As a wider variety of global luxury commodities entered the European markets by sea, previous European markets for luxury goods stagnated. The Atlantic trade largely supplanted pre-existing Italian an ...
European overseas expansion led to the contact between the Old and New Worlds producing the Columbian Exchange, named after Columbus. It involved the transfer of goods unique to one hemisphere to anot ...
In 1639 a group of explorers led by Ivan Moskvitin became the first Russians to reach the Pacific Ocean and to discover the Sea of Okhotsk, having built a winter camp on its shore at the Ulya River mo ...
In the early 17th century the eastward movement of Russians was slowed by the internal problems in the country during the Time of Troubles. However, very soon the exploration and colonization of the h ...
Around 1577, Semyon Stroganov and other sons of Anikey Stroganov hired a Cossack leader called Yermak to protect their lands from the attacks of Siberian Khan Kuchum. By 1580 Stroganovs and Yermak cam ...
In the mid-16th century the Tsardom of Russia conquered the Tatar khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, thus annexing the entire Volga Region and opening the way to the Ural Mountains. The colonisation of ...
Terra Australis Ignota (Latin, "the unknown land of the south") was a hypothetical continent appearing on European maps from the 15th to the 18th centuries, with roots in a notion introduced by Aristo ...
5 June 1594, Dutch cartographer Willem Barentsz departed from Texel in a fleet of three ships to enter the Kara Sea, with the hopes of finding the Northeast Passage above Siberia. At Williams Island t ...
France, the Netherlands, and England were left without a sea route to Asia, either via Africa or South America. When it became apparent that there was no route through the heart of the American contin ...
The 1497 English expedition led by Italian Venetian John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) was the first of a series of French and English missions exploring North America. Spain put limited efforts into explor ...
Nations outside Iberia refused to acknowledge the Treaty of Tordesillas. France, the Netherlands and England each had a long maritime tradition and had been engaging in privateering. Despite Iberian p ...
In 1543 three Portuguese traders accidentally became the first Westerners to reach and trade with Japan. According Fern?o Mendes Pinto, who claimed to be in this journey, they arrived at Tanegashima, ...
A first attempt to explore western South America was undertaken in 1522 by Pascual de Andagoya. Native South Americans told him about a gold-rich territory on a river called Pirú. Having reached San ...
In 1517 Cuba's governor Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar commissioned a fleet under the command of Hernández de Córdoba to explore the Yucatán peninsula. They reached the coast where Mayans invited the ...
Rumors of undiscovered islands northwest of Hispaniola had reached Spain by 1511 and king Ferdinand II of Aragon was interested in forestalling further exploration. While Portuguese were making huge g ...
