The Age of Exploration
Learn about the Age of Exploration — the era when European mariners connected the world's continents, launching globalization and transforming world history.
The Age of Exploration (c. 1415–1600) was the era when European mariners — driven by the desire for trade, glory, and religious conversion — sailed to every corner of the globe, establishing contact between civilizations that had developed independently for millennia. The consequences were world-changing: global trade networks, colonial empires, ecological transformation, and the death of millions of indigenous peoples.
Portugal pioneered European exploration, systematically pushing south along the African coast under Prince Henry the Navigator's patronage. Improved ship designs (the caravel), navigation instruments (the astrolabe, magnetic compass), and better understanding of wind patterns enabled increasingly ambitious voyages. Vasco da Gama's arrival in India (1498) and Columbus's landfall in the Caribbean (1492) opened new worlds — literally and figuratively.
The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) divided the non-European world between Spain and Portugal with breathtaking presumption. Within decades, Spanish conquistadors had conquered the Aztec and Inca empires, Portuguese traders had established posts from Goa to Macau, and the Columbian Exchange was transforming the biology, agriculture, and demographics of every continent. The Age of Exploration was simultaneously an era of extraordinary courage, brutal exploitation, and the beginning of the interconnected world we inhabit today.