If Columbus had failed to return to Europe, how long would it have been before someone else would have tried?
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Well you’re a busy guy tonight, fog.
Good question, but probably a Great Debate. I’ll just toss out the thought that manny of civilizations great leaps that are tied forever to certain names were breakthroughs that were being sought by many at the time.
Thus, if the hot ticket was a cheap route to India, I suspect Chris was not the only one on the case, or, if he was, it would’ve soon been taken up by another, dismal results for previous engagees notwithstanding.
Couple o’ months.
I’m being only a little bit facetious. The Cabots came nosing around North America, following the fishing fleets that harvested just east of the Grand Banks, not too long after Columbus. Others were not far behind. Did the discoveries by Columbus hurry that process along? Certainly.
If Columbus had not driven due west to find the Caribbean isles, then France or England (or, perhaps, the Dutch) would still have stumbled on the Americas by the middle of the sixteenth century. The invasion/exploration/development might have proceeded rather differently without the claims of gold that Columbus brought back, but Europe was no more than 50 years from encountering the Americas when Columbus jump-started the process.
Tom~
Not long. The Powers That Were at the time knew exactly what Columbus was sailing for, and just how iffy the weather could be. Had he failed, another expedition would have followed soon after.
You don’t let an entire new continent go that easily! And, since They knew about North America for almost 500 years before Chris and crew set out, it’s surprising they waited so long! Maybe shipbuilding hadn’t reached a high enough level…
Stonecutter: I disagree about them knowing about America. I assume you are talking about the viking discoveries. Most authorities agree these were not available to the Latin countries. Even if they did know, the Vikings never imaged a huge continent, just something maybe on a size w/ Iceland or Eire.
On the other hand, the Americas would likely have been “discoved” prior to 1500, so I agree w/ all of the above on that.
i do not think it would have been the northern europeans. Portugal and Castille (Spain) were the two countries that were doing these voyages of discovery. I think castille went west just because Portugal was going east. If it would not have been Columbus it would have been any other captain of any nationality but under the flag and financing of Castille. Columbus was not Spanish and he went to find backing in Spain.
As soon as Henry the Navigator turned navigation into a modern science in the middle of the 15th century, the age of discovery was a foregone conclusion. The rapid advances in martime technology and instrumentation in the 15th century made a circumnavigation in the 16th century almost inevitable, whether or not there was a continent between Europe and Asia
In 1500, a Portuguese expedition to India commanded by Pedro Cabral discovered Brazil purely by accident. He’d sailed west to avoid the calms off the coast of Guinea, and happened to run into South America.
Thus if Columbus hadn’t sailed the ocean blue, the new world would have been discovered anyway.
Dan Tilque
Well, dtilque, he discovered the mouth of a big river and planted the Portuguese flag there claiming all points that the river touched. Just his luck the river happened to be the Amazon!
The northern Europeans did not jump on the discovery and exploration bandwagon until after Columbus returned with news of his discoveries. Spain and Portugal were, as you noted, already engaged in active exploration.
However, northern Europeans were actively fishing the Grand Banks many years before Giovanni Cabot “officially” described them and it was simply a matter of time before a nor’easter pushed one of those fleets onto North American soil.
Had Columbus not come back with his news, it is simply speculation as to whether a French or British fisherman’s news of the Maritimes would have been treated with more interest than the Portugese discovery of the Amazon.
As Ursa Major has noted, the advances in navigation coupled to the mindest of fifteenth and sixteenth century Europeans guaranteed that Europe would “discover” the rest of the world.
(Actually, you can blame most of it on the Italians: they provided Columbus, Vespucchi, the Cabots, and several others to lead expeditions for other nations.)
Tom~
Read “The Second Messiah” by Michael Knight et al, and its companion volume for the background on pre-columbian discoveries. Templars, I mean. Vikings, they landed in Newfoundland, but, yes, they likely figured they’d found a small island. And they were half right…
Then they got slaughtered by xenophobic stoneage tribesmen. Wonder why Iceland and Norway don’t demand reparations?
Of course, because the Portuguese were busy exploiting their India trade route, they basically sat on the New World discovery for about 25 years. Eventually, someone found brazilwood in Brazil which valuable enough to exploit.
Dan Tilque
Did someone say Great Debate?
Well, it might be if I wasn’t leaving for a week tomorrow. So trying to debate me would be like trying to debate* someone like that idiot By0rn*.
But, I will politely disagree with your posts.
Although, I believe on principle that a knock-down, drag-out word duel would sharpen our understanding of the these issues. 
Ursa Major.
1.Henry the Navigator wasn’t. But a patron is invaluable.(Well, come to think of it, you could probably value your patron pretty accuratly.)
2.As to rapid advances in martime technology and instrumentation in the 15th century.
The ships Columbus( and the Pinzon brothers) captained were not completly new designs.
They were based on and had the same name as the ships that had last sailed around Africa over 2 millenia before. Of course that was a great improvement over current European technology.
As for the instruments, the same goes. Although, while determining latitude became more exact, they still had no clue about longitude.
I agree with your statement of inevitability of contact. But I think it more likely to becaused by advances in other fields.(printing press. Arabic numerals. double entry bookkeeping.)
Sailer:
Columbus’ nationality is subject to debate. Many believe,as do I, that Colombus WAS Spanish.
Beetle:
The same goes for Columbus’ destination.
___________________________PEACE ALL.
-By0rn sorry dude i just couldn’t resit no offence
Just putting my 2sense in.
Tyranny,* like Hell*,* is not easily conquered*.
-Thomas Paine (fugitive slave catcher)
I never said he was. I just refered to him by the name he is commonly known as. Calling him a patron is like calling JPL or NASA patrons of space travel. Henry the Navigator was the Van Allen, Goddard and Von Karman of the Age of Discovery.
Again, I never said they were. (Although I doubt even Columbus would have been able to do what he did without some of the breakthoughs made possible by Henry’s academy.) If Columbus hadn’t stumbled upon the New World using (mostly) ancient technology and a large set of cojones, someone else, with the advatanges of modern (early 16th century) technology and the confidence that technology would engender, would have.