Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 6.6.
The voyage of
Victoria
, 1519-22. Initially, Magellan was in command, but
after his death in the Philippines, the ship was brought home to Spain by del Cano.
colonies in Canada. Eventually, it would be the Dutch who won the Spice
Islands (and set up their main overseas colony in Batavia, in Indonesia, to
oversee the spice trade). Tough and capable ships manned by tough and
capable crews had crossed the world and, in doing so, changed it.
8
Standing Off and Shooting the Sun
If the Portuguese dominated the first phase of European exploration, the
Spanish dominated the second. They were the first Europeans to establish
an empire in the New World, and within that empire they discovered tons
of gold and a mountain of silver. All this wealth necessitated increased
8. The importance of the Spice Islands, as compared with the vastly larger New
World discoveries, is brought home by considering the Treaty of Breda, which ended a
seventeenth-century Anglo-Dutch war. The English gave up Run, a tiny island in the
spiceries, to the Dutch in return for the island of Manhattan. Both parties at the time
thought that the Dutch got the better deal.
