Chapter 2 Lesson 1 Highlights: Spanish Exploration PDF

**Chapter 2 lesson 1 highlights** **Why Did the Spanish Explore the Americas?** - During the middle Ages most Europeans rarely traveled. However, they began making pilgrimages, or religious journeys, to Christian holy sites. Some went as far away as areas in the Middle East considered...

**Chapter 2 lesson 1 highlights** **Why Did the Spanish Explore the Americas?** - During the middle Ages most Europeans rarely traveled. However, they began making pilgrimages, or religious journeys, to Christian holy sites. Some went as far away as areas in the Middle East considered the "Holy Land" by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. - The contact with new regions made Europeans desire goods from foreign lands. Soon, a new class of Europeans developed merchants who made their living by buying and selling goods. - On a second journey, they took 17-year-old Marco Polo. He returned to Italy years later and told of the wonders he had seen. His impressions were recorded in a book now called The Travels of Marco Polo. - Another person who encouraged Europeans to travel to new lands was Prince Henry of Portugal, whose sailors explored the west coast of Africa in the early 1400s. - Trade with Asia usually moved along a route called the Silk Road. It was named for a product much in demand---Chinese silk. Goods from the East Indies also came partly by sea. But whether entirely or only partly over land, the trade from Asia had to pass through the Middle East to reach the Mediterranean Sea and Italy. - The Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople. They cut off most European trade through the Middle East. European leaders began to sponsor, or pay for, voyages of exploration. - Important advances in navigation, or the science of guiding a boat, made this possible - Spain wished to become an even more powerful country after recapturing land it had lost to invading peoples from North Africa. Spaniards called this violent recapturing of territory the Reconquista. - Christopher Columbus, a sailor from Genoa, Italy, had a different idea. He believed that he could reach the East Indies more quickly by sailing west across the Atlantic Ocean, known then as the Ocean Sea. - He persuaded King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, Portugal's neighbor and rival, to pay for his voyage. In return, he would claim lands and open valuable trade for Spain. Columbus sailed from Spain with three ships---the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. - Finally a member of the crew, spotted land. Columbus would call the island he had reached San Salvador. Today, we know it as part of the Bahama Islands. A native people called the Taíno warmly greeted his crew. - Because he thought he had reached the East Indies, Columbus called the people he encountered Indios, Spanish for Indians. - The people Columbus did not survive long, this was due to diseases introduced by the Spanish, as well as harsh treatment, enslavement, starvation, and warfare. - On his first voyage, Columbus sailed to several neighboring islands. He still believed he had landed in the East Indies. Claiming the islands for Spain. - The king and queen soon sent him back on a second voyage to extend Spanish claims. This time he brought enough settlers and supplies to establish a Spanish colony on the island he named Hispaniola. - I Columbus made four voyages to the area. Other explorers soon followed. They knew that the islands were not the East Indies but a New World. - The name Americas began to be used for these lands in honor of Amerigo Vespucci. - Another explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, named those waters the Pacific Ocean. Magellan died as he attempted to sail around the world. The voyage took three years