Europe Reaches Out

The Age of Exploration

Entire populations and cultures have been transplanted in recent

centuries

59 million inhabitants of Great Britain• 270 million English-speakers in U.S.• 30 million in S. Africa• 28 million in Canada• 18 million in Australia.

39 million inhabitants in Spain• 250 million Spanish speakers in Latin

America• Largest Spanish city is Mexico City (half the

population of all of Spain) 10 million inhabitants in Portugal• 160 million Portuguese speakers in Brazil• Largest Portuguese city is Sao Paulo (more

inhabitants than Portugal)

• Largest French city is still Paris• But the second largest is

Montreal.

16 million inhabitants in Holland, 10 million Afrikaans speakers in S. Africa.

There are 5 million Jews in Israel, 5 million in the U.S.

The second largest Polish city is Chicago. 30 million blacks in the U.S. (only 6

countries in Africa have greater population)

The Impulse Toward Exploration• Tantalizingly brief gap between several

medieval events and the European Age of Exploration

• China closed itself to outsiders in 1368• China's great voyages to Asia and Africa ended

in 1431• Last ship to Norse colony in Greenland sailed in

1406• Columbus sailed in 1492.

Factors in Exploration Accidental discovery. Desire to bypass Moslem world. Disruptions of overland routes (somewhat

overrated). Intra-European rivalry. Curiosity.

Major Events in Exploration

African coast-route to India. Trans Atlantic voyages. Northwest and Northeast Passage. Pacific voyages. Circumnavigations

Circumnavigating the Globe• Ferdinand Magellan (Spain) 1519-22• Sir Francis Drake (England) 1577-80• Sir Thomas Cavendish (England) 1586-88• Simon de Cordes (Holland) 1598-1600• Oliver Van Noort (Holland) 1598-1601• George Spilberg (Holland) 1614-17• James LeMaire and William Cornelius

Schouten (Holland) 1615-17

Some Observations• Most of these voyages were for military

purposes (harassing the Spanish) rather than discovery

• This pattern is very similar to the early days of space exploration

• Not until the mid-1700’s were there circumnavigations largely aimed at exploration

• Drake and his fellow pirates would now be called state-sponsored terrorists

A Geographical Oddity• The easiest way to sail around the world is

from west to east, with the wind• Almost all early voyages were from east to

west around South America• Objective: secrecy in entering the Pacific• Spanish tried and failed to establish

settlements at the Straits of Magellan (weather poor, can’t raise crops, etc.)

A Geographical Oddity

The First Two (Three) -Time Circumnavigator

• William Dampier (between 1679 and 1711) seems to have been the first to circumnavigate more than once (three times)

• Odds of surviving a circumnavigation were very poor in early voyages

• The prevention of scurvy was not discovered until around 1800

The First Two -Time Circumnavigating Ship

• The Dolphin (1764-66 and 1766-68) was the first ship to circumnavigate the globe twice

• It took almost 250 years after Magellan for shipbuilding technology to be able to build a ship capable of surviving two voyages

The First Commercial Round-the-World Traveler

• By the 1600’s a globe-girdling network of European trade routes was in place

• It was rarely necessary to circle the globe• There were only about 25 circumnavigations

to 1800• Giovanni Carreri (1693-98) sailed to Mexico,

crossed overland, then booked passage across the Pacific and back to Europe

Why Did They Do It?• Why did people risk their lives in tiny boats

to trade halfway around the world?• Nowadays: bulk cargo. Ship more valuable

than cargo, but cost recovered by many voyages (Exxon Valdez: 10 million gallons = $10 million)

• 1600’s: cargo far more valuable than ship• “My ship came in” - one good voyage could

set you up for life.

Strange ideas were not so strange• Does it seem bizarre that Cartier could sail

up the St. Lawrence hoping to reach China? There was no clear idea how rivers were

fed or what made them flow. • The coastline of Europe is one of the most

complex in the world. • The one thing Europeans were not

prepared for was long regular coastlines without geographical oddities!

Innovations that aided exploration

Stern-post rudder Lateen and square sails in combination Compass Discovery of Trade Winds

Innovations derived from exploration

New foodstuffs: coffee, tea, potatoes, tomatoes, chocolate, squash, maize.

• Improvements in shipbuilding, charting, navigation.

• General stimulus to discovery.

The Compass Crisis• Compasses often pointed quite far from true

north • Queen Elizabeth offered a prize to anyone

who could solve the problem• The court physician, William Gilbert, in 1600

published De Magnete

De Magnete, 1600

• Considered the first great work on magnetism

• Gilbert deduced the overall form of magnetic fields and concluded that the Earth had two magnetic poles

• Earth's magnetic field varies in space and time. It changes measurably in a human lifetime

Why Compasses Don’t Point True North

• North Magnetic Pole is not at the geographic pole

• Declination in Wisconsin is nearly zero

• Declination in Maine is 20 degrees West

• Declination in Seattle is 20 degrees East

Latitude and Longitude

Latitude (N-S) is easy to determine by observing the stars

Latitude and LongitudeLongitude (E-W) cannot be determined by simple observation– In a night, every

observer at a given latitude sees the same stars

– What differs is when they see the stars

– The key to longitude determination is time

Longitude = Accurate Time

• Circumference of Earth =25,000 miles, so:• One hour = 1040 miles at the equator• One minute = 17 miles at the equator• One second = 0.3 miles at the equator• Clock has to be accurate to seconds over a

span of months, on a rolling ship, in all weather and climate.

Astronomical Methods

• Eclipses of Moon: Everyone who sees the Moon sees the same thing

• Too rare for most purposes• Eclipses of Jupiter’s moons: frequent but hard to

observe• Method never panned out

An Unexpected Spinoff

• The Dutch astronomer Roemer found eclipses ran early or late

• Discrepancy = time for light to cross Earth’s orbit

• First evidence that light had a measurable speed

The Final Solution - A Good Clock

• One of the great technological stimuli of all time

• John Harrison, 1761• Need high-quality steel for springs• Need accurate tools to make gears and

other parts• With good steel and accurate machine

tools, what else can you make?

Anything at All

The Other Immigrants• Rats and ships are synonymous• Dogs (for companionship) and pigs (for food)

were common passengers on early voyages• Rats, dogs and pigs wreaked havoc on many

island ecosystems• Horses were reintroduced to the Americas by the

Spanish and were utilized by Indians far outside the zone of immediate contact

• The most significant travelers were microscopic

Pre-Contact America• Pre-contact population of Americas once

estimated at perhaps 5-10 million• Estimates based on– Observed population at time of contact– Stereotype that Indians could not sustain a

complex society• Early estimates now known to be at least 10 times

too small• May have been more people in the Americas than

Western Europe

Conquest of the Americas• Europeans greatly outnumbered• Weapons advantage potentially offset by

numbers• European mortality high from disease• Spanish had been expelling Arabs for 700

years• No reason to expect native societies to

collapse upon conquest• Not the slam dunk we sometimes think

The Micro-Immigrants• Indians isolated from Old World disease

pool• Introduced diseases: smallpox, chicken pox,

measles, cholera, malaria• Effects extended far beyond contact areas• Overall mortality may have been 80%+• Why didn’t diseases travel other way as

well? (Syphilis?)

The Course of One Epidemic

Two Important Points about Disease in the New World

• First Europeans did not know they were carrying contagious diseases

• Europeans did not know that Indians lacked immunity to European diseases

• Would things have been different if they had known? Maybe not, but you can’t judge people for what they might have done