The Renaissance Voyages

The Renaissance voyages of discovery rank as one of history's two or three most important phenomena in terms of their effect on the modern world. In roughly two centuries, from about 1420 to 1620, the urge to find new lands beyond Europe led to an unprecedented increase in knowledge about this planet. Discovery led to colonization and settlement, to overseas commitments that influenced the rise and fall of nations in Europe. It brought new wealth, new products, new opportunities, new problems, new ways of thinking, and it led to the creation of new nations.

The exploits of the men whose names evoke the Age of Exploration -- Vasco da Gama, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan and many others - have become so familiar that it rarely occurs to anyone to ask the obvious questions about them. Why did the great discoveries coincide with the Renaissance, instead of occurring, for example, in the 12th or the 13th century? And why did the initiative come from western Europe? Why not from one of several other relatively advanced civilizations: China, India and Japan in Asia; Islam in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Europe: the Aztecs, Inca and Maya in the Americas? All these possessed large territories, great wealth and levels of civilization in some respects equal to, if not superior to, those of the European nations. Yet leadership in exploration was taken by Portugal, Spain, England, France and the Nether- lands, almost to the exclusion of all other lands.

There was a very special quality about the needs, the skills, and the imagination of Europeans in this age that sent them searching the globe. Renaissance Europe needed precious metals and spices. While individual merchants had sought for gold and silk, pepper and cloves in the Far East during the Middle Ages, it was only in the 15th century that governments joined in the search. This was not due merely to greed. Europe was genuinely desperate for metal to make into coin: its own gold deposits were unable to cope with the demand. Without ample supplies of coin, there could be no real expansion of commercial and financial transactions. Bullion was not just wealth, but the means of obtaining wealth.

Nor were the spices then, as they are now, simply a way to add a whiff of individuality to food. Difficulties of transport and a lack of refrigeration meant that most of the meat that Renaissance men ate was salted or spoiled; spices were needed to make food edible, not merely more delicious.

Together with the need for precious metals and spices there was the desire to please God by converting the heathen. The crusading motive was perfectly genuine, though it, too, had its practical side: converted natives were more gentle, converted chiefs were more co-operative. Governments and individuals alike sincerely believed that it was Europe's manifest destiny to convert the infidel.

None of the material needs that underlay the pressure for exploration could have been satisfied without seaworthy ships, suited to discovery, and skilful mariners. Renaissance Europe, alone among maritime communities of the world, possessed both. Here then is one explanation of why the impetus for exploration came from the European nations that looked out into the Atlantic.