Era of Discovery

Have you ever explored beyond your backyard, city, state, or even your country’s border? Have you ever left to find something that might be there or not? That might be valuable, or maybe not? Have you traveled 1000’s of miles just to find nothing or to find a unclaimed piece of land? Europeans during the 1500’s and 1600’s started exploration but it didn’t just happen overnight, it took them many years to prepare and find different ways to get where they were going, and how they are going to get there. Economy, social aspects, and technology played a big role leading into the European exploration and domination of the new world.

The economy played an enormous role in European exploration. One of the economic factors was trading; trading was so large, people lived in certain areas just so they could trade more easily. The map shows that all the land other than the new world or old world was only populated on the coast (Holt, 2003). Explorers and colonies lived on the coast; therefore, they could trade faster, and not lose what they had just bought from the traders. Mercantilism also played a crucial part; Countries would do what they had to do to get their country wealth. It is said that “a country could build wealth in two ways. It could mine gold and silver either at home or in its colonies; or it could sell more goods than it bought from foreign countries” (Holt, 2003). Some European explorers would go in search to steal this gold and silver that is mined in the country’s colonies. Even though trading and mercantilism was important, currency also played an equal part. Coins were made of several types of metals but the value of each metal used in the coin was the issue; “The values of coins could change depending on the amount of precious metal they contained” (Holt, 2003). Since most countries mined metals they could make their own currency, they could make other counterfeit coins they contained 5% gold instead of 30% gold, and then trade with the counterfeit currency to the country that there re counterfeiting.

Social aspects encouraged European Exploration. The curiosity of the world caused people to want to explore. Stated in Holt World History, “The scientific Revolution had created a desire among many Europeans to learn more about the world and had added to the general store of geographic knowledge” (Holt, 2003). This curiosity encouraged