Columbus was convinced pretty much to his dying day that he had found the Indies; he just had to search a bit further to find China and India’s centers of civilization.
Amerigo Vespucci was one of the early explorers to recognize it was a previously unknown land, and he (or was it some Dutch mapmakers he knew?) produced maps from his explorations that mapped out Americus’ land (Latinized name) , or since lands were feminine in Latin, “America”.
There are some who believe the Portuguese had actually covertly landed in Brazil before or around the time Columbus made it to Cuba, hence why they insisted that the Treaty of Tordesillas (signed in 1494 between them, the Spanish and the Pope) give them dominion over a western latitude that included the eastern tip of Southern America ; whereas officially their Empire only extended south and east, around Africa and into India.
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The Spanish royalty didn’t make all that much off of Columbus, and in fact they fired him after a few years. The West Indies were a disappointment, since they didn’t produce all that much gold, nor the spices and silks of the Far East. Spain only began to get large quantities of gold from the Americas with the conquest of the Aztec and Inca Empires, long after Columbus’s death. (Incidentally, Columbus missed a chance to discover the Aztec Empire himself in 1502 when he sailed south instead of north from Honduras because of his mistaken ideas about the geography of Central America based on his theory he was in the Far East.)
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Silver, not gold. The ratio was something like 20:1 IIRC. Potosi was essentially a giant pile of silver. Coincidentally that’s what the Chinese really really wanted, so that worked out fine, while the gold was mostly kept for European purchases.
Oh, but to answer the OP’s question more directly : it’s steam engines when it’s steam engine time. The political and economic dynamics in Europe pushed towards exploration and the quest for new lands & resources, and technology had more or less caught up with that need. If it hadn’t been Columbus, it would have been someone else within a couple decades at the most - though likely someone with a tad better grasp on maths and geography ;).
You also have to keep in mind that it was still very much the Middle Ages - the conquistadores and explorers had heads full of wild tales and fantasy legends on top of their proto-scientific knowledge. They were honest to god looking for stuff from fictional books half the time (men with dog heads, cities made of gold, the realm of Prester John, the Fountain of Youth and so forth).
So maybe the Danes would have looked into old Vinland sagas (which, coincidentally, happened to be historical), or maybe someone would have set out to find Atlantis or Ys or somesuch…
He told Queen Isabella that he was going to find Ray Charles.
I haven’t seen that you’ve responded substantially to anything.
That was admittedly a bit snarky, but you were being snarky yourself when you said “I learned that in third grade” not to mention “I understand your hatred for Columbus.” You can’t be snarky to people yourself and then complain about snark.
The problem is that the discovery of the Americas was the equivalent of a steam engine being built right around the time somebody else built the internal combustion engine.
Europeans had been seeking an alternate route to Eastern Asia that avoided Islamic lands for decades. And everyone knew the main contender was sailing south around Africa. Sailing west was considered the long shot.
And in 1498, Vasco da Gama finally sailed around Africa and traveled to India - and it was the real India not the fake one in America. After that, the main axis of traveling was south not west. If Columbus hadn’t already discovered there was something out to the west, it probably would have been a long time before anyone went looking in that direction.
Granted, Cabral accidentally landed in Brazil in 1500. But Cabral’s intent was to travel south and his initial thought when he landed was that he had just found an island. If the existence of significant new lands to the west hadn’t already been known, he might have just made a note on his map and resumed his trip south.
That’s contradicted by the actual history of the exploration of the New World. As I have already pointed out, by the early 1500s pretty much everyone but Columbus had realized that they weren’t in the Far East. Yet they continued actively exploring all along the coasts of the new continents, mapping them out in fairly short order, even in the absence of finding significant gold or other trade goods. In fact, the north coast of Brazil was probably first explored by Columbus’s former navigator Vicente Pinzon, who was sailing east, directly opposite the direction he would have had to take to reach the Far East. And once it was realized that the Americas weren’t the Far East, it wasn’t very long before Vespucci and others were trying to sail south around South America to find a way there by sailing west.
If Columbus had never existed, and Brazil had been discovered by accident in 1500 but not thought to be part of the Far East, you can bet that people would have figured out in short order that it was at least a potential stepping stone to the Far East. As mentioned, Europeans already knew that you could potentially reach the Far East by sailing west, but thought that it was out of range of a ship sailing without the ability to resupply. If a stepping stone like Brazil had been discovered it would have immediately made that route feasible and people would have attempted it.
One key difference between Columbus and the Portuguese/Basque/Cabot/etc. is that the former was a braggadocios fame-seeker while the latter were keen on keeping things secret.
This is why we aren’t really sure about when the fisherman first showed up at the Grand Banks. We also aren’t all that sure about the when and where of some of Cabot’s voyages. The knowledge from the expeditions sent out by Prince Henry was considered state secrets.
It might have taken 50 more years for the news of lands to the west to become general knowledge to geographers in Europe. Amerigo Vespucci might have been dead and “America” wouldn’t exist.
So you admit I have responded, but not substantially? Really?
As for the snark, I truly never really meant any.
If I challenge someone’s post it’s only because I’m trying to learn. I’m sorry if my post or points seem trollish sometimes.
Every time we have one of these threads, someone brings up the “Basque fisherman” idea. You state it as if it were a fact. Is it the consensus of historians that this is correct?
Indeed, the geography of Brazil makes it certain that, had it been discovered by accident, as allegedly happened with Cabral, then everyone would have KNOWN it wasn’t the Far East because Brazil is only about 10 degrees west of the Cape Verde Islands, and slightly more than 15 degrees west of the coast of Africa. The ONLY excuse for the false conclusion of Columbus that he’d gotten to islands in the “Indies” was the fact he’d managed to sail as far as he had before reaching land, thus fitting his “crackpot” notion of the size of the globe.
Nice.
Some of the results of voyages might have remained state secrets, but the word would eventually have gotten out. It wasn’t possible to control all the crew who participated in such voyages, and besides even the captains switched allegiance between countries all the time. Vespucci himself first sailed for Spain, and then later for Portugal. On one of the latter voyages he encountered Cabral on his way back from India in the Cape Verde islands, who told him about his discovery of eastern Brazil, leading to Vespucci’s exploration of southern South America. Vespucci’s sailing for Portugal didn’t prevent him from writing the letter proposing that the Americas were a “New World” instead of the Far East.
Ferdinand Magellan was Portuguese, and participated in Portuguese voyages to the East Indies. He later switched allegiance to Spain, and his circumnavigation (completed by others due to his death on the way) was at the head of a Spanish fleet attempting to do an end run around the Portuguese control of the eastern route.
I think you’re reading back into history the things we now know. Nobody in the Old World in the early fifteenth century knew that America existed so there was no motivation to go exploring to the west. As far as most people were concerned, the only thing out there was a vast expanse of open water with maybe a few islands.
Columbus only headed west because he was wildly wrong about the size of the ocean. And he only got backing because the southern route hadn’t been opened yet and people figured that while Columbus was almost certainly wrong it was worth a small investment to let him go off and try his idea.
Columbus sailed west and found America - but didn’t realize what he had done. He insisted he had found his western route to Asia. People were surprised by this result but they were willing to follow up on it. By the time it was established this wasn’t Asia, people had realized this new territory was worth exploring for its own sake.
If Columbus hadn’t been around, the big news of da Gama’s voyage around Africa five years later would have been even bigger. There wouldn’t have been any distracting talk about a western route to Asia. Everyone would have agreed that the route to Asia involved sailing south around Africa - which was correct. If a few people following this route had sighted some “islands” off to the west, nobody would have really cared. These “islands” were far off the route everyone was trying to follow so why bother sending expeditions to explore them when resources would be better spend setting up bases along the African route.
You have to remember this wasn’t exploration for the sake of discovering new things. These people were focused on the goal of traveling to Asia for commercial purposes. They had minimal interest in any place that was outside of that route. People might have occasionally sighting America off to the west just as people occasionally sighted Australia off to the south - but there wouldn’t have been any significant interest in going there. Like Australia, America would probably have been gradually “discovered” throughout the seventeenth century and settled in the eighteenth century.
He was right about the size of the* ocean*, but wrong about the size of the earth.
Actually Columbus was just arguing the minority view about the size of the Earth. he wasnt a crackpot.
wiki:*As far back as the 3rd century BC, Eratosthenes had correctly computed the circumference of the Earth by using simple geometry and studying the shadows cast by objects at two different locations: Alexandria and Syene (modern-day Aswan).[30] Eratosthenes’s results were confirmed by a comparison of stellar observations at Alexandria and Rhodes, carried out by Posidonius in the 1st century BC. These measurements were widely known among scholars, but confusion about the old-fashioned units of distance in which they were expressed had led, in Columbus’s day, to some debate about the exact size of the Earth. From d’Ailly’s Imago Mundi Columbus learned of Alfraganus’s estimate that a degree of latitude (or a degree of longitude along the equator) spanned 56⅔ miles, but did not realize that this was expressed in the Arabic mile rather than the shorter Roman mile with which he was familiar (1,480 m).[31] He therefore estimated the circumference of the Earth to be about 30,200 km, whereas the correct value is 40,000 km (25,000 mi).
Furthermore, most scholars accepted Ptolemy’s estimate that Eurasia spanned 180° longitude, rather than the actual 130° (to the Chinese mainland) or 150° (to Japan at the latitude of Spain). Columbus, for his part, believed the even higher estimate of Marinus of Tyre, which put the longitudinal span of the Eurasian landmass at 225°, leaving only 135° of water. He also believed that Japan (which he called “Cipangu”, following Marco Polo) was much larger, farther to the east from China (“Cathay”), and closer to the equator than it is, and that there were inhabited islands even farther to the east than Japan, including the mythical Antillia, which he thought might lie not much farther to the west than the Azores. In this, he was influenced by the ideas of Florentine astronomer Toscanelli, who corresponded with Columbus before his death in 1482 and who also defended the feasibility of a westward route to Asia.[32]
Columbus therefore estimated the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan to be about 3,000 Italian miles (3,700 km, or 2,300 statute miles).
*
Columbus’s genius came in knowing about and using the trade winds. Not unknown in his day, but generally kept secret.
As I’ve said, this is contradicted by the actual history. The Portuguese explored and colonized Brazil despite the fact they had the circum-African route sewn up. And you have to remember that once the Portuguese established that route, they attempted to block other European powers from using it. They had established forts and bases in the most strategic locations, including conquering Malacca and other sites. The Portuguese blocked the traditional routes of the Arabs through the Indian Ocean. By the early 1500s they had effective control of the African route and prevented other European nations from using it as much as possible. It was for exactly this reason that Spain sent Magellan’s fleet westward, in order to establish a route to the Indies free of Portuguese interference. And on their return voyage through the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, several of Magellan’s ships were captured and their crews imprisoned by the Portuguese for violating their territory.
They weren’t focused on Asia to the exclusion of everything else. While the Far East was the main goal, they were exploring to find commercially exploitable resources wherever they could find them. They weren’t going to ignore potentially exploitable areas just because they weren’t in Asia. They established trading posts and colonies all along the coast of Africa as well. As I’ve said, they thoroughly explored the Americas even after they knew it wasn’t Asia. While not as rich a trove as Asia before they found the Aztecs and Incas, there were sufficient rewards to keep them looking. I’ve mentioned that the trade in brasil-wood was one of the main motivations for the early exploration of Brazil. Saying that the Americas would have been left unexplored and unexploited just because a route had been found to the far east ignores the actual history of exploration.
I think it was an earlier thread, someone mentioned about a English legal case - not sure if it was Cabot or someone else. Several years before Columbus (1480’s?)someone was returning to England with large quantities of cod; the crown initially accused them of poaching on foreign fisheries in violation of treaties, as the only place such cod could be found, but then the case was quickly dropped.
You lost me. I was asking on what grounds you stated, as fact, that Basque fisherman had discovered America prior to Columbus. That doesn’t sound like any grounds at all. Perhaps the wording was not quite what you were thinking when you wrote:
“Well, the Basque fishermen… knew about the land across the sea with valuable cod stocks”
Did you not mean “America” there?
Fisherman apparently had a secret cod bank out in the Atlantic, at the end of a long sail. We dont know where, Grand banks sounds logical, sure.
http://www.oocities.org/athens/aegean/9318/fisherman.html
*Cartier - Champlain
Irish, Breton, Norse, Flemish, Basque and Portuguese fishermen likely came to the Grand Banks for centuries before the big-name explorers arrived.
When Jacques Cartier “discovered” St. Pierre and Miquelon in 1536, he found fishing boats from France and Brittany anchored there. The fishermen were already calling the harbour St. Pierre.
Samuel de Champlain recorded an encounter in 1601 at Tor Bay, N.S., with a fishing vessel skippered by M. Savalette out of St. Jean de Luz. The latter claimed to have made the Atlantic crossing “every year for forty years”.
Sixteenth century records indicate that Newfoundland’s Beothuk Indians understood many European languages. Cartier noted that they knew words from French, Breton, Norman, Provencal, Catalan and Italian. They could only have learned these tongues from fishermen, or perhaps the odd Catholic monk.
*
That’s rather speculative, and does not place them there before Columbus. But certainly, sailing to the Grand banks quite early and keeping it confidential.
Note that John Cabot apparently sailed into that area in 1497. Maybe they followed him, who knows for sure?
So, maybe.
Yes, that’s the actual history. But we’re talking about a different history in this thread.
Once it was established by Columbus that there were continents to the west, then a discovery like Cabral’s looked worthwhile. But without Columbus’ discovery then the default assumption upon sighting some land off to the west was that you had just discovered another worthless island off in the middle of nowhere.