What social economic and political factors led european to voyages of exploration?
Answer:
Boy you're in luck, I know this.
- The middle east had long imported spices from East Asia by land.
- The Europeans, on their travels to the mid-east that began with the crusades, discovered these spices and got hooked.
- For some time, Europe was able to import the spices through the Byzantine empire, though the more adventurous Portuguese began plotting to import directly by sea routes.
- When the Ottoman Empire conquered Byzantium in 1493, the Europeans were cut off from the Spice trade altogether, so now they really got desperate to sail to the spice islands.
- So Spain and Portugal stepped up their maritime activities to open sea routes to East Asia. And when the Portuguese and the Spanish wrangled a Papal Bull from the Pope dividing the world between them, the Dutch and the English were left to become privateers and to seek the doomed Northwest Passage to Asia.
- Of course when we talk about spices there were other goods that traded as well -- e.g., lacquered Chinese furniture was a big hit in Europe back in the day. And of course the sheer money of it all was a huge motivator. Spices were the crack cocaine of the late Middle Ages, so there was a humongous markup in trafficking the stuff.
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