BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS

religion. But the arrival of invaders long ago also brought disease, famine and often conflict, slavery and forced religious conversions. This greatly contributed to a decline in the local populations of those times, many of whom never recovered. It was the global domination of sea travel that made the Age of Exploration unique, and this led to many new technological developments in navigation and seamanship. These include the astrolabe, magnetic compass, caravel and sextant – all of which had enormous significance and continued to be used centuries after. Explorers brought back new goods. Tomatoes and potatoes for example, considered staple foods in Europe, were originally not native to our continent but were instead introduced by the Spanish in the 16th century. Other ‘New World’ crops include tobacco, rubber and vanilla. Our customs and way of life were forever changed—from drinking tea and coffee to the use of porcelain from China, aromatic spices from India and beautiful textiles and silks from Manila. Distant lands had been for centuries impenetrably separated by expansive oceans, and it was only through these early explorers that we could bridge the gap and expand beyond our limitations.

The Age of Exploration brought the world closer. Today we still see 90% of world trade going through our oceans, but it is the resulting human and social connections that bind us more, through the sharing of cultures and of our common ground, rather than our differences.

Works Cited

Abulafia, David. The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans. Oxford University Press, 2019.

Love, Ronald S. 2006. “Maritime Exploration in the Age of Discovery, 1415–1800”. The European Voyages of Exploration. The Applied History Research Group, University of Calgary, 2009. Archived from the original on 22 July 2010. Retrieved 22 June 2010.

Sletcher, Michael. “British Explorers and the Americas”. In Britain and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, editors Will Kaufman and Heidi McPherson. Oxford University Press, 2005.