European Contacts With Africa Pre-1492

Access to commodities such as fabrics, spices, and gold motivated a europiuman quest for a faster means to achieve due south Asia. It was this search that led the Portuguese down the chute of westside Africa to sierra Leone in 1460. Due to several expert and heathenish advantages, Portugal dominated world trade for nearly two hundred years, from the fifteenth to the sixteenth part centuries. While, in the fifteenth century, the rest of atomic number 63 was decimated by the Black Plague, Portugal was protected by its physical isolation. additionally, Portugal had an unusually strong national identity, due to its natural geographic b poses, allowing the pooling of the big economic resources necessary to fund these ambitious explorations. Additionally Portugals broad contact with Islam, and therefore with its superior mathematical intimacy and pilotage technologies, including sail shapes, hull designs, and maritime weaponry, resulted in a Portuguese fleet capable of nego tiating the high Atlantic seas. As a consequence, most of the westerly African coast was explored in the pointedness from 1415 into the 1600s. Preserved maps from this period show a unco correct understanding of the complicated coastline. African exports consisted primarily of gold, ivory, and pepper.

However, everyplace 175,000 slaves were excessively taken to Europe and the Americas during this period. In 1600, with the involvement of the Dutch and English, the order of magnitude of the slave trade grew exponentially. From the time of their reaching on the shores of Sierra Leone in 1460, and until their gradual decline as leaders in world exploration in the sixteenth century , the Portuguese had an indistinct relation! ship with their African trading partners. Disembarking at cities that were equally large, complex, and technologically advanced as Lisbon at the time, the Portuguese genuinely experienced far less market-gardening shock than we qualification expect. In fact, they encountered urban centers in West Africa comparable to those indorse in Europe,...If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderEssay.net

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