. The Renaissance was a time of new learning when a
number of advances occurred that made it easier for explorers to venture into the unknown.

One key advance was in cartography, the art and science of mapmaking. Discoveries by
explorers provided mapmakers with new information to use. The result was a dramatic change in Europeans' view
of the world. By the 1500s, Europeans made globes showing Earth as a sphere. In 1507, a
German cartographer made the first map that clearly showed North and South America
as separate from Asia.

In turn, better maps made navigation easier. The most important Renaissance geographer,
Gerardus Mercator (mer-KAY-tur), created maps using improved lines of longitude and
latitude, which were a great help to navigators.
 By the 1400s, Portuguese and Spanish shipbuilders were making a new type of ship called a
caravel. These ships were small, fast, and simple to maneuver and had special bottoms that made it easier for
explorers to travel along coastlines where the water was shallow. Caravels also used lateen sails, a triangular
style adapted from Muslim ships that could be positioned to take advantage of the wind regardless of its direction.

By the end of the 1400s, the compass, which sailors used to find their bearing, or
direction of travel, was much improved. The astrolabe helped sailors determine their distance north or
south from the equator.

Finally, improved weapons gave Europeans a huge advantage over the people they met in their
explorations. Sailors could fire their cannons at targets near the shore without leaving their ships. On land, the
weapons of native peoples often were no match for European guns, armor, and horses.
 Portugal Begins the Age of Exploration
The major figure in early Portuguese exploration was Prince Henry, the son of King John I of Portugal.
Nicknamed “the Navigator,” Prince Henry was not an explorer himself, but he encouraged exploration and
planned and directed many important expeditions.

Beginning in about 1418, Henry started a school of navigation where sailors and mapmakers could
learn their trades. In July 1497, Vasco da Gama set sail with four ships to chart a sea route to India. Da Gama's
ships rounded Africa's southern tip and then sailed up the east coast of the continent. In May 1498, Da Gama arrived in
the port of Calicut, India, where he obtained a load of cinnamon and pepper. On the return trip to Portugal, da Gama lost
half of his ships. However, his valuable cargo paid for the voyage many times over. His trip increased the Portuguese's
eagerness to trade directly with Indian merchants.
 The Impact of Portuguese Exploration
Portugal's explorers changed Europeans' understanding of the world in several ways. They explored the coasts of Africa
and brought back gold and enslaved Africans. They also found a sea route to India. From India, explorers brought back
spices, such as cinnamon and pepper, and other goods, such as porcelain, incense, jewels, and silk. They seized the seaport of
Goa in India and built forts there. They attacked towns on the east coast of Africa. They also set their sights on the Moluccas, or
Spice Islands, in what is now Indonesia,

Portugal's control of the Indian Ocean ended Muslim and Italian control over Asian trade. With
the increased competition, prices of Asian goods—such as spices and fabrics—dropped, enabling more Europeans to afford
them.
During the 1500s, Portugal also began to establish colonies in Brazil. The native people of Brazil suffered
greatly as a result, in part, because the Portuguese forced them to work on sugar plantations, or large farms. They also tried
to get them to give up their religion and convert to Christianity. Missionaries sometimes tried to protect the
native people from abuse, but countless natives died from overwork and from European diseases. Others fled into the interior of
Brazil.
The colonization of Brazil also negatively affected Africa as well. As the native population of Brazil decreased, the
Portuguese needed more laborers, so they turned to Africa beginning in the mid-1500s. Over the next 300 years, ships brought
millions of enslaved West Africans to Brazil.
 Spain's Early Explorations
In the late 1400s, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain were determined to make their country
a powerful force in Europe. One way they thought to do this was to sponsor explorations to claim new lands for Spain.

Christopher Columbus
It was Ferdinand and Isabella who sponsored the voyages of Christopher Columbus. The Italian-born Columbus thought
that the Indies, or eastern Asia, lay on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and believed sailing west
would be the easiest route to reach it. Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to pay for the risky voyage. They wanted to beat
Portugal in the race to control the trade wealth of Asia.
Columbus went ashore on an island in the Caribbean Sea and claimed it for Spain. For three months,
Columbus and his men explored nearby islands. Thinking they were in the Indies, the Spanish soon called all the local people
“Indians.” In March 1493, Columbus arrived back in Spain and proudly reported that he had reached Asia. Over the next ten years,
he made three more voyages to what he called the Indies. He died in Spain in 1506, still insisting that he had sailed to Asia.
 Ferdinand Magellan
Many Europeans, however, believed that Columbus had actually found a land mass
between Europe and Asia. One of these was Ferdinand Magellan (muh-JEL-uhn), a Portuguese explorer.
Magellan believed he could sail west to the Indies if he found a strait, or channel, through
South America. Magellan won Spain's support for a voyage to find the strait and, in August 1519, set sail with
five ships and about 250 men.

Magellan looked for the strait and finally found it at the southern tip of the South American continent. Today, it
is called the Strait of Magellan. Continuing west, Magellan visited the Philippines, where he became
involved in a conflict between two local chiefs. In April 1521, Magellan was killed in the fighting. Magellan's crew
sailed on to the Spice Islands. Three years after the expedition began, the only ship to survive the expedition
returned to Spain. The 18 sailors on board were the first people to travel completely around Earth.
 The Impact of Early Spanish Exploration

The early Spanish explorations greatly changed Europeans' view of the world. The voyages of Christopher Columbus
revealed the existence of the Americas, and indeed he found a ‘New World’ and Magellan's expedition opened up a westward route to the
Indies. It showed that it was possible to sail completely around the world.

Columbus's voyages marked the beginning of Spanish settlement in the West Indies, which earned Spain great wealth. Settlers mined for
precious minerals, such as gold and silver, and started sugar plantations. The Spanish also brought new crops, such as sweet potatoes and
pineapples, to Europe. For the native people of the West Indies, however, Spanish settlement was extremely
detrimental. The Spanish forced native people to work as slaves in the mines and on the plantations, and
priests forced many of them to become Christians. When the Spanish arrived, perhaps one or two million Taino (natives) lived
on the islands. Within 50 years, fewer than 500 Taino were left, with most having died of starvation, overwork, or European diseases.

Like Portugal, Spain looked to West Africa for new laborers. From 1518 through the mid-1800s, the Spanish brought millions
of enslaved Africans to work in their American colonies.
 The Impact of Exploration on Europe
Mapmakers helped explorers and by the 1700s, European ships traveled trade routes that spanned the globe. New
centers of commerce developed in the port cities of the Netherlands and England. As a result of exploration,
more goods, raw materials, and precious metals entered Europe.
Exploration and trade contributed to the growth of capitalism. Merchants gained great wealth and
many of them used their profits to finance more voyages and to start trading companies. Other people began investing
money in these companies and shared in the profits, and soon, this type of shared ownership was applied to other kinds
of businesses.
Another aspect of the capitalist economy was that money became more important as precious metals flowed into Europe.
Instead of having a fixed price, items were sold for prices set by the open market. This meant that
an item's price depended on how much of the item was available and how many people wanted to buy it. This kind of
system, based on supply and demand, is called a market economy.
Labor, too, was given a money value. Increasingly, people began working for hire instead of directly providing for their
own needs. Merchants hired people to work from their own cottages, turning raw materials from overseas into finished
products. This growing cottage industry was especially important in the manufacture of textiles.
Cottage industry was a step toward the system of factories operated by capitalists in later centuries.
 A final result of exploration was a new economic policy called mercantilism. European rulers
believed that building up wealth was the best way to increase a nation's power. For this reason, they tried to reduce
the products they bought from other countries and to increase the items they sold.
Having colonies was a key part of this policy. Nations looked to their colonies to supply raw materials
for their industries at home. These industries turned the raw materials into finished goods that they could sell back to
their colonies, as well as to other countries. To protect this valuable trade with their colonies, rulers often forbade
colonists from trading with other nations.
 02
The Scientific
Revolution
 Roots of the Scientific Revolution

Humans have asked questions about nature since ancient times. What was different about the Scientific
Revolution of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries? What factors helped it arise?
During the Renaissance, many thinkers began to question the conclusions of earlier thinkers. For example,
Renaissance scholars rediscovered the cultures of the classical age. Renaissance thinkers also put trust in
reason and observation became a key part of modern science. And that lead to the idea of rationalism, which
was the belief that reason, or logical thought, could be used to discover basic truths about the world.
Arab, Christian, and Jewish scholars in the Muslim world translated many classical works and made
advances of their own in such fields as medicine, astronomy, and mathematics.
Additionally, the Age of Exploration helped inspire the growth of science. For instance, in the 2nd century
C.E., thinkers had stated that there were only three continents: Europe, Africa, and Asia. However, explorers
who visited the Americas proved these theories wrong. Such discoveries encouraged Europeans to question
existing knowledge.
 Copernicus and Kepler: A New View of the Universe
The Scientific Revolution began with the work of the
Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. His work led to a new
view of the universe.
For nearly two thousand years, most people considered
Earth the center of the universe. According to this
geocentric theory, the sun, stars, and planets—
everything believed to be the universe—traveled around
a motionless Earth. Unfortunately, this belief made it difficult to
explain the observed movements of planets, such as Mars and Jupiter.

In the early 1500s, Copernicus tackled these issues

using observation and mathematics. According to his
heliocentric theory, Earth and the other planets
travel in orbits around the sun, which is at the center of this
solar system. Earth also turns on its own axis every 24 hours,
explaining why heavenly objects seem to move around Earth.
Then, in the early 1600s, German scientist Johannes Kepler expanded on
Copernicus's theory. After studying detailed observations, Kepler realized that the orbits of the planets
were ovals, not circles. With this insight, he wrote precise mathematical laws describing the
planets' movements around the sun.
Kepler's laws coincided beautifully with actual observations, proving that the Copernican theory was correct.
Once the theory was accepted, people would never again hold the same view of Earth's place in the
universe.
 Isaac Newton and the Law of Gravity

Isaac Newton was born in England in 1642, the same year Galileo died. Newton was a brilliant
scientist and mathematician whose greatest discovery was the law of gravity.

In later life, Newton told a story about his discovery. He saw an apple fall from a tree and hit
the ground and realized that when objects fall, they fall toward the center of Earth. This was
Newton's great insight. A single force explained a falling apple on Earth, as well as the
movements of heavenly bodies. Newton called this force gravity.

In 1687, Newton published a book known as the Principia, or Principles, which presented the
law of gravity and described three laws of motion. Newton's laws provided an explanation for
what earlier scientists had observed. For example, others had shown that the planets moved
around the sun, but Newton's laws explained why. Just as gravity kept the moon traveling
around Earth, it kept the planets traveling around the sun.

Newton's laws dramatically changed people's view of the universe. Many people began to view
the universe as a beautifully designed machine. People needed only to discover how it
worked.
 The Scientific Method

A key outcome of the Scientific Revolution was the development of the scientific method. Two philosophers who
influenced this development were Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes (reh-NAY dey-KAHRT).

Francis Bacon argued that people could gain knowledge only if they rid their minds of false beliefs. He outlined a
method of scientific investigation that depended on close observation.

Rene Descartes suggested, people should doubt every statement until logic proved it to be true. Descartes also
saw the physical universe as obeying universal mathematical laws.

These ideas helped create a new approach to science - the scientific method, which combines logic, mathematics,
and observation into five basic steps:

1. The scientist states a question or problem.

2. The scientist forms a hypothesis, or assumption, that might explain the problem.
3. The scientist designs and conducts an experiment to test the hypothesis.
4. The scientist measures the data, or information, produced by the experiment and records the results.
5. The scientist analyzes the data to determine whether the hypothesis is correct.
Scientists still use this basic method today. An
advantage of the scientific method is that any
trained scientist can repeat what another has done.
In this way, scientists can test each others' ideas.

Impact: Fewer and fewer people looked to

traditional authorities for the answers to scientific
problems, but that did not mean they discarded all
their old beliefs. For example, thinkers such as
Descartes and Newton were deeply religious. For
many, science was a way to better understand the
world God had made.
 Key Inventions
The Scientific Revolution spurred the invention of new tools for studying the world. These tools, such as
the telescope, helped scientists discover new facts and measure data more accurately.

Microscope Scientists use microscopes to make small objects appear much larger. The microscope was
invented by Dutch lens makers in the late 1500s. In the mid-1600s, Dutchman Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
(LAY-ven-hook) designed his own powerful microscopes and became the first person to see bacteria.
Leeuwenhoek was amazed to find a tiny world of living things and exclaimed, “All the people living in our
United Netherlands are not so many as the living animals that I carry in my own mouth this very day!”

Barometer Evangelista Torricelli (tawr-ih-CHEL-ee) invented the barometer in the 1640s. It measures
changes in the pressure of the atmosphere. The barometer soon proved to be a valuable tool in studying
and predicting the weather.

Thermometer Galileo likely made the first thermometer. In the early 1700s, however, a German scientist,
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, put mercury in a glass tube, and as the mercury grew warmer, it expanded and
rose up the tube. The height of the mercury provided a more accurate measure of temperature. In the
United States, they still measure temperature using Fahrenheit degrees.
 03
The Enlightenment
 The Roots of the Enlightenment

The thinkers of the Enlightenment prized reason over authority; questioned the
foundations of religion, morality, and government; and believed that everything must
be re-examined in the light of reason.

Enlightenment thinkers also criticized accepted ideas about government. Some

questioned the long-held belief that God gave monarchs the right to rule, and many
insisted that governments must respect individual rights. Toward the end of the 18th
century, these ideas played a major role in government across the world.

The Enlightenment were influenced by:

The Renaissance and the Reformation The humanists of the Renaissance
celebrated the dignity and worth of the individual. Many Enlightenment
thinkers were inspired by classical culture and were inspired by democracy and
reason of ancient Athens and ancient Rome.
During the Reformation, Protestants rebelled against the Catholic Church by
putting individual conscience ahead of religious authority. Enlightenment
thinkers went further in rejecting authority and upholding the freedom of
individuals to reason and think for themselves.

The Scientific Revolution In science, observation and reason were revealing natural
laws that applied throughout the physical world. The thinkers of the Enlightenment
wanted to apply this approach to human life and experience. Like scientists,
philosophers placed their trust in reason and observation as the best sources of
understanding and progress.
 Thomas Hobbes: Absolute Rule by Kings
Thomas Hobbes was born in England in 1588. He wrote about many subjects,
including politics and government, and tried to give a rational basis for absolute, or
unlimited, rule by kings

In Hobbes's view, human beings were naturally cruel, selfish, and greedy. In 1651, he
published a book called Leviathan, in which he wrote that people are driven by a
restless desire for power. Without laws or other social controls, people would always
be in conflict, and life would be “nasty, brutish and short.”
Governments, Hobbes believed, were created to protect people from their own
selfishness. Because people were selfish by nature, they could not be trusted to
make decisions that were good for society as a whole. Only a government that has a
ruler with absolute authority could maintain an orderly society.
Later Enlightenment thinkers came to quite different conclusions about human
nature and the best form of government. Hobbes was important, however, because
he was one of the first thinkers to apply the tools of the Scientific Revolution to
problems of politics. During the Enlightenment and the years that followed, many
European countries moved away from absolute m onarchy.
 John Locke: Natural Rights
John Locke was born in England in 1632. His thinking about government and people's rights had a major impact
on the Enlightenment. Whereas Thomas Hobbes had argued that kings should have absolute power, Locke
favored constitutional monarchy. In this type of government, a basic set of laws limits the ruler's power.

Locke's ideas reflected a tradition of limitations on the English monarchy dating back to 1215 - the Magna
Carta, or the “Great Charter.” Magna Carta established the idea that even monarchs had to obey English laws
and respect certain individual rights.

In 1690, he published Two Treatises of Government. In the book, Locke denied the divine right of monarchs to
rule and argued that the true basis of government was a social contract, or agreement, among free people.

Under this agreement, the purpose of government was to protect people's natural rights, including the right to
life, liberty, and property. The people are the sole source of power and must agree to give power to the
government to rule on their behalf. Therefore, according to Locke's social contract, a government's authority
was based on the consent of the governed. If the government failed to respect people's rights, it broke the
contract and could be overthrown. Over time, Parliament became the main check on the monarch's power.

Locke's view of government had a wide influence. In 1776, his ideas would be echoed in the American
Declaration of Independence.
 Cesare Beccaria: The Rights of the Accused
Cesare Beccaria (beck-kah-REE-ah) was born in Milan, Italy, in 1738. He was a pioneer in the
field of criminology and his work stressed the rights of accused people to fair treatment.

In 1763, Beccaria began a study of the justice system. He was upset by the harsh and
torturous practices that were People might have their thumbs crushed in a device called a
thumbscrew or have their bodies stretched on a device called a rack until their joints were
pulled apart. It was not unusual for trials to be held in secret or for judges to be corrupt.
People found guilty of crimes were frequently sentenced to death.

Beccaria attacked these practices in a famous book called On Crimes and Punishments. He
argued that to stop people from committing crimes, punishment did not have to be brutal. It
only had to be certain and severe enough to outweigh the crime's potential benefits.
Beccaria also argued for other specific rights, including the right to a fair and speedy trial
for persons accused of a crime and an end to the use of torture. He believed that capital
punishment—putting someone to death—should be ended completely. His ideas about rights
and punishment influenced reform movements throughout Europe. In the United States,
many laws concerning crime and punishment reflect his ideas.
 The Impact of the Enlightenment on Government
Enlightened Rule A few European monarchs founded universities and scientific
societies and promoted greater religious tolerance and an end to torture and capital
punishment. However, these rulers pushed change only so far. They wanted to maintain
their own power and avoid angering the noble classes, whose support they needed.

The American and French Revolutions The ideas of the Enlightenment greatly
influenced leaders of the American and French Revolution. The colonists in America
overthrew the English monarchy and the Declaration of Independence (USA) and the
U.S. Constitution contains ideas like natural rights and social contract from the
Enlightenment.

Similarly in France in 1789, the absolute monarchy was overthrown. France made a
new constitution focused on liberty and equality. It also guaranteed freedom of speech
and religion. All these ideas grew out of the Enlightenment.
 Women & the Enlightenment
English writer Mary Wollstonecraft, in an essay published in 1792, she argued that women deserve the
same and equal rights and opportunities as men. Wollstonecraft believed that education was the key
to gaining equality and freedom and she called for reforms to give women the same education as
men. In the 19th century, her ideas about equality for women inspired early leaders of the women's
rights movement in the United States.