Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER SIX
Europe Discovers
the World
The rapid exploration of the world's oceans and the beginning of European
overseas empires were accompanied by gradual improvements in naviga-
tion. Here, we look at the developments of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies, and I show how some of the early navigation instruments were used.
The Search for Spices
For fourteen hundred years, the fabulous wealth of the East—everything
from silk to steel and spices—had been carried by mule, camel, or wagon
along the Silk Road to the humbler civilizations in the West. Rather than
being a single physical track, the Silk Road was instead a broad route that
terminated in the Near East, though some of the goods kept moving west-
ward to adorn the households of the wealthy. Among the most sought-after
items by medieval Europeans were spices: cloves, nutmeg, peppers, cin-
namon, sa√ron, mace, cumin. The first three were particularly desired for
their properties of flavoring and preserving meat, and Venetian merchants
shipped them out of Constantinople (modern Istanbul) to Western Europe
by the ton. Most of these spices originated in the Moluccas, an island group
in modern Indonesia (fig. 6.1). Other spices that made their way along the
Silk Road included aloewood, camphor, ginger, sandalwood, and turmeric
from China and cardamom, pepper, and sesame from India. (The word
spice in medieval times had a broader meaning in many European lan-
guages; it included products that today we would classify as perfumes and
drugs.) The long journey of these spices, passing from hand to hand, made
them very expensive.
In the previous chapter we saw how the Silk Road arose. Here, we
concentrate on the European e√ort to circumvent it. The Silk Road passed
 
 
 
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