As shown in Map 2.1, the greatest of the sea explorations from Europe took place within a little less than thirty-five years. The historical scope of it is astonishing. In 1488, Bartholo-meu Dias of Portugal rounded the Cape of Good Hope and would have reached India had his mutinous crew not forced him to return home. In September 1522, the Vittoria—the last of Ferdinand Magellan’s fleet of five ships—put in at Seville; in a spectacular achievement, 18 Europeans had circumnavigated the globe. Between these two dates, two other voyages of no less importance were accomplished. Columbus, certain that no more than 2,500 miles separated the Canary Islands from Japan, persuaded the Spanish sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella to finance his first Atlantic expedition. On October 12,1492, his lookout sighted the little island of San Salvador in the Bahamas. Only a few years later, Vasco da Gama, sailing for the Portuguese, reached Calicut (Kozhikode) in India via the Cape of Good Hope, returning home in 1499. Following Dias’s and Columbus’s discoveries, Portugal and Spain, with the pope’s blessing, agreed in the treaty of Tordezillas (1494) to grant Spain all lands more than 370 leagues (1,100 miles) west of the Cape Verde Islands (a measurement accident that ultimately established Portugal’s claim to Brazil). Thus, the sea lanes opened, with Portugal dominant in the East (to East Africa, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, China, and beyond) and Spain supreme in the West.
By the early sixteenth century, the wealth and commerce of Europe had shifted to the Atlantic. The Mediterranean leaders did not decline absolutely; they were simply overtaken and passed by. In an international context, this was a critical first phase in the relative rise and eventual supremacy of key Western nation-states.
After Spain’s conquest of Mexico by Hernando Cortez in 1521, American silver and gold flowed into Spain in ever-increasing quantities. When the Spanish king Philip II
MAP 2.1
Exploration
Spain and Portugal came first; then France, Holland, and England. All these nations explored vast amounts of territory in North America, giving rise to new economic opportunities, but England's exploration gave rise to the most extensive permanent settlements in the New World.
Made good his claim to the throne of Portugal in 1580, Spanish prestige reached its zenith. By royal decree, Spain simply swallowed Portugal, and two great empires, strong in the Orient and unchallenged in the Americas, were now joined. When we reflect that no other country had as yet established a single permanent settlement in the New World, it seems astonishing that the decline of Spanish power was so imminent.
Although Spain was a colonizer, Spanish attempts to settle in the Americas lacked a solid foundation. Spain’s main interests, for both the conquistadors and the rulers at home, were treasures from America’s mines (especially silver) and Christianity for the conquered. To be sure, attempts were made to extend agriculture and to establish manufacturing operations in the New World, but the Spaniards remained a ruling caste,
Dominating the natives who did the work and holding them in political and economic bondage. Their religious, administrative, military, and legal institutions were strong and lasting, but the Spanish were more like occupying rulers than permanent settlers.
Meanwhile, the Protestant Reformation radically altered the nature of European nation building and warfare. When, toward the end of the sixteenth century, Spain became involved in war with the English and began to dissipate its energies in a futile attempt to bring the Low Countries (Holland and Belgium) under complete subjection, Spain lost the advantage of being the first nation to expand through explorations in America. Also harmful to Spain was the decline in gold and silver imports after 1600 as the mines of better-grade ores became exhausted.
World History
