Age of Discovery

The Age of Discovery runs from the Portuguese capture of Ceuta in 1415 and Prince Henry’s Atlantic ventures through to the early seventeenth century. Iberian crowns funded caravels and carracks that rounded Cape Bojador in 1434, reached India under Vasco da Gama in 1498, and crossed the Atlantic with Columbus in 1492. The period reorganized global trade around ocean routes, linked previously separate maritime systems, and opened the Atlantic slave trade and the Columbian exchange. It established the navigational science, ship types, and chartered-company finance that shaped the next three centuries of seafaring.