02b: The Old World - 1500 AD

The Decline and Fall (Really!) of the Roman Empire
By 600 AD, the Western Roman Empire was gone, leaving behind the Eastern Empire - also known as the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines had carried on Roman traditions for centuries, but by 1100, they were losing territory rapidly to the rising Ottoman Turkish empire. That was not their only problem. The Crusaders,supposedly came to reclaim the Holy Land from the Turkish Muslim infidels. But in fact the Crusaders were often more interested in fighting the Byzantine Christian heretics. In the twelfth century,  Byzantine trade was cut off by Italian shippers, while agribusiness interests drove independent peasant farmers out of business. The peasants provided the state with less and less revenue, which made it harder for the Byzantines to maintain a viable army and navy. When Constantinople finally in 1453, the Roman Empire had come to its definite end. On a positive note, the stream of refugees from Constantinople included scholars with their priceless ancient manuscripts. Once settled in Italy, these scholars stimulated a new human-centered interest in the ancient past, as opposed to the old Catholic fixation on sin and salvation. The revival of secular learning kicked off first the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment provoked a renewed interest in public affairs which would directly influence the Founders of the United States of America.

Moscow and the Mongols
Far to the north of Constantinople, the young Grand Duchy of Moscow aspired to follow in the Byzantine Empire's footsteps. The Russian (or Rus, to be more precise) culture had emerged in the late 800s around the city of Kiev. In the mid 1200s, nomadic Mongols conquered Russia and ruled it like a subject state for two centuries. As the Mongols weakened, the city of Moscow grew in power and influence. Grand Duke Ivan III of Moscow, who came to the throne in 1462, drove the Mongols off for good. He then founded the kingdom of Russia with himself as "tsar," or "Caesar." Ivan's wife, a Byzantine princess, encouraged his ambitions until Ivan began thinking of Muscovy as the "Third Rome" after Constantinople and Rome itself. Ivan III also saw Russia as the protector of the Eastern (or Orthodox) Christian Church. To Russia's west were two dangerous enemies: Poland and Lithuania, both of which practiced Western (or Catholic) Christianity. To Russia's south, the Ottoman Turks had reached their greatest power under Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (who ruled from 1520-1566). Because Russia, Poland, Lithuania, and the Ottoman Empire were all on the rise, Western European nations could not expand eastward. To the south lay Africa and a fringe of strong Muslim nations, and after that, desert. If the Western European nations wanted an outlet for their excess population, they would have to look elsewhere.

France, England and Italy
The year 1453 marked not only the end of the Byzantine Empire, but the end of the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) between France and Great Britain. Although the war did not go on continuously, both nations were exhausted, and needed time to recover. Because of the number of powerful French nobles killed, the king of France took over the entire government. Under the French monarchy, the people's rights were what the king decided they were. Even after the French economy bounced back, exploration was still decades off. Great Britain's recovery got off to a slower start due to a 30 year civil war between the York and Lancaster factions. In 1485, Henry Tudor unified the British throne and began undercutting the position of the British nobles. As opposed to the autocratic French kings, Henry Tudor worked with Parliament to establish his and his dynasty's position. Only then could Britain think about creating an Empire. Italy, meanwhile, was dominated by five wealthy city-states: Venice, Milan, Florence, the Papal states (which included Rome) and Naples. They shared the Italian language and an Italian heritage, but fought each other for land, money, and new markets. Fearing that one or another of them might become too powerful, and accordingly got involved in a dizzying pattern of alliances and wars. This is the cultural background of Niccolo Machiavelli's 1505 masterpiece, "the Prince." For economic or political reasons, many Italian captains made their mark exploring in the service of other nations; Italy herself would never make her mark in the New World.

Portugal and Spain
The French, the British, and the Italians weren't ready to look across the Atlantic just yet. But the Spanish and Portuguese were ready to take advantage of advances in navigation. In 1487 the Portuguese explorer, Bartolomew Diaz, conquered traditional naval fears - boiling water, falling off the edge of the earth, and angry sea monsters - and sailed as far as the southern tip of Africa. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain backed Christopher Columbus's dream of reaching India by sailing westward. Of course, Columbus found the island of Hispaniola instead, and technically, the Americas. Word got out that new lands were waiting to be discovered and claimed. In 1498 the Portuguese Vasco da Gama successfully reached India by sailing around Africa, returning to Portugal the next year with a load of spices which not only fetched a huge profit but touched off a frenzy of exploration. The fleet sent by Portugal in 1500 to follow up on da Gama's discovery was blown off course to what is now Brazil. Portugal became a major player in the New World completely by accident.

Soon all the seafaring nations of Western Europe now had the technology to sail across the Atlantic - and around the world. They had pilot books, the magnetic compass and the astrolabe, which measured the angle of celestial bodies from the horizon. Their ships were mounted with cannon which fired iron balls or stones, and could wreck an opposing ship or fortress from a distance. The European explorers claimed to be on a quest to Christianize the so-called savage heathens, but this was more of a pretext than anything else. They were more interested in gold, spices, and whatever other riches could be extracted from their new discoveries. The voyages of Columbus and of Vasco da Gama had in effect shrunk the world and started the process of globalization. A wave of exploration was about to begin. But before we discuss it in greater detail, we need to examine life in the Americas before the Western Europeans arrived.