Renaissance princes had problems gaining wealth because of Italians and Muslims and began to explore alternative sources of wealth:

• Italian city states, such as Venice, Genoa, Florence and Milan hold great wealth through trade with the east.
• In 1453, the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople, complicating an important trade route to the east.

Portugal

Prince Henry "the Navigator" 1394-1460

caravel

Treaty of Tordesillas 1494 (drawn up by the Pope):

Portugal was given free run of everything east of a line 370 miles, east of the Cape Verde Islands.

1. This treaty and the explorations that led up to it would lay the foundations of Portuguese Brazil.
2. In Africa, Portuguese would establish trading posts which would supply wood, red dye and later valuable sugar cane.
3. This series of expeditions were based on new knowledge acquired through science and European arrogance.

King Manuel I, 1469-1521, Portugal became a great naval power.

Spain

60 years captivity of Portugal.

united under Ferdinand and Isabella at the end of the 15th Century.

• Cristoforo Colombo 1451-1506, Genoese sailor; Spain got all the lands to the west based on Treaty of Tordesillas as a result of the Columbus's first voyage. Thus, the Pope divided the New World between Spain and Portugal in 1494.
• Vasco de Balboa, 1475-1519, discovers the Pacific Ocean in 1513
• Ferdinand Magellan, 1480-1521, one surviving ship from the Magellan circumnavigation arrived in Spain and reported the scale of the ocean.
• Hernando Cortes, 1485-1547, conquered an advanced Aztec civilization in Mexico.
• Francisco Pizarro, 1471-1541, conquered Inca.

Indians mostly died of European diseases and resistance

African slave trade

England

John Hawkins 1532-1595

The covert war between England and Spain

The war became official in the 1580s

Unlike the French, the English used their colonies as a safety valve for excess population. (Puritans); very limited commercial or military value

• Jamestown; Cape Cod; Boston
• Massachusetts Bay Company; self-governance and the founding of a puritan new Jerusalem, a city on a hill

Rebellion because of the religious intolerance of Puritans

• Roger Williams 1603-1683
• George Calvert 1580-1632

Wool Industry

East Indian Company, joint stock company

Then Dutch, French and English literally fought trade war for the trade of the far east.

Holland, a Republic in early modern Europe

At first, like Portuguese, the company wanted economically strategic locations and trading posts instead of territory.

Dutch Miracle

The failure of Germany to engage in the great game of European Imperialism, leading to

• the poverty and weakness of the Holy Roman Empire
• the decentralized country
• the Protestant reformation