(^76) › STEP 4. Review the Knowledge You Need to Score High
✪^ Mercantilism Economic theory that held that money (gold and silver, especially) is
the only form of wealth. Mercantilism led to the quashing of any incipient industry
in colonized areas, leaving economic control strictly in the hands of the colonizer.
Key Individuals:
✪^ The Catholic Kings (Ferdinand and Isabella)
✪^ Prince Henry the Navigator
✪^ Bartolomeo de las Casas
✪^ Christopher Columbus
Introduction
Around the middle of the fifteenth century, European civilization began to recover from
a series of calamities that had destroyed much of the culture that characterized the High
Middle Ages. What emerged was a more secular, ambitious culture that began to explore
and exploit new areas of the globe, including Africa, the Americas, and the East. The influx
of trade, wealth, and new cultural influences put severe stress on the traditional economic
and social organization of Europe.Exploration and Expansion
The marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469 united two previously
unruly Spanish kingdoms. With the resources of the joint kingdoms at their disposal, Isabella
and Ferdinand increased Spain’s power first, by completing the reconquista, or definitively
retaking the Iberian peninsula from the Moors (1492) and uniting the Kingdom of Spain,
and second, by promoting overseas exploration. They sponsored the voyages of the Genoese
explorer Christopher Columbus, who, sailing west in 1492 in search of a shorter route to the
spice markets of the Far East, reached the Caribbean, thereby “discovering” a “New World”
for Europeans and setting in motion a chain of events that would lead to the establishment
of a Spanish Empire in Mexico and Peru.
Spain was not alone in the fifteenth century in sponsoring seafaring exploration. The
Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator sponsored Portuguese exploration of the African
coast. By the end of the fifteenth century, Portuguese trading ships were bringing in gold
from Guinea. Soon, European powers came to understand that there was also gold to be
had in the selling of spices imported from India that were used both to preserve and flavor
food. The search for gold and competition for the spice trade combined to inspire an era
of daring exploration and discovery:
• In 1487, Bartholomew Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of
Africa, thereby opening Portuguese trade routes in the East.
• In 1498, Vasco da Gama extended Portuguese trade by reaching the coast of India and
returning with a cargo that earned his investors a 60 percent profit.
• The Portuguese formed trading colonies in Goa and Calcutta on India’s Malabar Coast.
• Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian sailing for Spain in 1499 and for Portugal in 1501, helped
to show that the lands discovered by Columbus were not in the Far East, but rather a new
continent, which the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller dubbed “America” in his
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