Age of Exploration
The period from 1400 to 1700 saw some key
technological
innovations and changes in thinking. I want to pull out a few key
examples
The printing press:
- medieval books cost $2000-10,000 in today's
money
- the first universities developed in the
middle
ages, and
the demand for books was so high that some workshops had a kind of mass
production with one person reading and a number writing
- paper was already mass produced, the screw
press
and oil-based
inks used for wooden block prints
- Gutenberg's key innovation (in 1452) was
moveable type (more
history )
- by 1483 the same amount of money would
produce 3
hand
copies of 1025 printed copies
- the cost of a book dropped to a few hundred
dollars in
todays money
- by 1500 8 million books published--equal to
total previous
world output
impact:
- students didn't have to spend all their time
memorizing
the books
- more books available meant it was easier to
compare books
and notice contradictions
- more accurate and faster transmission of
knowledge
- people read the Bible for themselves,
leading to
the reformation
- Luther takes his stand in 1517--argues
that we
are saved
by God's grace not by good works and that everyone has the right to
interpret
the Bible for themselves
- in 1531 Henry VIII breaks England away
from
the Catholic
church
Martin
Luther
Exploration:
- the problem of navigation was not solved in
this
period
- magnetic compass
introduced in 13th century, but knowing
which way you are going doesn't help much if you don't know where you
are
- more careful mapmaking was the main
improvement of the
14th and 15th centuries, particularly knowledge of the winds
- minor improvements in methods for
measuring
latitude in
15th century
- the problem of measuring longitude was not
solved until
the mid to late 1700s ( story)
- in 1340 the Muslims cut off overland trade
to
Asia and
Europeans start exploring outside the Mediterranean
- slow exploration
down the coast of Africa until Bartholomew
Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1487
- Columbus underestimated the circumference
of
the earth
and reached America in 1492
- in 1519 Magellan
set out
on a 3 year voyage around
the
world
Magellan
rounds
the southern tip of South America
- the full rigged
ship (about 1500--only one of Columbus's
ships was the new design)
- multiple masts and more than one sail on
each
mast
- rudder
permanently attached to a stern post instead of
a steering oar
- rounded shape
- military technology was also critical,
because
of the
fighting to control sea routes
- primitive cannon about 1325
used carved stone balls and
exploded a lot
- iron cannonballs introduced 1350, corned
gunpowder for
more even explosion about 1420
- cannon became safe enough to use on a ship about
1500
- very quickly warships began carrying large
numbers of
cannon--England rose to power partly because they were more successful
in making iron cannon (because they happened to have high-phosphorous
ore)
Early
gunpowder weapons
Colonization:
- increased trade meant cash crops and
regional
specialization
- Europeans traded
for exotic products (spices, silk, etc.)
with Asians
- but it wasn't clear how to make money from
the
New World
- the native people did not have many
obvious
trade products,
except furs, plus the Europeans wiped out an estimated 90% of the
population
of Mexico (mostly by imported diseases, but also by war and harsh
slavery)
- Europeans chose to colonize and grow cash
crops (eg. sugar,
tobacco, eventually cotton)
- Europeans brought their own plants, which
tended
to be
hardier and take over--50-70% of the vegetation in California is of
European
origin
Impact:
- sophisticated business practices developed
in
trading
centers in the late middle ages--eg. banking and insurance in Venice
- war was expensive so the way to be powerful
was
to get
rich--kings encouraged trade and the search for gold
- trade encouraged the economy to gradually
become
more
based on a free market rather than on customary prices and made
opportunities
for people to get rich--capitalism was emerging
- Europeans gained pride from discovering a
new
world--they
no longer believed that the ancient Greeks knew more than they did
Scientific Revolution ( a
somewhat more detailed overview ):
- Copernicus
published De Revolutionibus Orbis Celestium
in 1543. He was a priest motivated by the need for calendar
reform,
but his argument that the earth goes around the sun (instead of vice
versa)
started the downfall of Aristotelian science
- Kepler
published the theory that the planets move in elliptical orbits in 1609.
- Galileo
published his defense of the Copernican system
in 1632 and his new physics in 1638. Galileo is most important
because
he put into place a new scientific method in which scientists argued
from
experiment and from his observations with the telescope, not from logic
alone.
- Newton
published the law of universal gravitation in 1687.
He was slowed down a bit because he had to invent calculus in order to
show that his theory worked.
the
telescope
this page written and copyright Pamela
E. Mack
last updated 9/23/2005