Age of Discovery

The period from the 15th to 17th centuries when European maritime voyages expanded global contact, trade, conquest, and colonization.

Caravel: A small, maneuverable sailing ship used by Portuguese and Spanish mariners during early oceanic exploration. Its sail plan and handling suited the Atlantic voyages that began this period.
Portuguese discoveries: Portuguese-sponsored voyages that explored Atlantic islands and the African coast and reached the Indian Ocean. Portugal established the period’s earliest sustained European program of oceanic exploration.
Vasco da Gama: The Portuguese navigator who led the first European sea voyage from Europe to India around the Cape of Good Hope. His route connected Portuguese shipping directly to Indian Ocean commerce.
Columbian exchange: The transfer of plants, animals, diseases, people, and technologies between the Americas and Afro-Eurasia after 1492. It captures the biological and ecological consequences of sustained Atlantic contact.
European colonialism: The establishment and maintenance of European political and economic control over territories beyond Europe. This broader process includes conquest and settlement that the exploration-centered label can obscure.
Carrack: A large ocean-going sailing ship used by Europeans from the 15th through 17th centuries. Carracks carried crews, weapons, and cargo across routes opened by exploration.
Prince Henry the Navigator: The Portuguese prince who sponsored voyages and exploration along the west coast of Africa in the 15th century. His patronage helped organize Portugal’s early Atlantic and African expeditions.
Christopher Columbus: The Genoese navigator whose 1492 voyage across the Atlantic initiated sustained Spanish contact with the Americas. His voyages inaugurated Spanish claims and colonization in the Caribbean.
Atlantic slave trade: The forced transportation of millions of Africans across the Atlantic to labor primarily in the Americas. European colonial expansion built plantation economies through large-scale enslavement.
Age of Sail: The era when sailing ships dominated long-distance maritime transport, warfare, and trade. Its maritime chronology is broader than the period of European overseas expansion.

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