The start of the Modern Age. The Great Geographical Discoveries

In the 15th–17th centuries European sailors opened sea routes to Africa, America, Asia and Oceania; these events are called the Great Geographical Discoveries. They were made possible by the caravel, which could sail the ocean, and by better compasses and charts; after Byzantium fell in 1453, trade routes to the East came under Ottoman control, which pushed Europe to look for new routes. The Portuguese, inspired by Henry the Navigator, sailed along the African coast; Bartolomeu Dias rounded the cape at Africa’s southern tip, and Vasco da Gama opened the sea route to India in 1497–1499. Christopher Columbus, in Spanish service, reached the Bahamas on 12 October 1492; Amerigo Vespucci showed that these lands were a new continent, and it came to be named after him. The expedition begun by Ferdinand Magellan (1519–1522) sailed around the globe; Magellan himself died in the Philippines in 1521. In 1606 the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon reached the coast of Australia, and later (in 1642) Abel Tasman sighted Tasmania. The trade centre shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, but colonialism, the plundering of local peoples and the slave trade also grew.