05-01-2004, 12:28 AM
Hi,
But Portugal wasn't looking for lands to conquer, they were looking to get rich off the spice trade. Besides, Africa was a tough nut to crack. Few harbors and those were poor. Much of the continent is either desert (or at least semi-desert grassland) or jungle. The effort just wasn't worth the potential payback -- not compared to a spice trade that would make the nation that controlled it the richest nation in Europe.
That the world was a sphere was known to most educated people from antiquity on. A number of Greeks used shadows and trigonometry to calculate the Earth's circumference. Estimates ranged from 19,000 miles to about 24,000 miles. The distance from Europe to Asia overland was pretty well known. Subtract that distance from the circumference and one gets the range a ship sailing West would have to have to make the trip.
The Portuguese had done their homework. They knew that the 24,000 figure was about right and that no existing ship could make the Western voyage (about the sum of crossing the Atlantic and Pacific). That's why they were trying the South then East path. The English also had a pretty good idea, and Columbus never even got an interview. The Spanish were much more backwards. They bought in to Columbus' 19,000 mile circumference and the notion that a ship *could* make the voyage. They were flush with the spoils from driving the Muslims and Jews out of Spain (and confiscating their possessions). So they made a cheap investment. Ignorance, wrongheadedness, dumb luck, and the world was "changed".
Would things have been different if the American natives had been more advanced or better armed? Ask the natives of India, of China.
After all, a Catholic, European, Pope divided the world between Spain and Portugal and effectively told them to grab as much as they wanted. Since the inhabitants were not Catholic Europeans, they were nothing.
--Pete
But Portugal wasn't looking for lands to conquer, they were looking to get rich off the spice trade. Besides, Africa was a tough nut to crack. Few harbors and those were poor. Much of the continent is either desert (or at least semi-desert grassland) or jungle. The effort just wasn't worth the potential payback -- not compared to a spice trade that would make the nation that controlled it the richest nation in Europe.
That the world was a sphere was known to most educated people from antiquity on. A number of Greeks used shadows and trigonometry to calculate the Earth's circumference. Estimates ranged from 19,000 miles to about 24,000 miles. The distance from Europe to Asia overland was pretty well known. Subtract that distance from the circumference and one gets the range a ship sailing West would have to have to make the trip.
The Portuguese had done their homework. They knew that the 24,000 figure was about right and that no existing ship could make the Western voyage (about the sum of crossing the Atlantic and Pacific). That's why they were trying the South then East path. The English also had a pretty good idea, and Columbus never even got an interview. The Spanish were much more backwards. They bought in to Columbus' 19,000 mile circumference and the notion that a ship *could* make the voyage. They were flush with the spoils from driving the Muslims and Jews out of Spain (and confiscating their possessions). So they made a cheap investment. Ignorance, wrongheadedness, dumb luck, and the world was "changed".
Would things have been different if the American natives had been more advanced or better armed? Ask the natives of India, of China.
After all, a Catholic, European, Pope divided the world between Spain and Portugal and effectively told them to grab as much as they wanted. Since the inhabitants were not Catholic Europeans, they were nothing.
--Pete
How big was the aquarium in Noah's ark?