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During the fifteenth century, Spain hoped to gain advantage over its rival, Portugal. The history of Spanish exploration begins with the history of Spain itself. The most famous of these Spanish adventurers are Christopher Columbus (who, though Italian himself, explored on behalf of the Spanish monarchs), Hernán Cortés, and Francisco Pizarro. Thousands of Spaniards flocked to the Americas seeking wealth and status.

The Spanish established the first European settlements in the Americas, beginning in the Caribbean and, by 1600, extending throughout Central and South America. For them, the dungeon of Elmina was their last sight of their home country. Slaves lived in the dungeon for weeks or months until ships arrived to transport them to Europe or the Americas. The dungeon of the fort now served as a holding pen for African slaves from the interior of the continent, while on the upper floors Portuguese traders ate, slept, and prayed in a chapel. Originally built by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century, it appears in this image as it was in the 1660s, after being seized by Dutch slave traders in 1637.Īlthough the Portuguese originally used the fort primarily for trading gold, by the sixteenth century they had shifted their focus.

In time, much of the Atlantic World would become a gargantuan sugar-plantation complex in which Africans labored to produce the highly profitable commodity for European consumers.Įlmina Castle on the west coast of Ghana was used as a holding pen for slaves before they were brought across the Atlantic and sold. In the following years, as European exploration spread, slavery spread as well. The Portuguese also traded these slaves, introducing much-needed human capital to other European nations. Sugar fueled the Atlantic slave trade, and the Portuguese islands quickly became home to sugar plantations. Seeing the value of this source of labor in growing the profitable crop of sugar on their Atlantic islands, the Portuguese soon began exporting African slaves along with African ivory and gold. The travels of Portuguese traders to western Africa introduced them to the African slave trade, already brisk among African states. While the Portuguese didn’t rule over an immense landmass, their strategic holdings of islands and coastal ports gave them almost unrivaled control of nautical trade routes and a global empire of trading posts during the 1400s. It also established trading posts in China and Japan. From these strategic points, Portugal spread its empire down the western coast of Africa to the Congo, along the western coast of India, and eventually to Brazil on the eastern coast of South America. Merchants then used these Atlantic outposts as debarkation points for subsequent journeys. Portuguese mariners built an Atlantic empire by colonizing the Canary, Cape Verde, and Azores Islands, as well as the island of Madeira. With his support, Portuguese mariners successfully navigated an eastward route to Africa, establishing a foothold there that became a foundation of their nation’s trade empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Portugal’s Prince Henry the Navigator spearheaded his country’s exploration of Africa and the Atlantic in the 1400s. This age of exploration and the subsequent creation of an Atlantic World marked the earliest phase of globalization, in which previously isolated groups-Africans, Native Americans, and Europeans-first came into contact with each other, sometimes with disastrous results. In the 1500s, Spain surpassed Portugal as the dominant European power. Portuguese colonization of Atlantic islands in the 1400s inaugurated an era of aggressive European expansion across the Atlantic.

Explain the importance of Spanish exploration of the Americas in the expansion of Spain’s empire and the development of Spanish Renaissance culture.

Describe Portuguese exploration of the Atlantic and Spanish exploration of the Americas, and the importance of these voyages to the developing Atlantic World.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

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