Maritime history is the study of human interaction with and activity at sea. It covers a broad thematic element of history that often uses a global approach, although national and regional histories remain predominant. As an academic subject, it often crosses the boundaries of standard disciplines, focusing on understanding humankind's various relationships to the oceans, seas, and major waterways of the globe. Nautical history records and interprets past events involving ships, shipping, navigation, and seafarers. Maritime history is the broad overarching subject that includes fishing, whaling, international maritime law, naval history, the history of ships, ship design, shipbuilding, the history of navigation, the history of the various maritime-related sciences (oceanography, cartography, hydrography, etc.), sea exploration, maritime economics and trade, shipping, yachting, seaside resorts, the history of lighthouses and aids to navigation, maritime themes in literature, maritime themes in art, the social history of sailors and passengers and sea-related communities. There are a number of approaches to the field, sometimes divided into two broad categories: Traditionalists, who seek to engage a small audience of other academics, and Utilitarians, who seek to influence policy makers and a wider audience.
Historiography Historians from many lands have published monographs, popular and scholarly articles, and collections of archival resources. A leading journal is International Journal of Maritime History, a fully refereed scholarly journal published twice a year by the International Maritime Economic History Association. Based in Canada with an international editorial board, it explores the maritime dimensions of economic, social, cultural, and environmental history. For a broad overview, see the four-volume encyclopedia edited by John B. Hattendorf, Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History (Oxford, 2007). It contains over 900 articles by 400 scholars and runs 2900 pages. Other major reference resources are Spencer Tucker, ed., Naval Warfare: An International Encyclopedia (3 vol. ABC-CLIO, 2002) with 1500 articles in 1231, pages, and I. C. B. Dear and Peter Kemp, eds., Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea (2nd ed. 2005) with 2600 articles in 688 pages. Typically, studies of merchant shipping and of defensive navies are seen as separate fields. Inland waterways are included within 'maritime history,' especially inland seas such as the Great Lakes of North America, and major navigable rivers and canals worldwide. One approach to maritime history writing has been nicknamed 'rivet counting' because of a focus on the minutiae of the vessel. However, revisionist scholars are creating new turns in the study of maritime history. This includes a post-1980s turn towards the study of human users of ships (which involves sociology, cultural geography, gender studies and narrative studies); and post-2000 turn towards seeing sea travel as part of the wider history of transport and mobilities. This move is sometimes associated with Marcus Rediker and Black Atlantic studies, but most recently has emerged from the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobilities (T2M). Building on earlier efforts to bring the ocean itself, rather than merely maritime activity at the surface, into historical analysis, Michael W. Jung has proposed the concept of Sub-Oceanic History. The approach shifts attention from the sea surface to the ocean's interior as a historically produced and technologically mediated space. It connects histories of diving and underwater exploration with the history of knowledge, science and technology, and infrastructure, and examines how changing forms of underwater access - from freediving and scuba diving to saturation systems, submersibles, and remotely operated vehicles - have transformed the ocean interior into a space that can increasingly be accessed, known, and controlled. Jung frames this relationship through the analytical triad of access, knowledge, and control and positions Sub-Oceanic History at the intersection of maritime history, environmental history, and Science and Technology Studies (STS).
See also: Historiography related articles below
Prehistoric times Watercraft such as rafts and boats have been used far into pre-historic times and possibly even by Homo erectus more than a million years ago crossing straits between landmasses. Little evidence remains that would pinpoint when the first seafarer made their journey. It is known, for instance, that a sea voyage had to have been made to reach Greater Australia (Sahul) c. 50,000 or more years ago. Functional maritime technology was required to progress between the many islands of Wallacea before making this crossing. It is unknown what seafaring predated the milestone of the first settling of Australia. One of the oldest known boats to be found is the Pesse canoe, and carbon dating has estimated its construction from 8040 to 7510 BCE. The Pesse canoe is the oldest physical object that can date the use of watercraft, but the oldest depiction of a watercraft is from Norway. The rock art in Valle Municipality in Norway depicts a carving of a more than 4 meter long boat and it is dated to be 10,000 to 11,000 years old.
Ancient times
Throughout history sailing has been instrumental in the development of civilization, affording humanity greater mobility than travel over land, whether for trade, transport or warfare, and the capacity for fishing. The earliest depiction of a maritime sailing vessel is from the Ubaid period of Mesopotamia in the Persian Gulf, from around 3500 to 3000 BCE. These vessels were depicted in clay models and painted disks. They were made from bundled reeds encased in a lattice of ropes. Remains of barnacle-encrusted bituminous amalgams have also been recovered, which are interpreted to have been part of the water-proof coating applied on these vessels. The depictions lack details, but an image of a vessel on a shard of pottery shows evidence of what could be bipod masts and a sail, which would make it the earliest known evidence of the use of such technology. The location of the sites indicate that the Ubaid culture was engaging in maritime trade with Neolithic Arabian cultures along the coasts of the Persian Gulf for high-value goods. Pictorial representation of sails are also known from Ancient Egypt, dated to circa 3100 BCE. The earliest seaborne trading route, however, is known from the 7th millennium BCE in the Aegean Sea. It involved the seaborne movement of obsidian by an unknown Neolithic Europe seafaring people. The obsidian was mined from the volcanic island of Milos and then transported to various parts of the Balkans, Anatolia, and Cyprus, where they were refined into obsidian blades. However, the nature of the seafaring technologies involved have not been preserved.
Austronesians started a dispersal from Taiwan across Maritime Southeast Asia around 3000 BCE. This started to spread into the islands of the Pacific c. 1300 BCE, steadily advanced across the Pacific and culminated with the settlement of Hawaii c. 1250 CE, and New Zealand c. 1300 CE. Distinctive maritime technology was used for this, including the lashed-lug boatbuilding technique, the catamaran, and the crab claw sail, together with extensive navigation techniques. This allowed them to colonize a large part of the Indo-Pacific region during the Austronesian expansion. Prior to the 16th century Colonial Era, Austronesians were the most widespread ethnolinguistic group, spanning half the planet from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific Ocean to Madagascar in the western Indian Ocean. The Ancient Egyptians had knowledge of sail construction. The Greek historian Herodotus states that Necho II sent out an expedition of Phoenicians, which in two and a half years sailed from the Red Sea around Africa to the mouth of the Nile. As they sailed south and then west, they observed that the mid-day sun was to the north. Their contemporaries did not believe them, but modern historians take this as evidence that they were south of the equator as crossing the equator changes the angle of the sun resulting in the change of season.
Ancient Rome had a variety of ships that played crucial roles in its military, trade, and transportation activities. Rome was preceded in the use of the sea by other ancient, seafaring civilizations of the Mediterranean. The galley was a long, narrow, highly maneuverable ship powered by oarsmen, sometimes stacked in multiple levels such as biremes or triremes, and many of which also had sails. Initial efforts of the Romans to construct a war fleet were based on copies of Carthaginian warships. In the Punic wars in the mid-third century BCE, the Romans were at first outclassed by Carthage at sea, but by 256 BCE had drawn even and fought the wars to a stalemate. In 55 BCE Julius Caesar used warships and transport ships to invade Britain. Numerous types of transport ships were used to carry foodstuffs or other trade goods around the Mediterranean, many of which did double duty and were pressed into service as warships or troop transports in time of war. Roman ships are named in different ways, often in compound expressions with the word Latin: navis, lit. 'ship'. These are found in many ancient Roman texts, and named in different ways, such as by the appearance of the ship: for example, navis tecta (covered ship); or by its function, for example: navis mercatoria (commerce ship), or navis praedatoria (plunder ship). Others, like navis frumentaria (grain), navis lapidaria (stones), and navis vivaria (live fish), are about the cargo. The Althiburos mosaic in Tunisia lists many types of ships. The expression naves longae (lit. "long ships") is the plural of the noun phrase navis longa ("long ship"), following the rules for pluralization of feminine, third declension nouns in Latin, and inflectional agreement of the adjective longus to match.
Age of navigation
By 1000 BCE, Austronesians in Island Southeast Asia were already engaging in regular maritime trade with China, South Asia, and the Middle East, introducing sailing technologies to these regions. They also facilitated an exchange of cultivated crop plants, introducing Pacific coconuts, bananas, and sugarcane to the Indian subcontinent, some of which eventually reached Europe via overland Persian and Arab traders. A Chinese record in 200 AD describes one of the Austronesian ships, called kunlun bo or k'unlun po (崑崙舶, lit. "ship of the Kunlun people"). It may also have been the "kolandiaphonta" known to the Greeks. It had 4–7 masts and was able to sail against the wind due to the usage of tanja sails. These ships reached as far as Madagascar by c. 50–500 AD and Ghana by the eighth century AD.
Northern European Vikings also developed oceangoing vessels and depended heavily upon them for travel and population movements prior to 1000 AD, with the oldest known examples being longships dated to around 190 AD from the Nydam Boat site. In early modern India and Arabia the lateen-sail ship known as the dhow was used on the waters of the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Persian Gulf.
The Chinese started building sea-going ships in the 10th century during the Song dynasty. These ships were based on Austronesian designs which had been trading with the Eastern Han dynasty since the second century AD. They purportedly reached massive sizes during the Yuan dynasty in the 14th century, and by the time of the Ming dynasty, they were used by Zheng He to send expeditions to the Indian Ocean. Water was the cheapest and usually the only way to transport goods in bulk over long distances. In addition, it was the safest way to transport commodities. The long trade routes created popular trading ports called entrepôts. There were three popular Entrepôts in Southeast Asia: the Malaka in southwestern Malaya, Hoi An in Vietnam, and Ayuthaya in Thailand. These super centers for trade were ethnically diverse, because ports served as a midpoint of voyages and trade rather than a destination. The Entrepôts helped link the coastal cities to the "hemispheric trade nexus". The increase in sea trade initiated a cultural exchange among traders. From 1400 to 1600 the Chinese population doubled from 75 million to 150 million as a result of imported goods; this was known as the "age of commerce". The mariner's astrolabe was the chief tool of Celestial navigation in early modern maritime history. This scaled down version of the instrument used by astronomers served as a navigational aid to measure latitude at sea, and was employed by Portuguese sailors no later than 1481. The precise date of the discovery of the magnetic needle compass is undetermined, but the earliest attestation of the device for navigation was in the Dream Pool Essays by Shen Kuo (1088). Kuo was also the first to document the concept of true north to discern a compass' magnetic declination from the physical north magnetic pole. The earliest iterations of the compass consisted of a floating, magnetized lodestone needle that spun around in a water-filled bowl until it reached alignment with Earth's magnetic poles. Chinese sailors were using the "wet" compass to determine the southern cardinal direction no later than 1117. The first use of a magnetized needle for seafaring navigation in Europe was written of by Alexander Neckham, circa 1190. Around 1300, the pivot-needle dry-box compass was invented in Europe; it pointed north, similar to the modern-day mariner's compass. In Europe the device also included a compass-card, which was later adopted by the Chinese through contact with Japanese pirates in the 16th century. The oldest known map is dated back to 12,000 BC; it was discovered in a Spanish cave by Pilar Utrilla. The early maps were oriented with east at the top. This is believed to have begun in the Middle East. Religion played a role in the drawing of maps. Countries that were predominantly Christian during the Middle Ages placed east at the top of the maps, in part due to Genesis, "the Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden". This led to maps containing the image of Jesus Christ, and the garden of Eden at the top of maps. The latitude and longitude coordinate tables were made with the sole purpose of praying towards Mecca. The next progression of maps came with the portolan chart. This was the first type of map that labeled North at the top and was drawn proportionate to size. Landmarks were drawn in great detail.
Ships and vessels
Various ships were in use during the Middle Ages. The jong, a type of large sailing ship from Nusantara, was built using wooden dowels without iron nails and multiple planks to endure heavy seas. The chuan (junk) design was both innovative and adaptable. Junk vessels employed mat and batten style sails that could be raised and lowered in segments, as well varying angles. The longship was a type of ship developed over a period of centuries and perfected by its most famous users, the Vikings, around the 9th century. The ships were clinker-built, using overlapping wooden strakes. The knaar, a relative of the longship, was a type of cargo vessel. It differed from the longship in that it was larger and relied solely on its square rigged sail for propulsion. The cog was a design which is believed to have evolved from (or at least been influenced by) the longship, and was in wide use by the 12th century. It too used the clinker method of construction. The caravel was a ship invented in Islamic Iberia and used in the Mediterranean from the 13th century. Unlike the longship and cog, it used a carvel method of construction. It could be either square rigged (caravela redonda) or lateen rigged (caravela latina). The carrack was another type of ship invented in the Mediterranean in the 15th century. It was a larger vessel than the caravel. Columbus's ship, the Santa María, was a famous example of a carrack.
Arab age of discovery
The Arab Empire maintained and expanded a wide trade network across parts of Asia, Africa and Europe. This helped establish the Arab Empire (including the Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates) as the world's leading extensive economic power throughout the 8th–13th centuries according to the political scientist John M. Hobson. The Belitung is the oldest discovered Arabic ship to reach the Asian sea, dating back over 1000 years. Apart from the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, navigable rivers in the Islamic regions were uncommon, so transport by sea was very important. Islamic geography and navigational sciences were highly developed, making use of a magnetic compass and a rudimentary instrument known as a kamal, used for celestial navigation and for measuring the altitudes and latitudes of the stars. When combined with detailed maps of the period, sailors were able to sail across oceans rather than skirt along the coast. According to the political scientist John M. Hobson, the origins of the caravel ship, used for long-distance travel by the Spanish and Portuguese since the 15th century, date back to the qarib used by Andalusian explorers by the 13th century. Control of sea routes dictated the political and military power of the Islamic nation. The Islamic border spread from Spain to China. Maritime trade was used to link the vast territories that spanned the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean (see also: Indo-Mediterranean). The Arabs were among the first to sail the Indian Ocean. Long-distance trade allowed the movement of "armies, craftsmen, scholars, and pilgrims". Sea trade was an important factor not just for the coastal ports and cities like Istanbul, but also for Baghdad and Iraq, which are further inland. Sea trade enabled the distribution of food and supplies to feed entire populations in the middle east. Long distance sea trade imported raw materials for building, luxury goods for the wealthy, and new inventions.
Hanseatic League
The Hanseatic League was an alliance of trading guilds that established and maintained a trade monopoly over the Baltic Sea, to a certain extent the North Sea, and most of Northern Europe for a time in the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period, between the 13th and 17th centuries. Historians generally trace the origins of the League to the foundation of the Northern German town of Lübeck, established in 1158/1159 after the capture of the area from the Count of Schauenburg and Holstein by Henry the Lion, the Duke of Saxony. Exploratory trading adventures, raids and piracy had occurred earlier throughout the Baltic (see Vikings)—the sailors of Gotland sailed up rivers as far away as Novgorod, for example—but the scale of international economy in the Baltic area remained insignificant before the growth of the Hanseatic League. German cities achieved domination of trade in the Baltic with striking speed over the next century, and Lübeck became a central node in all the seaborne trade that linked the areas around the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. The 15th century saw the climax of Lübeck's hegemony. (Visby, one of the midwives of the Hanseatic league in 1358, declined to become a member. Visby dominated trade in the Baltic before the Hanseatic league, and with its monopolistic ideology, suppressed the Gotlandic free-trade competition.) By the late 16th century, the League imploded and could no longer deal with its own internal struggles, the social and political changes that accompanied the Reformation, the rise of Dutch and English merchants, and the incursion of the Ottoman Empire upon its trade routes and upon the Holy Roman Empire itself. Only nine members attended the last formal meeting in 1669 and only three (Lübeck, Hamburg and Bremen) remained as members until its final demise in 1862.
Italian maritime republics
The maritime republics, also called merchant republics, were Italian thalassocratic port cities which, starting from the Middle Ages, enjoyed political autonomy and economic prosperity brought about by their maritime activities. The term, coined during the 19th century, generally refers to four Italian cities, whose coats of arms have been shown since 1947 on the flags of the Italian Navy and the Italian Merchant Navy: Amalfi, Genoa, Pisa, and Venice. In addition to the four best known cities, Ancona, Gaeta, Noli, and, in Dalmatia, Ragusa, are also considered maritime republics; in certain historical periods, they were of comparable importance to some of the better known cities. Uniformly scattered across the Italian peninsula, the maritime republics were important not only for the history of navigation and commerce: in addition to precious goods otherwise unobtainable in Europe, new artistic ideas and news concerning distant countries also spread. From the 10th century, they built fleets of ships both for their own protection and to support extensive trade networks across the Mediterranean, giving them an essential role in reestablishing contacts between Europe, Asia, and Africa, which had been interrupted during the early Middle Ages. They also had an essential role in the Crusades and produced renowned explorers and navigators such as Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus. Over the centuries, the maritime republics—both the best known and the lesser known but not always less important—experienced fluctuating fortunes. In the 9th and 10th centuries, this phenomenon began with Amalfi and Gaeta, which soon reached their heyday. Meanwhile, Venice began its gradual ascent, while the other cities were still experiencing the long gestation that would lead them to their autonomy and to follow up on their seafaring vocation. After the 11th century, Amalfi and Gaeta declined rapidly, while Genoa and Venice became the most powerful republics. Pisa followed and experienced its most flourishing period in the 13th century, and Ancona and Ragusa allied to resist Venetian power. Following the 14th century, while Pisa declined to the point of losing its autonomy, Venice and Genoa continued to dominate navigation, followed by Ragusa and Ancona, which experienced their golden age in the 15th century. In the 16th century, with Ancona's loss of autonomy, only the republics of Venice, Genoa, and Ragusa remained, which still experienced great moments of splendor until the mid-17th century, followed by over a century of slow decline that ended with the Napoleonic invasion. The maritime republics reestablished contacts between Europe, Asia and Africa, which were almost interrupted after the fall of the Western Roman Empire; their history is intertwined both with the launch of European expansion towards the East and with the origins of modern capitalism as a mercantile and financial system. In these cities, gold coins, which had not been used for centuries, were minted, new exchange and accounting practices were developed, and thus international finance and commercial law were born. Technological advances in navigation were also encouraged; important in this regard was the improvement and diffusion of the compass by the Amalfi people and the Venetian invention of the great galley. Navigation owes much to the maritime republics as regards nautical cartography: the maps of the 14th and 15th centuries that are still in use today all belong to the schools of Genoa, Venice, and Ancona. From the East, the maritime republics imported a vast range of goods unobtainable in Europe, which they then resold in other cities of Italy and central and northern Europe, creating a commercial triangle between the Arab East, the Byzantine Empire, and Italy. Until the discovery of America they were therefore essential nodes of trade between Europe and the other continents.
Among the most important products were:
Medicines: aloe vera, balsam, ginger, camphor, laudanum, cardamom, rhubarb, astragalus Spices: black pepper, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, white sugar Perfumes and odorous substances to burn: musk, mastic, sandalwood, incense, ambergris Dyes: indigo, alum, carmine, varnish Textiles: silk, Egyptian linen, sambe, brocade, velvet, damask, carpets Luxury products: gemstones, precious coral, pearls, ivory, porcelain, gold and silver threads The maritime republics' great prosperity deriving from trade had a significant impact on the history of art, to the point that five of them (Amalfi, Genoa, Venice, Pisa and Ragusa) are today included in UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites. Although an artistic current common to all of them and exclusive to them cannot be described, a characterizing trait was the mixture of elements of the various Mediterranean artistic traditions, mainly Byzantine, Islamic and Romanesque elements. The modern Italian communities living in Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Gibraltar, and Crimea descend, at least in part, from the colonies of the maritime republics, as well as the language island of the Tabarchino dialect in Sardinia and the extinct Italian community of Odesa.
Somali maritime enterprise
During the Age of the Ajuran, the Somali sultanates and republics of Merca, Mogadishu, Barawa, Hobyo and their respective ports flourished. They had a lucrative foreign commerce with ships sailing to and coming from Arabia, India, Venetia, Persia, Egypt, Portugal and as far away as China. In the 16th century, Duarte Barbosa noted that many ships from the Kingdom of Cambaya in what is modern-day India sailed to Mogadishu with cloths and spices, for which they in return received gold, wax and ivory. Barbosa also highlighted the abundance of meat, wheat, barley, horses, and fruit on the coastal markets, which generated enormous wealth for the merchants. In the early modern period, successor states of the Adal and Ajuran empires began to flourish in Somalia who continued the seaborne trade established by previous Somali empires. The rise of the 19th century Gobroon dynasty in particular saw a rebirth in Somali maritime enterprise. During this period, the Somali agricultural output to Arabian markets was so great that the coast of Somalia came to be known as the Grain Coast of Yemen and Oman.
Age of Discovery
The Age of Discovery was a period from the early 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century, during which European ships traveled around the world to search for new trading routes after the Fall of Constantinople. Historians often refer to the 'Age of Discovery' as the pioneer Portuguese and later Spanish long-distance maritime travels in search of alternative trade routes to "the East Indies", moved by the trade of gold, silver and spices. In the process, Europeans encountered peoples and mapped lands previously unknown to them. The Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India changed Europe's view of the world. Italian navigators and explorers played a key role in the exploration and settlement of the Americas by Europeans. Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus (Italian: Cristoforo Colombo [kriˈstɔːforo koˈlombo]) completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean for the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. These voyages led to the widespread knowledge of the New World. This breakthrough inaugurated the period known as the Age of Discovery, which saw the colonization of the Americas, a related biological exchange, and trans-Atlantic trade. These events, the effects and consequences of which persist to the present, are often cited as the beginning of the modern era.
Christopher Columbus was an Italian navigator and maritime explorer who is one of several historical figures credited as the discoverer of the Americas. It is generally believed that he was born in Genoa, although other theories and possibilities exist. Columbus' voyages across the Atlantic Ocean began a European effort at exploration and colonization of the Western Hemisphere. While history places great significance on his first voyage of 1492, he did not actually reach the mainland until his third voyage in 1498. Likewise, he was not the earliest European explorer to reach the Americas, as there are accounts of European transatlantic contact prior to 1492. Nevertheless, Columbus's voyage came at a critical time of growing national imperialism and economic competition between developing nation states seeking wealth from the establishment of trade routes and colonies. Therefore, the period before 1492 is known as Pre-Columbian.
Born in the Republic of Genoa, Columbus was a navigator who sailed in search of a westward route to India, China, Japan and the Spice Islands thought to be the East Asian source of spices and other precious oriental goods obtainable only through arduous overland routes. Columbus was partly inspired by 13th-century Italian explorer Marco Polo in his ambition to explore Asia. His initial belief that he had reached "the Indies" has resulted in the name "West Indies" being attached to the Bahamas and the islands of the Caribbean. At the time of Columbus's voyages, the Americas were inhabited by Indigenous Americans, and Columbus later participated in the beginning of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Another Italian, John Cabot (Italian: Giovanni Caboto [dʒoˈvanni kaˈbɔːto]), together with his son Sebastian, explored the eastern seaboard of North America for Henry VII in the early 16th century. The historian Alwyn Ruddock worked on Cabot and his era for 35 years. She suggested that Cabot and his expedition successfully returned to England in the spring of 1500. She claimed their return followed an epic two-year exploration of the east coast of North America, south into the Chesapeake Bay area and perhaps as far as the Spanish territories in the Caribbean. Her evidence included the well-known world map of the Spanish cartographer Juan de la Cosa. His chart included the North American coast and seas "discovered by the English" between 1497 and 1500. The Cabot Project at the University of Bristol was organized in 2009 to search for the evidence on which Ruddock's claims rest, as well as to undertake related studies of Cabot and his expeditions. The lead researchers on the project, Evan Jones and Margaret Condon, claim to have found further evidence to support aspects of Ruddock's case, including some of the information she intended to use to argue for a successful return of the 1498 expedition to Bristol. These appear to place John Cabot in London by May 1500, although Jones and Condon have yet to publish their documentation. Jacques Cartier was a French navigator who first explored and described the Gulf of St-Lawrence and the shores of the Saint Lawrence River, which he named Canada, likely comes from the Huron-Iroquois word "kanata", meaning "village" or "settlement". Juan Fernández was a Spanish explorer and navigator. Probably between 1563 and 1574 he discovered the Juan Fernández Islands west of Valparaíso, Chile. He also discovered the Pacific islands of San Félix and San Ambrosio (1574). Among the other famous explorers of the period were Vasco da Gama, Pedro Álvares Cabral, Yermak, Juan Ponce de León, Francisco Coronado, Juan Sebastián Elcano, Bartolomeu Dias, Ferdinand Magellan, Willem Barentsz, Abel Tasman, Jean Alfonse, Samuel de Champlain, Willem Jansz, Captain James Cook, Henry Hudson, and Giovanni da Verrazzano.
In 1524 the Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano (Italian: [dʒoˈvanni da (v)verratˈtsaːno]) was the first European to explore the Atlantic coast of North America between Florida and New Brunswick in 1524. The geographic information derived from this voyage significantly influenced 16th-century cartographers. Despite his discoveries, Verrazzano's reputation did not proliferate as much as other explorers of that era. For example, Verrazzano gave the European name Francesca to the new land that he had seen, in accordance with contemporary practices, after the French king in whose name he sailed. That and other names he bestowed on features he discovered have not survived. Verrazzano's reputation was particularly obscure in New York City, where the 1609 voyage of Henry Hudson on behalf of the Dutch Republic came to be regarded as the de facto start of European exploration of New York. It was only by a great effort in the 1950s and 1960s that Verrazzano's name and reputation were re-established as the European discoverer of the harbour, during an effort to name the newly built Narrows bridge after him. The Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (Italian: [ameˈriːɡo veˈsputtʃi]) first demonstrated in about 1501 that the New World was not Asia as initially conjectured but a different continent (America is named after him). Between 1497 and 1504, Vespucci participated in at least two voyages of the Age of Discovery, first on behalf of Spain (1499–1500) and then for Portugal (1501–1502). In 1503 and 1505, two booklets were published under his name, containing colourful descriptions of these explorations and other alleged voyages. Both publications were extremely popular and widely read across much of Europe. Although historians still dispute the authorship and veracity of these accounts, at the time they were instrumental in raising awareness of the new discoveries and enhancing the reputation of Vespucci as an explorer and navigator. Vespucci claimed to have understood, back in 1501 during his Portuguese expedition, that Brazil was part of a fourth continent unknown to Europeans, which he called the "New World". The claim inspired cartographer Martin Waldseemüller to recognize Vespucci's accomplishments in 1507 by applying the Latinized form "America" for the first time to a map showing the New World. Other cartographers followed suit, and by 1538 the tradition of marking the name "America" on maps of the newly discovered continents was secure. It is unknown whether Vespucci was ever aware of these honours. In 1505, he was made a subject of Castile by royal decree and in 1508, he was appointed to the newly created position of piloto mayor (master navigator) for Spain's Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) in Seville, a post he held until his death in 1512. A number of Italian navigators and explorers in the employ of Spain and France were involved in exploring and mapping their territories, and in establishing settlements; but this did not lead to the permanent presence of Italians in America. In 1539 Marco da Nizza explored the territory that later became the states of Arizona and New Mexico.
Peter Martyr d'Anghiera was an Italian-born historian of Spain and of the discoveries of her representatives during the Age of Exploration. He wrote the first accounts of explorations in Central and South America in a series of letters and reports, grouped in the original Latin publications of 1511–1530 into sets of ten chapters called "decades". His Decades are thus of great value in the history of geography and discovery. His De Orbe Novo (published 1530; "On the New World") describes the first contacts of Europeans and Native Americans and contains, for example, the first European reference to India rubber. Richard Hakluyt was an English writer, and is principally remembered for his efforts in promoting and supporting the settlement of North America by the English through his works, notably Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America (1582) and The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoueries of the English Nation (1598–1600).
European expansion
Although Europe is the world's second-smallest continent in terms of area, it has a very long coastline, and has arguably been influenced more by its maritime history than any other continent. Europe is uniquely situated between several navigable seas and intersected by navigable rivers running into them in a way which greatly facilitated the influence of maritime traffic and commerce. When the carrack and then the caravel were developed by the Portuguese, European thoughts returned to the fabled East. These explorations have a number of causes. Monetarists believe the main reason the Age of Exploration began was because of a severe shortage of bullion in Europe. The European economy was dependent on gold and silver currency, but low domestic supplies had plunged much of Europe into a recession. Another factor was the centuries long conflict between the Iberians and the Muslims to the south. The eastern trade routes were controlled by the Ottoman Empire after the Turks took control of Constantinople in 1453, and they barred Europeans from those trade routes. The ability to outflank the Muslim states of North Africa was seen as crucial to their survival. At the same time, the Iberians learnt much from their Arab neighbours. The carrack and caravel both incorporated the Mediterranean lateen sail that made ships far more manoeuvrable. It was also through the Arabs that Ancient Greek geography was rediscovered, for the first time giving European sailors some idea of the shape of Africa and Asia.
European colonization
In 1492, Christopher Columbus reached the Americas, after which European exploration and colonization rapidly expanded. The post-1492 era is known as the Columbian Exchange period. The first conquests were made by the Spanish, who quickly conquered most of South and Central America and large parts of North America. The Portuguese took Brazil. The British, French and Dutch conquered islands in the Caribbean Sea, many of which had already been conquered by the Spanish or depopulated by disease. Early European colonies in North America included Spanish Florida, the British settlements in Virginia and New England, French settlements in Quebec and Louisiana, and Dutch settlements in New Netherlands. Denmark–Norway revived its former colonies in Greenland from the 18th until the 20th century, and also colonised a few of the Virgin Islands.
From its very outset, Western colonialism was operated as a joint public–private venture. Columbus' voyages to the Americas were partially funded by Italian investors, but whereas the Spanish state maintained a tight rein on trade with its colonies (by law, the colonies could only trade with one designated port in the mother country, and treasure was brought back in special convoys), the English, French and Dutch granted what were effectively trade monopolies to joint-stock companies such as the British East India Company, the Dutch East India Company and the Hudson's Bay Company. In the exploration of Africa, there was a proliferation of conflicting European claims to African territory. By the 15th century, Europeans explored the African coast in search of a water route to India. These expeditions were mostly conducted by the Portuguese, who had been given papal authority to exploit all non-Christian lands of the Eastern Hemisphere. The Europeans set up coastal colonies to purchase or abduct slaves for the Atlantic slave trade, but the interior of the continent remained unexplored until the 19th century. This was a cumulative period that resulted in European colonial rule in Africa and altered the future of the African continent. Imperialism in Asia traces its roots back to the late 15th century with a series of voyages that sought a sea passage to India in the hope of establishing direct trade between Europe and Asia in spices. Before 1500 European economies were largely self-sufficient, only supplemented by minor trade with Asia and Africa. Within the next century, however, European and Asian economies were slowly becoming integrated through the rise of new global trade routes; and the early thrust of European political power, commerce, and culture in Asia gave rise to a growing trade in lucrative commodities—a key development in the rise of today's modern world capitalist economy. European colonies in India were set up by several European nations beginning at the beginning of the 16th century. Rivalry between reigning European powers saw the entry of the Dutch, British and French among others.
Ming maritime world
Zheng He