1. Chapter 1 Section 2: The Age of Exploration
Pages 12-19
Homework: Read pages Make flashcards for key terms on page 12, and highlighted in notes. Do section assessment on page 19, questions 1-6

2. The Age of Exploration The Big Idea
7.11.1
7.11.2
The Big Idea
As trade routes developed across the globe, European explorers crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.
Main Ideas
Economic growth in Europe led to new ways of thinking.
Trade with Africa and Asia led to a growing interest in exploration.
Many European nations rushed to explore the Americas.
The Columbian Exchange affected the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe.

3. Main Idea 1: Economic growth in Europe led to new ways of thinking.
Europe experienced a great economic change called the Commercial Revolution, beginning in the 1200s.
Wealth became more important in European society.
Merchant families wanted capital: money or property that is used to earn more money.
Merchants created joint-stock companies: businesses in which a group of people invest together.

4. Explain how economic growth in Europe led to new ways of thinking.
Focus Question #1
Explain how economic growth in Europe led to new ways of thinking.

5. Main Idea 2: Trade with Africa and Asia led to a growing interest in exploration.
Wealth was made mainly through trade with distant continents—Asia and Africa.
European merchants looked for sea routes to Africa and Asia by 1400.
New technology was developed to aid exploration.
Magnetic compass, astrolabe, accurate maps, the sextatnt, and the caravel.
Vasco da Gama reached India in 1498.

6. Focus Question #2
Why would trade with Africa and Asia lead to a growing interest in exploration?

7. Main Idea 3: Many European nations rushed to explore the Americas.
Christopher Columbus, a sailor from Genoa, Italy, heard stories of great wealth in the Indies.
He persuaded King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to pay for an expedition to the Indies ( the catch all name for the countries of Asia).
On August 3, 1492, Columbus set sail across the Atlantic with three ships.
On October 12, 1492, he reached the Americas.

8. Columbus in the Americas
Columbus and his crew landed in the Bahamas, on an island he named San Salvador.
He called the native people Indians because he thought he was in the Indies.
Columbus was interested in gold, not the culture of the native people.
He made three more voyages to the Americas, mapping islands in the Caribbean sea, part of the north coast of South America, and the northeast coast of Central America from Panama to the Yucatan Peninsula.
The impact of Columbus’s voyages on the world was not realized until years after his death in 1506.

9. Other Explorations
The news that Christopher Columbus had discovered, what was thought to be, a western route to the East Indies spread through Europe.
Other European countries began to send explorers.
Like Columbus, they were looking for gold, silver, silk and other valuables.
They were also looking for new land to claim for their country.
They soon discovered what Columbus had actually found was North America.

10. Amerigo Vespucci
America was named for Amerigo Vespucci, who sailed to the Caribbean and South America in 1499 and 1501, making detailed charts of the coast line.

11. Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan headed an expedition consisting of five ships and 250 men between 1519 and 1522 that eventually sailed around the world.

12. The Northwest Passage
Several countries sent explorers to North America to find a sea passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

13. French explorers
Jacques Cartier (1534) and Samuel de Champlain (1605) reached what is now Canada.

14. Henry Hudson
The English captain Henry Hudson led a Dutch expedition to present-day New York in 1609, discovering the Hudson River.
John Collier's painting of Henry Hudson
with his son and some crew members after
a mutiny on his icebound ship in June The boat was set adrift and never heard from again.

15. Focus Question #3
What were the reasons for many European nations rushing to explore the Americas in the 1500’s?

16. Main Idea 4: The Columbian Exchange affected the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Explorers brought plants, animals, and diseases to the “New World” of the Americas and brought back plants and animals to the “Old World”—Europe, Asia, and Africa.
The Columbian Exchange is the name given this transfer of plants, animals, and diseases.
Explorers brought horses, cattle, pigs, and grains such as barley and wheat to the Americas.
Europeans took back such American plants as corn, tomatoes, tobacco, and cocoa.
Diseases from Europe, such as smallpox and bubonic plague, killed tens of millions of American Indians.
The total Native American population in North and South America before 1492= 112,000,000 (estimated; real number may have been higher)
By 1650 the native population was only about 6,000,000
95% of the population died off; made colonization much easier.

18. Focus Question #4
How did the Columbian Exchange affect the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe?

19. The Essential Question for Chapter 1 Section 2
As trade routes developed across the globe, why did European explorers cross the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas, and what were the effects of contact between Europe and the Americas?