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HISTODEX

Age of Discovery

c. 1400–c. 1600

From the fifteenth through the seventeenth century, European maritime states extended routes across the Atlantic, around Africa, into the Indian Ocean, and to the Americas.

Sailing ships and merchants gathered around a chart in an age of Atlantic navigation
Reconstruction note: This educational reconstruction is not a primary-source image of the event.
Period
c. 1400–c. 1600
Kind
Political event
Regions
North America
Keywords
voyage · maps · trade · empire · exchange

Follow the story · Four stages

  1. Background

    Competition for spices, gold, conversion, and royal power joined advances in navigation and ships to existing Mediterranean and Atlantic knowledge.

    • Port cities and monarchies invested in voyages
    • Navigation and mapmaking improved
    • Asia, Africa, and the Americas became connected
    An Iberian port equipped with charts and navigational instruments

  2. Course

    Portuguese and Castilian navigators moved down the African coast, crossed the Atlantic, and connected routes to the Indian Ocean and the Americas.

    • Routes extended along the West African coast
    • Atlantic crossings created new competition
    • Trade and conquest moved along the same sea lanes
    Sailing ships leaving for distant ports across the open ocean

  3. Outcome

    Oceanic trade, conquest, colonization, forced labor, and epidemic exchange expanded, reshaping the distribution of people, goods, and power around the world.

    • A global trading network took shape
    • Colonial rule and coerced labor expanded
    • Plants, animals, pathogens, and people crossed oceans
    Goods from different regions being transferred in a busy harbor warehouse

  4. Historical significance

    The word “discovery” can erase Indigenous societies, so the period must be read through existing maritime knowledge, violence, and environmental change as well as navigation.

    • It created the unequal connections of the modern world
    • It transformed geographic knowledge and maritime empires
    • Its legacy contains both encounter and violence
    A chart and baskets of crops representing an unequal connected world

Related figures

Related events

  1. c. 1415

    Atlantic competition

    A royal ship leaving an Atlantic port toward the African coast

    Ports and monarchies financed voyages that extended exploration along the African coast.

  2. 1498

    Portuguese routes

    A carrack rounding the Cape toward an Indian Ocean harbor

    The route around the Cape connected European ports with the Indian Ocean.

  3. c. 1400–c. 1600

    Castilian voyages

    Current event

    Three ships leaving the Atlantic while people watch from a quay

    Royally backed voyages changed European ideas of the Atlantic and the forms of overseas rule.

  4. c. 1492

    Oceanic exchange

    Crops and trade goods from different regions changing hands at a port

    Crops, animals, people, and pathogens crossed the Atlantic and transformed societies.

  5. c. 1600

    A global legacy

    A table with a chart, compass, and trade goods before a distant harbor

    Trade and empire became intertwined, leaving structures of conquest and coerced labor.

Sources