What conditions existed in Europe that helped promote the exploration and settlement of America?

Answer 1

Norwegians in the 9th-11th centuries were constantly searching new seafaring trade routes, and they had great ships (called "longships") that were capable of both crossing oceans and also navigating swiftly up rivers to carry their passengers far inland. This was because the longships were big enough and wide enough to be stable on the open seas, but also shallow enough to go far up the rivers without dragging on the bottom. During this great period of exploration, many Norwegians went "a-viking" (that is, they went exploring, trading, raiding and plundering to earn their wealth), and some of them discovered new lands, including Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and in the year 1000, places they called Markland (forest land) and Vinland (wine land). Markland is thought to have been somewhere on the coast of modern-day Labrador (Canada), and evidence strongly suggests that Vinland was a place known today as L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland (Canada). The Norse "Viking Age" settlements in modern-day Canada and Greenland did not last long, however, and the Americas would not be settled by Europeans on a large scale until the time of Christopher Columbus, nearly 500 years later.

During the time of Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan, Europeans were searching for a seafaring trade route to the far east, where they could trade for goods such as silk and expensive spices, without having to transport them over the "silk roads" (a journey that made these expensive goods all the more expensive). In the search for a shipping route to the legendary Spice Islands, explorers discovered that there were many islands and some vast lands beyond the sea, which they thought at the time to be uninhabited. They quickly discovered aboriginal populations (natives) and conquered them through superior technology and military strength.

Though the exploration was mostly driven by the competition to be the first to find a money-saving water route for the spice trade, the further exploration and colonization of the Americas was driven by the quest for a fabled golden city and the desire to escape religious persecutions. During the same period in history, the Reformation (the philosophical and often literal battle between Catholics and Protestants) was in full swing, and this often led to persecutions, when everyone subscribing to a certain religion would be run out of town, or worse, beaten, tortured and hanged or burned at the stake. Some of the most-persecuted were some of the ascetic sects, such as the Calvinists and the Anabaptists, so these groups left Europe by the hundreds, seeking the lawless seclusion of the new colonies on North America, where they could live by their own rules without fear of persecution from an entrenched Catholic church or warring European monarchs. It was only much later (in the 18th century) that the social experiment of the American colonies would be expanded to include the abolition of monarchy and the self-rule of a democratic republic.

Answer 2

route for the spice trade