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 ...
Soon after Magellan's expedition, the Portuguese rushed to seize the surviving crew and built a fort in Ternate. In 1525, Charles I of Spain sent another expedition westward to colonize the Maluku Isl ...
By 1516 several Portuguese navigators, conflicting with King Manuel I of Portugal, had gathered in Seville to serve the newly crowned Charles I of Spain. Among them were explorers Diogo and Duarte Bar ...
In 1515–1516 the Spaniard Juan Díaz de Solís sailed down the east coast of South America as far as Río de la Plata, which he named shortly before he died, while trying to find a passage to the "So ...
In 1513, about 40 miles (64 kilometres) south of Acandí, in present day Colombia, Spanish Vasco Nú?ez de Balboa heard unexpected news of an "other sea" rich in gold, which he received with great in ...
In 1511, Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Malacca for Portugal, then the center of Asian trade. East of Malacca, Albuquerque sent several diplomatic missions: Duarte Fernandes as the first European env ...
Protected from direct Spanish competition by the treaty of Tordesillas, Portuguese eastward exploration and colonization continued apace. Twice, in 1485 and 1488, Portugal officially rejected Christop ...
In 1497, newly crowned King Manuel I of Portugal sent an exploratory fleet eastwards, fulfilling his predecessor's project of finding a route to the Indies. In July 1499 news spread that the Portugues ...
That year John Cabot, also a commissioned Italian, got letters patent from King Henry VII of England. Sailing from Bristol, probably backed by the local Society of Merchant Venturers, Cabot crossed th ...
Very little of the divided area had actually been seen by Europeans, as it was only divided by a geographical definition rather than control on the ground. Columbus's first voyage in 1492 spurred mari ...
Shortly after Columbus arrival from the "West Indies", a division of influence became necessary to avoid conflict between Spanish and Portuguese. On 4 May 1493, two months after Columbus arrival, the ...
Portugal's neighbouring fellow Iberian rival, Castile, had begun to establish its rule over the Canary Islands, located off the west African coast, in 1402, but then became distracted by internal Iber ...
In 1297, with the reconquista completed, king Dinis of Portugal took personal interest in exports and in 1317 he made an agreement with Genoese merchant sailor Manuel Pessanha (Pesagno), appointing hi ...
