Reading path · 9 stops
The Age of Sail
How small Atlantic kingdoms and a merchant republic built empires across the oceans.
From the fifteenth century, European ships opened sea routes that linked the continents as never before. Portugal led the way down the African coast and into the Indian Ocean; Spain crossed the Atlantic and seized the wealth of the Americas; the Dutch built a company with the powers of a state; and Britain eventually assembled the largest empire in history. This path follows that expansion, and the enslavement and violence on which much of it rested.
Suits the Navigator · the Strategist
1 · Profile · 1415 CE – 1975 CEPortuguese EmpireFrom the capture of Ceuta in 1415 to Goa, Malacca and Hormuz, Portugal built an empire of fortified trading posts rather than territory.
2 · Encyclopedia · PersonPrince Henry the NavigatorHenry's sponsorship of voyages down the West African coast turned exploration from episodic raiding into an institutionalised commercial enterprise.
3 · Encyclopedia · Person · 1498Vasco da GamaDa Gama's arrival at Calicut in 1498 completed the sea route to Asia that Bartolomeu Dias had opened by rounding the Cape.
4 · Encyclopedia · Event · 1494Treaty of TordesillasThe treaty of 1494 fixed a meridian dividing newly discovered lands between the Spanish and Portuguese spheres.
5 · Profile · 1492 CE – 1898 CESpanish EmpireColumbus, Cortés and Pizarro made Spain master of the Americas, and under Philip II the first empire on which the sun never set.- 66 · Encyclopedia · TermAtlantic slave tradePlantation economies such as Brazil's sugar estates rested on the forced transport of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic.
7 · Profile · 1581 CE – 1975 CEDutch EmpireA small republic projected power across four continents by seizing maritime chokepoints such as Malacca, taken from Portugal in 1641.
8 · Encyclopedia · InstitutionDutch East India CompanyFounded in 1602 with permanent capital, tradable shares and powers to wage war and make treaties, the VOC was something new.
9 · Profile · 1583 CE – 1997 CEBritish EmpireBuilt on a fiscal-military state and a professional Royal Navy, it became the largest empire in history, ruling roughly a quarter of the world's population.
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