4.2 Exploration: Causes and Events from 1450 to 1750

The expansion of European exploration during the early modern era was driven by a combination of economic ambition, political competition, religious zeal, and scientific curiosity. By the mid-fifteenth century, Europe stood at the edge of a world it scarcely understood but was newly equipped to reach. The collapse of the Mongol Empire had disrupted the overland Silk Roads, and the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 limited European access to eastern goods. Spices, silks, and precious metals—long traded through Muslim and Venetian intermediaries—became prohibitively expensive. European rulers sought to circumvent these barriers by finding direct maritime routes to Asia. Economic necessity became the seed of exploration, but it quickly grew into something much larger: a global transformation in power and perspective.