Why Columbus Significant?
- maritime community of skilled navigators
- Bristol fishermen, Cabot from Venice, Verranzano from Genoa
- had knowledge of Plato's Antilia, Vikings, St. Brendan, Marco Polo, Ptolemy
- made portulan charts, learned of Atlantic gyre
- joined with Martin and Vincente Pinzon at Palos
- Enterprise of the Indies
- Ferdinand and Isabella unified Spain, expelled Moors, Inquisition
- Franciscan monks, banker Santangel
- Papal line of demarcation - Tordesillas
- 4 voyages made - also Ojeda, de Lepe, Cabral
- printing press
- Santangel letter published 1493, Peter Martyr
- Vespucci, Waldseemuller, Mercator
- Columbian Exchange
- from Europe: sugar, pig, smallpox
- from America: potato, tobacco, quinine
- Slave trade begins
- discovered pathway
- Magellan, Urdaneta, Verranzano
- colonization
- La Navidad, Santo Domingo
- Balboa to Panama, de Leon to Florida 1513
- conquistadores and missionaries
- Juan de Onate settled New Mexico
- missions, encomiendas, ranchos
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revised 8/15/05 | Before Columbus | Voyages of Columbus | Why British? | Class