How might life be in Europe Americas have been different if Columbus did not journyed here?

Answer 1

Europe would still have to trade with and through the Middle East. The governments ruling the Middle East, especially the Ottoman Turks, would be far wealthier than they ended up being after Europe turned to the West. After the capture of Constantinople in 1456, the Turks would have probably been able to capture Vienna within a few hundred years. Whole swaths of Europe, not just the Balkans might be speaking Turkish today. The Middle East would not have turned into the international backwater that it is today. Correspondingly, many European states would be far less powerful than they became after the Atlantic Ocean became more important than the Mediterranean Sea. Without tobacco or sugar,(two New World products for which Europe developed an addiction) for example, England would have never amassed a trade surplus. Without the trade surplus a far less wealthy England would have never built an empire where "the sun never sets". Spain might still have been able to consolidate its Christian kingdoms against the Muslim rulers, but it would never be building an Armada to invade England, a few hundred years later, because it wouldn't have the gold and silver from the Incas and the Aztecs as a source of funding. Germany as we know it might not exist, except as provinces of the Ottoman or Russian empire.