How Technology Favored Early Portuguese Exploration
by Before the Dutch or the British dominated world trade, the Portuguese were early leaders in oceanic exploration.
Like most expansionist countries, Portugal used new technology to explore and control new territory. New technologies are always based upon new knowledge, however, so it is important to look at Portugal before it became a great seafaring nation to understand how it developed the technologies that allowed it to explore and dominate the Indian Ocean for a brief time.
Prior to the Reconquista, the Iberian peninsula was inhabited by Jews and Arabs as well as Christians. Since all of the ancient knowledge of the Greeks, Romans, Babylonians, Egyptians and more had been preserved by the Arabs who had added to it while Europe was in the midst of the Dark Ages, this cultural interaction was important. Because of their frequent contact with Arab traders, Portuguese were the first Europeans to benefit from what the Arabs knew.
This information, added to their own experiences in sailing the oceans, gave them a good understanding of oceanic navigation. This made it easier and less risky for them to send ships out for exploratory missions. Realizing the profits that could be made, they did not hesitate to do just that.
Next, the Portuguese built two new kinds of ships, the carack and the caravel. Both kinds of ships had advantages in certain types of waters, but they were both better on the high seas than the Nordic vessels that had made it all of the way to North America. They were more maneuverable and able to sail into the wind. This was essential for sailing down the dangerous African coast. The Portuguese used relatively new inventions like the compass and the astrolabe to determine their location at see. This made navigation much easier and helped make maps more accurate.
When they encountered Arab and Indian traders in the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese used gunpowder in cannons to destroy potential rivals and seize strategic choke points. The cannon gave the Portuguese supremacy on the high seas, that is, until someone (The Dutch) came along with better guns. While useful in explaining how the Portuguese managed to control the Indian Ocean, this new technology is also a good example of globalization.
The Portuguese used Greek and Arab knowledge to help them build new technology to travel to the other side of the Eurasian continent. Once they got there, they used gunpowder invented by the Chinese that was adapted to military use by the Turks to gain the upper hand against the merchant marine in the Indian Ocean. Without the flow of goods and information between far flung cultures, this expansion would not have been possible.
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