Exploration of the New World Motives for Exploration

Exploration of the New World Motives for Exploration Explain the political, economic, and technological factors that led to the exploration of the New World by Spain, Portugal, and England, including the competition between nation-states, the expansion of international trade, and the technological advances in shipbuilding and navigation.

Economic Factors • Expansion of international trade. [both a cause and a result of Age of Exploration] • Merchants brought spices from the Far East to Europe to trade for a profit. • Other Europeans wanted more goods from the East without the added expense charged by these middle men.

Economic Factors • Because of the leadership of Prince Henry and their geographic location on the Atlantic Ocean, Portugal became the first to seek a water route to Asia. Let’s take a look at the classroom map…

Economic Factors • Economic competition with Portugal influenced Spain to sponsor Columbus and others to explore unmapped lands in the New World that were found by various explorers. Let’s take a look at the classroom map…

Political Factors Competition between nationstates • England other countries became interested in the New World, especially as the Spanish found gold and silver that made them the most powerful nation in Europe.

Political Factors Competition between nationstates • The English monarchs began to send explorers to the New World and in the next few centuries they would become the dominant country in the settlement of North America.

Technological Factors Helped explorers • Advancements in shipbuilding • The construction of the caravel -a smaller, faster ship with triangular sails that could sail into the wind

More pictures of caravels Notice the shape and size…

Technological Factors Helped explorers • Improvements in navigational skills • Allowed sailors to venture further out to sea Let’s check out some of those new tools…

Astrolabe-measures height of sun above the horizon Reading celestial stars to plot location and course Compass-helped with direction

Cartography What is cartography? Map making skills Cartography helped them share their knowledge with others and was taught at the Portuguese School of Navigation. Not the same as maps we have today