Religion seems to have played a fairly moderate role with regards to being a motivation for European exploration and Colonisation. It is clear there were other factors, perhaps more important than religion, that seemed to have been more of a motivation, for example advances in technology, ship building and also the desire to find new land to cultivate.[1]
In the popular imagination of the explorers and adventurers of the Middle Ages, there were beliefs that ships who dared to travel too far into mysterious and uncharted seas might plunge over the boundary of the world or perish in the scorching seas of the torrid zone. Fears such as these acted as a deterrent to new exploration and discovery, and also rational and practical investigations. However some mythical fantasies, despite their unrealistic nature, seem to have taken a significant part in motivating some voyages of discovery in the fifteenth century, for example, the desire to find existence of Lost Islands, a continent of Atlantis in the Western Seas, and also legend of a powerful Christian king called Prester John, who was thought to be ruling somewhere beyond the Muslim lands in Africa or Asia.[2]
The same fusion of truths and legend was apparent in the maps of the medieval period. In the earlier maps Jerusalem, as the religious centre of Christianity, appeared in the middle of a flat and circular world with the known continents of Europe, Africa and Asia in arrangement symmetrically around it, leaving little space for any intervening seas.[3]
One recurrent theme that seems to have acted as a religious motivation for exploration was the search for Prester John. There is sufficient evidence of frequent curiosity and interest in the long established myth of Prester John, believed to have been a Christian ruler whose kingdom was thought to be located somewhere on the African continent. The search for Prester John was re-established in 1442 at the council of Florence after an attempt to reunite the Coptic and Latin churches. The driving force behind the regained interest in the search for the Christian king came from Prince Pedro of Portugal’s tour of Europe between 1428 and 1437, and also from the imagined and entirely fictional visit he made to the Indies in quest for the land of Prester John, portrayed in the literary work of Gomez de Santisteban published in 1515. These factors, however fictitious they may be, help to explain Henry the Navigator’s hope of his coastal explorations of West Africa would expose the possible existence of potential Christian allies. The lack of European knowledge regarding Africa’s political organisation and internal geography led to the assumption of the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia existing in the Eastern part of Africa, rather than being extended from East to West right across the continent.[4]
Prince Henry of Portugal was motivated by the medieval myth of Prester John in the fifteenth century, believing that he would find a powerful Christian prince somewhere in Africa with whom he could ally in a joint crusade against Islam.[5] Prince Henry’s geographical knowledge was apparently modest and his academic interests restricted, with his mind engaged with religion, honour and virtue. He seems to have believed himself to have been a hero who wanted to convert pagans, punish infidels and seek out fellow Christians.[6]
But for Henry, as later for Isabella, motives regarding religion did not exist in isolation. They often reinforced, and were freely implemented to excuse, what we would now see as fundamentally economic and political objectives. Religion in the fifteenth century was part of everyday life, indivisible from other factors of trade and politics. However, part of the importance of the religious issues is that it gave extra confidence and purpose to the expansionism of Portugal and Castilian Spain. The strength of their religious convictions, their constant faith in a divinely authorised operation to conquer Islam and to convert the heathens and infidels wherever they might be found, led the Portuguese and Spanish into overseas explorations that the more careful and practical states of Europe, particularly of Italy, would have considered reckless and unrewarding. Religion is imperative then, in explaining why it was that the Iberian states progressed even further than others in overseas expansion.[7]
This age of collective discovery occurred from several different viewpoints. The Europeans struggled to understand the new kind of civilisation that they discovered in other continents, just as the indigenous peoples in the New World struggled to understand the meaning of what the arrival of the Spanish invaders with strange sailing vessels, weapons, different religious beliefs, manners and customs might indicate. In particular, the Aztecs, under the rule of Emperor Montezuma, struggled and resisted with this new experience more than others, as it had been prophesised within their religion that pale face men would come from the East to establish new kingdoms. The European explorers were often met with interest or dislike, with great confrontation or some form of collaboration and efforts to accommodate them, and so it is difficult to distinguish if European exploration and attempt of colonisation created a positive or negative effect on the New World.[8]
The long-established awareness of the existence of India’s spice trade combined with the legend of Prester John both advanced further progress in a very direct way to the voyage of Vasco da Gama in 1498 and also to the Portuguese explorations and inspections of the sea route to India.[9] The exploration for new trade was a key factor pushing Europe’s expansionist drives in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but the epoch also saw significant social and cultural changes emanating out from Europe as well. Different European languages began to extend to other continents and to be embraced and accepted by non-European people, in particular Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French and English. A Christian existence was established in parts of Africa, Asia and the Americas where it had not been previously infiltrated.[10]
Though commerce was a key factor, it was not Portugal’s only concern in Africa. Aggression to Islam was a continuing characteristic of Portuguese relations with North-west and Eastern Africa, and the obliteration of the chiefly Muslim dominant towns of Sofala and Kilwa owed something to religious enthusiasm of the Portuguese as well as to their industrial and commercial aims and aspirations. A Portuguese emissary seeking the mythical Prester John contacted the Coptic Christian kingdom of Ethiopia as early as 1494, but further connections were slow to build up. Four hundred Portuguese soldiers were sent to help the Ethiopians oppose a Muslim assault in 1541-3, but the close coalition with a Christian ally that Prince Henry hoped for failed to materialise.[11]
The Portuguese made several different efforts in Africa to convert African rulers and to Christianise and Europeanise their subjects. The most continued example of this was in the Congo Kingdom which is located south to the Congo River. Missionaries, teachers and craftsmen were dispatched from Portugal in the 1490s and in 1507 a Christian convert, Nzinga Mbemba, rose to the throne as Afonso I. Until his death in 1543 he preferred closer relations with Portugal and sought to mould his kingdom along European lines. As was to confirm the case elsewhere in its overseas territory, Portugal’s economic interests in Africa was achieved at the expense of its religious idealism.[12]
As in Africa, the original forcefulness of the Portuguese owed something to their Christian principles. It was intolerable to their religion as they understood it to settle down to trade agreeably in conjunction with Muslims, even if it was commercially appealing to do so. The narrow-minded spirit of the reconquista was brought in from the Iberian Peninsula to the Indian Ocean. On several occasions the Portuguese even assaulted unarmed Muslim ships that were carrying pilgrims to Mecca. But though the Portuguese originally demonstrated considerable hostility against Muslim traders and princes, they made only weak or inadequate efforts to win Asia over to Christianity. The influx of the Jesuits at Goa in 1540 brought a more firm religious strength to Portuguese relations with Hindus as well as Muslims in India. The inquisition was active in Goa in attempting to eradicate all traces of non-Christian worship, but outside their own little domains and with the exemption of a few accomplishments, like the mass conversion of ten thousand Parava fishermen on the Coromandel coast of South India in 1536, they had in practice to endure the recognized religions of Asia, even Islam, which was increasingly broadening its influence in this period over South and SouthEast Asia.[13]
The explorations of the African coast by the Portuguese, as well as the aims of expansion towards India can also be viewed on a comparable level to the crusades which had been a prominent factor throughout Europe since the eleventh century. The voyages made by Christopher Columbus can also be seen as attempts and efforts to broaden the limits of Christianity. Christopher Columbus and the Portuguese were concerned to search for new alliances to fight against the Islamic world, preferably Christian ones, for example Prester John, who there is evidence to suggest was still being eagerly sought after up to the end of the fifteenth century.[14]
In 1415 the Portuguese gained control of Ceuta, a city opposite Gibraltar, which they upheld against the constant efforts of the Moroccans to reclaim it. In 1471 they were able to gain control over Tangiers and of many more ports dotted along the shores of the Atlantic, stretching as far as Agadir. Consequently they were able to penetrate the Mediterranean freely and to refuse Muslim enemies ports from which they could intimidate Portuguese merchant fleets.[15]
Two outcomes of the campaigns over Granada were the expulsions of the Jews and the funding of an Atlantic voyage to find a quick route to India, promised by Christopher Columbus. The Jewish expulsion formed part of an general cultural homogenisation policy focused on eradicating alternative religions and customs among the Morisco’s, who were Muslims recently converted to Christianity, and Converso’s, who were Jews recently converted to Christianity. Others were also dealt with through the use of the Iberian Inquisition.[16]
Ferdinand and Isabella marriage in 1469 combined with their triumph in the war of succession of 1474-9 brought a personal unification of the two crowns of Aragorn and Castile. However the state themselves stayed officially separate from each other in order to preserve their own laws and institutions. Nevertheless, even this level of unity unchained Christian Spain from countless internal divisions that had previously preoccupied it and provided the country the power and force to pursue expansionist policies. After commencing in 1481, the final conquest of Muslim Granada was concluded in January 1492, almost forty years after Constantinople’s fall.[17]
The energy with which Queen Isabella, who had previously permitted the establishment of the Iberian inquisition, followed Granada’s fall in 1492 with the Jews expulsion from Castile and the forced conversion of the Muslims shows her determination to root out the non-Christian influences that had been an essential part of Medieval Spain and had contributed so much to its arts, trade and culture. With only a fine channel separating Christian Spain from Muslim North Africa, and with Ottoman power in the Mediterranean increasing, it was not unexpected that Isabella, until her death in 1504, sought to overseas expansion and development as a way of continuing the struggle against Islam and, in supporting Columbus, as the means of which to carry Christianity into heathen lands.[18]
In Hispaniola, the Canaries, and generally throughout the Caribbean, the native inhabitants were unfamiliar and unaccustomed to peasant work forced onto them by the Europeans, and so resisted being pressured into a new way of life that was largely inferior to their pre-European contact existence. The European invaders were generally aiming to make themselves a small fortune in order to cover expenses and a form of compensation for their huge personal risks for taking part in such voyages, and so were much inclined to bully and pressure the indigenous people into peasant work and also conversion to Christianity. Heathen lands and labour could be seized by Christian men at arms under Spanish Law. In many cases were the heathen opposed the development of the expansion of Christianity in a particularly stubborn manner, they could be declared slaves by the Invaders. Many indigenous people could only gain their human rights and emancipation after accepting Christianity as their new religion.[19]
The voyage of Magellan and Elcano established a Spanish claim over the Philippines, in an obvious breach of the treaty of Tordesillas. Their only significant ownership in Asia, the Spanish began to colonise the Philippines through the Northern islands of Luzon and Cebu, and to launch the religion of Christianity in partnership with a Spanish style administration. In the Americas, as in Africa and Asia, the Spanish and Portuguese disregarded the rights of indigenous peoples to the land they inhabited, insisting upon them that only man of the Christian faith could possess a valid title.[20]
While Ceuta and Atlantic Morocco were being taken over by the Portuguese, the Mediterranean side of the strait was being occupied by Castilian interest. Gibraltar fell to Castile in 1462, and was soon followed by a great land and sea attack upon Granada by Ferdinand and Isabella, whose union had joined together the resources of Castile and Aragon.[21]
In contrast, religion was more significant regarding colonisation rather than being used as a motivation for exploration. Conquistadors were very keen to convert infidels to Christianity, often disregarding the indigenous people’s human rights until they converted to Christianity. This way of conversion does not seem to be greatly effective. It has also been argued that some overseas explorations were driven by a search for more land and food, as the ever advancing Ottoman Turks were denying Europe any access to the Eastern Mediterranean.[22]In conclusion, religion definitely acted as a small motivation for exploration and colonisation in the New World; however, there were many more other significant factors that should be considered alongside religion as a motivation. Religion, in particular Christianity, seems to have been used to excuse Invaders actions upon the indigenous peoples, as they believed to be doing it in the name of God.[23]
Bibliography
Arnold, David, The Age of Discovery 1400-1600 (London: Routledge: 2006: 2nd Edition) pp. 1-54
Fernandez- Armesto, Filipe, Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonisation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic 1229-1492 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education: 1987)
Lewis, A. R and Runyan, T. J, European Naval and Maritime History 300-1500 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 1990) pp. 62-85
Philips, J. R. S, The Medieval Expansion of Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press: 1998) pp. 227-253
Pomeranz, Kenneth and Topik, Steven, The World that Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy, 1400 to the Present, (London: M.E Sharpe: 2006)
Raudzens, George, Empires: Europe and Globalisation 1492-1788 (Stroud: Sutton: 1999) pp. 41-63
Rose, Susan, The Medieval Sea, (London: Hambledon/Continuum: 2007)
Scammell, G. V, The First Imperial Age: European Overseas Expansion c. 1400-1715 (London: Routledge: 1997) pp. 51-70
Verlinden, Charles, The Beginnings of Modern Colonisation: Eleven Essays (Ithaca: Cornell U.P: 1970) [1] Philips, J.R.S, The Medieval Expansion of Europe (Oxford:Clarendon Press:1998)pp.227-253
[2] David Arnold, The Age of Discovery (London:Routledge:2006)pp.6
[3] David Arnold, The Age of Discovery (London:Routledge:2006)pp.6
[4] Philips, J.R.S, The Medieval Expansion of Europe (Oxford:Clarendon Press:1998)pp.251-252
[5] David Arnold, The Age of Discovery (London:Routledge:2006)pp.24
[6] G.V.Scammell, The First Imperial Age (London:Routledge:1997)pp.51
[7] David Arnold, The Age of Discovery (London:Routledge:2006)pp.24
[8] David Arnold, The Age of Discovery (London:Routledge:2006)pp.4
[9] Philips, J.R.S, The Medieval Expansion of Europe (Oxford:Clarendon Press:1998)pp.253
[10] David Arnold, The Age of Discovery (London:Routledge:2006) pp 4
[11] David Arnold, The Age of Discovery (London:Routledge:2006)pp.37
[12] David Arnold, The Age of Discovery (London:Routledge:2006)pp.37
[13] David Arnold, The Age of Discovery (London:Routledge:2006)pp.40-42
[14] Philips, J.R.S, The Medieval Expansion of Europe (Oxford:Clarendon Press:1998)pp.257-258
[15] A.R.Lewis, European Naval and Maritime History 300-1500 (Bloomington:Indiana U.P:1990)pp.81
[16] George Raudzens, Empires: Europe and Globalisation 1492-1778 (Stroud:Sutton:1999)pp.43
[17] David Arnold, The Age of Discovery (London:Routledge:2006)pp.23
[18] David Arnold, The Age of Discovery (London:Routledge:2006)pp.23-24
[19] George Raudzens, Empires: Europe and Globalisation 1492-1778(Stroud:Sutton:1999)pp.48
[20] David Arnold, The Age of Discovery (London:Routledge:2006)pp.48
[21] A.R.Lewis, European Naval and Maritime History 300-1500 (Bloomington:Indiana U.P:1990)pp.81
[22] G.V.Scammell, The First Imperial Age (London:Routledge:1997)pp.52
[23] George Raudzens, Empires: Europe and Globalisation 1492-1778 (Stroud:Sutton:1999)pp.48
do not like it... doesnt get to point
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