Europeans Enter New World
During the 1300s and 1400s, trade between Europe and the East greatly enriched
commercial centers such as Venice and Genoa. Rulers of countries such as England,
Spain, and Portugal wanted to increase their commerce as well. Such trade, these rulers
believed, was vital for the long-term survival of their nations. Without trade, a nation
would remain economically weak and more vulnerable to attack by other countries.
The desire for increased commerce led Spain's ruler to consider Christopher
Columbus's idea for a totally new trade route to the East. Columbus was convinced, as
were most knowledgeable people of his day, that the world was not flat, but rather
spherical. He believed that ships could travel to the Far East by sailing westward across
the uncharted Sea of Darkness, as the Atlantic Ocean was then called. Gambling that
such a trade route could be found, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella provided
Columbus with financial support. In August of 1492 Columbus put his idea to the test,
and two months later landed on the western shores of the Atlantic. Columbus mistakenly
thought he had reached the Far East. On reporting this exciting (but erroneous)
information to the Spanish, more westward expeditions were quickly outfitted. The
English king sent his own navigator, John Cabot, on westward voyages of discovery. In
1498 Cabot claimed for England much of the land on the western shore of the North
Atlantic -- land he thought was Asia but was actually North America. This
misunderstanding of Cabot, Columbus, and others was not cleared up until 1504. In that
year a Spanish-hired explorer named Amerigo Vespucci declared that the land across the
Atlantic was not Asia but rather a New World.
The announcement that a New World lay beyond the Atlantic caused even more
European nations to send explorers westward. In 1534 the Frenchman Jacques Cartier
explored the Saint Lawrence River. Based on the explorations of Cartier and other
Frenchmen who followed him, France claimed lands around the Saint Lawrence, Ohio,
and Mississippi Rivers. In 1609 Henry Hudson claimed the Hudson Valley for the
Netherlands while searching for a northwest passage to the Pacific. Needless to say,
some of these claims overlapped. This would cause tension and even war between
nations competing for territory in the New World.