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The capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 acted as a key driver for European exploration. Overland routes into Persia, Central Asia and China were lengthy, dangerous and already expensive thanks to all the middlemen involved. They were now taxed even further.
Long since addicted to silk and spices, and jealous of the riches of Venice and other Italian cities that had benefited from this trade, the Portuguese sought to develop a sea route to the East around the continent of Africa. In this way they looked both to bypass the Ottoman taxes and to undercut the Italian trade.
The other impetus to exploration came from Africa itself. The Portuguese needed gold to pay for their imports from the East, but the main European access to gold came from Africa via the trans-Sahara caravan routes. Several African kingdoms, such as Ghana, had grown fabulously wealthy on the back of this trade and the Portuguese wanted to establish sea routes down the coast of Africa in order to obtain the gold at its source.
Working their way down the African coast, they rapidly proved that such small expeditions could be successful and profitable. The son of the king of Portugal, Prince Henry (aka the Navigator), dreamt of an ocean route to the Spice Islands and became a famous patron of the maritime sciences. In addition to funding voyages of discovery, he established a school of seamanship in southern Portugal where mapmakers, geographers, astronomers and navigators could discuss and improve upon the latest maritime technology.
One of the developments that stemmed from this initiative was that of the construction of the caravel, a new type of ship that could travel faster and carry larger cargoes. Thanks to the design of its sails, it was able to sail closer to the wind, meaning that it became much easier to sail in a straighter line as opposed to the constant zigzagging required to catch the wind. This saved huge amounts of time and the new design came to play a major part in the voyages of discovery of the 15th century; indeed two of the three boats used by Christopher Columbus were caravels.
Prince Henry died in 1460 but his son, King João, continued the patronage and in 1486 sent Bartolemeu Dias to lead an expedition around the southern end of Africa. Amongst other orders, Dias was to try to make contact with the legendary Christian African king, Prester John, and request his help in overcoming Muslim dominance of the Indian Ocean trade. Prester John was never found, of course, as he never existed, but Dias returned to Lisbon 16 months later having successfully completed the first part of his mission. Dias named the tip of Africa ‘Cabo das Tormentas’, or ‘the Cape of Storms’, in memory of the storms he had experienced. The name was changed – allegedly by the king – to Cabo da Boa Esperança, or the ‘Cape of Good Hope’, as he was hopeful, but not sure, that Dias had found a way to the East.
By rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Dias proved that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans were not landlocked, as many European geographers of the time thought, and showed that a sea route to India might indeed be feasible. This was big news, and greatly encouraged those who looked for a sea route to the East. However, before a further voyage could take place, some momentous news came from the court of the king and queen of Spain: an Italian sailor they had sponsored had allegedly found a route to the Orient by sailing west across the Atlantic. We now know that he had discovered the Americas.