European Exploration Motives Essay

Exploration Motives Essay

In the 15th and 16th centuries there were many Europeans setting out to explore the rest of the world, with no idea what they could encounter on the way. Many explorers found what they were seeking, and lots of explorers found something completely different. While religion was a major motive for exploration, so were economic motives and land expansion.

Religious motives were one of the main factors that drove Europeans to explore the east. The reason many European explorers used for their travels was to spread Christianity to the new world. The crusades of England and Spain, intending to convert Muslims to Christianity failed. So “crusading impulses thus shifted from Muslims to pagan people of other continents” (Buckler, 504). These new Spanish crusades were under the direction of Queen Isabella. As a

One of the economic factors was the search for gold. Gold was "required for... expanding the system of trade" (Arnold, 13). It was important to because gold was essential to trade valuable items with. Europeans were running out of gold from Asian imports, but they believed the New World to be full of precious metals that were even more valuable. Another valuable item they were hoping to find in the New World was spices. Like gold, spices had to be imported all the way from Asia and the demand was growing almost faster than could be transported from Asia. Thus, Europeans were hoping to find more spices in the new world (Buckler, 505). As well as trading spices, the Europeans had a need to find a market for their handmade goods. Europeans were beginning to manufacture their own wool textiles and we're having difficulty selling them to countries in the west that were "accustomed to fine silks and calicoes" (Arnold, 15). This motivated them to explore the new lands and find a population that would purchase their products without a comparison to Asian