Age of Exploration

A near-synonym for the Age of Discovery, the Age of Exploration emphasizes the navigators and voyages rather than the commercial outcome. It covers Portuguese expansion down the African coast under Henry the Navigator, Spanish transatlantic voyages, the Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation of 1519 to 1522, and later Dutch, English, and French enterprise. The voyages depended on the caravel, the magnetic compass, the mariner’s astrolabe, and portolan charts. Historians treat the two labels as interchangeable, with this one foregrounding the cartographic and navigational achievement.