The age of great geographical discoveries

The age of great geographical discoveries.

I would like to tell about great geographical discoveries because for me it is the most interesting theme in history and I don’t like reading about wars. I think it’s very important to know the great people who developed the history of Mankind.

 One of the supreme geographical discoveries is Columbus’s voyage to the coasts of India to the west, through the Atlantic ocean. As a result of this journey a new continent was discovered, that now is called America.

Columbus was given the title “Admiral of the Ocean Sea” in April 1492. He wanted to lead his own expedition and was a trained sailor and ready to lead. However, he needed someone to fund his voyage, so he went to the king of Portugal, John II, who immediately declined. Columbus turned then to queen Isabella of Spain who reluctantly funded him.  On the evening of August 3, 1492, Columbus departed from Castilian Palos de la Frontera with three ships (Niña, Pinta, and the Santa Maria). Columbus first sailed to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa, which were ruled by the Crown of Castile, where he restocked provisions and made repairs. On September 6, he departed San Sebastián de la Gomera for what turned out to be a five-week voyage across the ocean. After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sights a Bahamian island, believing he has reached East Asia.  On October 12, the expedition reached land, probably Watling Island in the Bahamas. Later that month, Columbus sighted Cuba, which he thought was mainland China, and in December the expedition landed on Hispaniola, which Columbus thought might be Japan. He established a small colony there with 39 of his men. The explorer returned to Spain with gold, spices, and "Indian" captives in March 1493 and was received with the highest honors by the Spanish court. He was the first European to explore the Americas since the Vikings set up colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland in the 10th century. During his lifetime, Columbus led a total of four expeditions to the New World, discovering various Caribbean islands, the Gulf of Mexico, and the South and Central American mainlands, but he never accomplished his original goal—a western ocean route to the great cities of Asia. Columbus died in Spain in 1506 without realizing the great scope of what he did achieve: He had discovered for Europe the New World, whose riches over the next century would help make Spain the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth.

Another important discovery has made Vasco da Gama in 1497-1499. He extended the sea route exploration of his predecessor Bartolomeu Dias, who had first rounded Africa's Cape of Good Hope in 1488, culminating a generation of Portuguese sea exploration fostered by the nautical school of Henry the Navigator. Da Gama's voyage was successful in establishing a sea route from Europe to India that would permit trade with the Far East, without the use of the costly and unsafe Silk Road caravan routes of the Middle East and Central Asia--which were also disappearing do to the collapse of the Mongol Empire. The route was also fraught with peril - his fleet went more than three months without seeing land, and only 54 of his 170 voyagers, and two of four ships, returned to Portugal in 1499. Nevertheless, da Gama's initial journey ushered in a several-hundred year era of European domination through sea power and commerce, and 450 years of Portuguese colonialism in India that brought wealth and power to the Portuguese monarchy.

The discoveries of these people benefitted all the humanity. Besides of discovery of America, the very significant event in the history was Australia’s discovery with it’s own natural world, rich of wonders. Sailors had been searching for the big south continent “Terra Australis Incognita” for the long time. There were many legends about this land, so when European people reached it and found this continent desert, the disappointment was so big that Ost-Indian company refused to explore it more for many years.

In the age of great geographical discoveries the widely spread idea of globe-shaped earth played the great role. And the thought of possibility to get to India sailing to the west through the Atlantic ocean was connected with it. The outlines of all inhabited continents, except north and north-west coasts of America and eastern seaboard of Australia, were defined and the greater part of earth was explored. Nevertheless many inner areas of America, Asia, Africa and especially Australia were still unstudied. Great discoveries gave new vast material for many other fields of knowledge – history, zoology, botany and geography. Exactly as the result of the great geographical discoveries potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco and maize that are the usual products now, came to Europe.