18th Century American Colonization

Colonization is a big deal for countries giving them Spices, Luxuries Religion and Ambition. Spices from the Far East were very precious. So precious at one point one ounce of pepper was worth the same as 1 ounce of gold. Cotton, silk, pearls, valuable metals and jewels were luxuries then and merchants became very rich for this. The greedy Catholic Church would look for ways for more money and searching for land was a good way to do it. By putting their catholic Religion on the land would extend their money and more income from more people. And finally ambition many sea captains saw a chance to make riches and become famous along with their new technology, which helped with better, ships navigation aids and guns. This makes the journey more likely to succeed.

Explorer Christopher Columbus found Central America in the late 15th century (august 1492) to discover the new world. Many methods were used to cross the dangerous seas. Celestial navigation was used to travel along the seas, the astrolabe an instrument used to make very big measurements in navigation for calculating latitude. The ships speed was determined by a measurement called ‘heaving the log’ used between the …show more content…
The other countries of Europe such as Spain and Portugal were keen to grow rich through trade. They were mostly looking for a sea route to India, China and South East Asia. One writer described the goods carried in Venetian ships, “From India they have pearls, precious stones and plenty of spices... they have a very large quantity of cotton and silk”. Turkey had made the journey difficult Columbus was also hoping to find a sea route to the Far East. No goods could get from Asia to Europe without crossing the Arab or Turkish lands. Powerful European leaders would pay explorers to go on voyages to find a sea route for ‘new trade routes’ to Cathay (China) and the Spice Islands (The Mollucus). I got this source from class and paper/book