The process of disintegration of feudalism and the emergence of capitalist relations in Europe was accelerated by the opening of new trade routes and new countries in the 15th-16th centuries, which marked the beginning of the colonial exploitation of the peoples of Africa, Asia and America.
By the 16th century in Western Europe, commodity production and trade made significant progress, and the need for money, which was the universal medium of exchange, increased sharply. “The discovery of America,” Engels says about the causes of geographical discoveries, “was caused by a thirst for gold, which even before that drove the Portuguese to Africa ... because it developed so powerfully in the XIV and XV centuries. European industry and the corresponding trade required more means of exchange, which Germany - the great country of silver in 1450-1550. - could not give. Letter from Engels to K. Schmidt, October 27, 1890, K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Letters, 1953, p. 426.) By this time, the desire for luxury and the accumulation of treasures among the upper classes of European society also greatly increased. Under such conditions, the desire for enrichment, or, in the words of Marx, "the general thirst for money" ( "Archive of Marx and Engels", vol. IV, p. 225.) embraced in Europe both the nobles, and the townspeople, and the clergy, and kings.
One of the most tempting means of getting rich quick in 15th century Europe. there was trade with Asia, the importance of which after the Crusades increased more and more. The largest cities of Italy, primarily Venice and Genoa, rose on intermediary trade with the East. The East was a source of supply for Europeans with luxury goods. Spices brought from India and the Moluccas - pepper, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg - became a favorite seasoning for food in rich houses, and a lot of money was paid for a grain of spices. Perfumes from Arabia and India, gold items from Oriental jewelers, Indian and Chinese silk, cotton and wool fabrics, Arabian incense, etc. were in great demand in Europe. India, China, Japan were considered countries rich in gold and precious stones. The imagination of European money-seekers was struck by the stories of travelers about the fabulous riches of these distant countries; especially popular were the notes of the Venetian merchant Marco Polo, who visited in the XIII century. in China and in many other countries of the East. In his notes, Marco Polo reported such fantastic information about Japan unknown to Europeans: “Gold, I tell you, they have a great abundance; there is an extremely large amount of it here, and they do not take it out of here ... I will now describe to you the outlandish palace of the sovereign of the local people. To tell you the truth, the palace here is large and covered with pure gold, just as our houses and churches are covered with lead ... I will also tell you that the floors in the chambers - and there are many of them - are also covered with pure gold two in thickness; and everything in the palace - both the halls and the windows - is covered with gold ornaments... There is an abundance of pearls here, it is pink and very beautiful, round, large... "The Europeans were promised great wealth and the seizure of trade routes in the seas of South Asia, along which East, there was a lively trade, which was in the hands of Arab, Indian, Malay and Chinese merchants.
However, the countries of Western Europe (with the exception of Italy) did not have direct trade relations with the eastern countries and did not benefit from eastern trade. The trade balance of Europe in its trade with the East was passive. Therefore, in the XV century. there was an outflow of metallic money from European countries to the East, which further increased the shortage of precious metals in Europe. In addition, in the XV century. in Europe's trade with Asian countries, new circumstances appeared that contributed to a fabulous increase in prices for oriental goods. The collapse of the Mongol state resulted in the termination of the caravan trade of Europe with China and India through Central Asia and Mongolia, and the fall of Constantinople and the Turkish conquests in Western Asia and the Balkan Peninsula in the 15th century. almost completely closed the trade route to the East through Asia Minor and Syria. The third trade route to the East - through the Red Sea - was the monopoly of the Egyptian sultans, who in the XV century. began to levy extremely high duties on all goods transported this way. In this regard, the decline of Mediterranean trade began, the centers of which were Italian cities.
Europeans in the 15th century attracted the wealth of not only Asia, but also Africa. At this time, the countries of Southern Europe through the Mediterranean Sea traded with the countries of North Africa, mainly with Egypt and with rich and cultural states Maghreb - Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. However, until the end of the XV century. most of the African continent was unknown to Europeans; there were no direct ties between Europe and Western Sudan, isolated from the countries of the Mediterranean by the rugged Sahara desert and the part of the Atlantic Ocean unknown to Europeans.
At the same time, the cities of the coast of North Africa traded with the tribes of the interior regions of the Sudan and Tropical Africa, who exchanged ivory and slaves. Along the caravan routes across the Sahara, gold, slaves and other goods from the Western Sudan and from the Guinean coast were delivered to the cities of the Maghreb and fell into the hands of Europeans, arousing their desire to reach these unknown rich regions of Africa by sea.
“To what extent,” says Engels, “at the end of the 15th century, money undermined and corroded the feudal system from within, is clearly seen from the thirst for gold, which in this era took possession of Western Europe; the Portuguese were looking for gold on the African coast, in India, in the entire Far East; gold was that magic word, which drove the Spaniards across the Atlantic Ocean to America; gold - that's what the white man first demanded, as soon as he set foot on again open shore».( F. Engels, The Peasant War in Germany, M. 1953, Applications, p. 155.) Thus, in Western Europe in the XV century. there was a need to search for new sea routes from Europe to Africa, India and East Asia.
But the distant and dangerous sea voyages undertaken from the end of the 15th century. with the aim of opening new routes to Africa and the East and to conquer new countries, became possible because by this time, as a result of the development of productive forces, important improvements had been introduced in the field of navigation and military affairs.
Sailing ships with a keel, introduced by the Normans as early as the 10th century, gradually became widespread in all countries and replaced the multi-tiered rowing Greek and Roman ships.
During the XV century. the Portuguese, during their voyages along the western coast of Africa, using the Genoese type of a three-masted sea vessel, created a new high-speed and light sailboat suitable for long-distance voyages - the caravel. Unlike coastal (coastal) navigation vessels, the caravel had three masts and was equipped with a large number of straight and slanting sails, thanks to which it could move even with an unfavorable wind direction. She had a very capacious hold, which made it possible to make large sea passages; the crew of the caravel was small. Significantly increased the safety of navigation due to the fact that the compass and nautical charts - portolans were improved; in Portugal, the astrolabe, borrowed from the Arabs, was improved - a goniometric tool with which the positions of the stars and latitude were calculated; at the end of the 15th century. tables of planetary movements were published to facilitate the calculation of latitude at sea.
The improvement of firearms was important.
A serious obstacle to the organization of sea voyages were geographical representations based on the teachings of the Greek geographer Ptolemy, which dominated medieval Europe. Ptolemy rejected the doctrine of the movement of the Earth and believed that the Earth stands motionless at the center of the universe; he admitted the idea of a spherical shape of the Earth, but argued that somewhere in the south Southeast Asia is connected to East Africa, the Indian Ocean is closed on all sides by land; thus, get from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean and reach the shores by sea East Asia supposedly impossible. According to the views prevailing in the Middle Ages, borrowed from ancient authors, the Earth was divided into five climatic zones, and it was believed that life was possible only in two temperate zones, at both poles there were completely lifeless regions of eternal cold, and at the equator there was a belt of terrible heat, where the sea boils and ships and people on them burn.
In the XV century. with the success of the Renaissance culture in Europe, these ideas began to be increasingly questioned. Even in the XIII century. Marco Polo and other travelers proved that in reality the eastern coast of Asia does not extend endlessly to the east, as Ptolemy thought, but is washed by the sea. On some maps of the XV century. Africa was depicted as a separate mainland tapering to the south. The hypothesis about the spherical shape of the Earth and a single ocean washing the land, expressed even by ancient scientists, was found in the 15th century. an increasing number of supporters. Based on this hypothesis, in Europe they began to express the idea of the possibility of reaching the eastern coast of Asia by sea, sailing from Europe to the west, across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1410 French Bishop Pierre d'Alli wrote the book "Picture of the World", in which he cited the statements of ancient and medieval scientists about the sphericity of the earth and argued that the distance from the coast of Spain to India across the ocean is small and can be covered with a fair wind in a few days.
At the end of the XV century. The idea of the possibility of a western route to India was especially ardently promoted by the Florentine physician and cosmographer Paolo Toscanelli. He depicted on the map the Atlantic Ocean, washing Europe in the east, and Japan, China and India in the west, and thus tried to show that the western route from Europe to the East was the shortest. “I know,” he wrote, “that the existence of such a path can be proved on the basis that the Earth is a sphere ...”
The Nuremberg merchant and astronomer Martin Beheim presented a gift to his hometown the first globe he made with a characteristic inscription: “Let it be known that the whole world is measured out on this figure, so that no one doubts how simple the world is, and that everywhere you can drive ships or pass, as shown here ... "
Navigation and maritime geography among the peoples of Asia in the Middle Ages
The peoples of Asia - Indians, Chinese, Malays and Arabs - during the Middle Ages achieved significant success in the field of geographical knowledge, the development of navigation in the Indian and Pacific oceans and the art of navigation, which was important for the geographical discoveries of Europeans in Asia and Africa and their expansion to territories of these continents.
Long before the appearance of Europeans in the Indian Ocean, these peoples discovered and mastered the great South Asian sea route, which connected the countries of the most ancient culture in the East, from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea. Along the western section of this route, from the Malabar coast of India to East Africa, Arabia and Egypt, Indian ships sailed in antiquity; their helmsmen skillfully used the monsoons - seasonal winds in the southern seas. In the first centuries of our era, Chinese, Indian and Malay merchants and sailors laid routes in the eastern part of the Indian Ocean, the South China and Java Seas, establishing trade links between the countries of Southeast Asia. At the beginning of the 5th century the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Fa Xian traveled on a Malay ship from the Bengal coast to Shandong, visiting Ceylon, Sumatra and Java on the way; in the 7th century such journeys were frequent.
After the Arab conquests and the formation of the Caliphate, the leadership in trade and navigation in the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the western Indian Ocean passed to the Arabs. In their hands were Aden, the island of Socotra and a number of cities on the east coast of Africa. Enterprising Arab merchants were intermediaries in South Asia's trade with Europe. Their ships sailed to India, Ceylon, Java, and China; Arab trading posts arose in many cities of South Asia; there were such trading posts in Canton and Quanzhou. The cities of the coast of medieval India flourished, through which the flow of goods transported along the sea routes of Asia passed. “Here,” one Chinese described the Indian city of Calicut at the beginning of the 15th century, “there is pepper, rose oil, pearls, incense, amber, corals ... colored cotton fabrics, but all this is imported from other countries ... and gold is bought here , silver, cotton fabrics, blue and white porcelain, beads, mercury, camphor, musk, and there are large warehouses where goods are stored ... "
However, maritime trade in Southeast Asia was mainly in the hands of the Chinese and Malays.
In the period from the X to the XV century. China has become a mighty maritime power; its seaside cities became centers of world trade. Canton at the beginning of the 14th century, according to one European traveler who visited it, was equal to three Venices. “There are not as many goods in all of Italy as there are in this city alone,” he notes. At that time, large quantities of silk, porcelain, art products were exported from China to other countries, and spices, cotton fabrics, medicinal herbs, glass and other goods were imported. In Chinese ports for long-distance voyages, large sea vessels were built, which had several decks, many rooms for the crew and merchants; the crew of such a ship usually numbered up to a thousand sailors and soldiers, which was necessary in case of a meeting with pirates, who were especially numerous in the waters of the Malay Archipelago. These ships were propelled by sails made of reed mats fixed on movable yards, which made it possible to change the position of the sails in accordance with the direction of the wind; when calm, these ships moved with the help of large oars. The geographical map was known to Chinese sailors even before our era. From the end of the XI century. a compass appeared on Chinese ships (the Chinese knew the property of a magnet in ancient times). “The helmsmen are aware of the outlines of the coast, and at night they determine the path by the stars, during the day - by the sun. If the sun is hidden behind clouds, then they use a south-pointing needle, ”says the navigation of Chinese sailors in one treatise of the beginning of the 12th century. Chinese sailors had a thorough knowledge of the monsoons in the southern seas, sea currents, shoals, typhoons, obtained by the centuries-old practice of Asian sailors. There was also an extensive geographical literature in China, containing descriptions of overseas countries with detailed information about the goods brought from them to China.
The naval power of medieval China was especially clearly manifested in the successful implementation of the largest naval expeditions to the Indian Ocean, undertaken by the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty Chengzu in the period from 1405 to 1433. While the Portuguese had just begun their advance into the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean, the Chinese fleet in consisting of 60 to 100 different ships with a total crew of up to 25-30 thousand people made seven voyages to the west, visiting Indo-China, Java, Ceylon, the Malabar coast in India, Aden, Ormuz in Arabia; in 1418 Chinese ships visited the Somali coast of Africa. In the seas of the Malay Archipelago, this fleet defeated numerous pirate gangs that hindered the development of China's maritime trade with the countries of South Asia. All these expeditions were led by the great Chinese navigator Zheng He, who came from an humble family and was promoted to the emperor's court for his military merits. Zheng He's expeditions not only strengthened China's influence in South Asia and contributed to the growth of its economic and cultural ties, but also expanded the geographical knowledge of the Chinese: their participants studied, described and mapped the lands and waters they visited. “Countries beyond the horizon and at the edge of the earth have now become subject (to China - Ed.) And to the most western and most northern edges, and perhaps even beyond their borders, and all paths have been traveled and distances have been measured,” - this is how he assessed the results of his voyages of Zheng He.
Maritime affairs were also highly developed among the Malays, who inhabited the islands of the Malay Archipelago, which included the Moluccas - the birthplace of spices exported from here to all countries of the East. The cities of Java and Sumatra and Malacca were in the XIV-XV centuries. the largest centers of trade, navigation and geographical science in the East; the Javanese helmsmen were known as experienced sailors, and the charts drawn up by the Malays were highly valued in the ports of Asia for the accuracy and thoroughness of the information contained in them.
Another center of trade and navigation in the XV century. there were Arab cities of the East African coast - Kilva, Mombasa, Malindi, Sofala, the island of Zanzibar, etc. They carried on a lively maritime trade with all Asian countries, exporting ivory, slaves, and gold exchanged by neighboring tribes for handicrafts from Arabian cities. Arab sailors knew the sea routes well from the countries of the Red Sea to the Far East; there is evidence that around 1420, one Arab navigator passed from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, rounding the southern tip of Africa. "Arab pilots have compasses for guiding ships, instructions for observing and nautical charts," wrote Vasco da Gama. A special literature on navigation was created - descriptions of routes, sailing directions, marine guides - summarizing the most important achievements in the field of shipping and navigation over many centuries. In the second half of the XV century. one of the most experienced Arab pilots in the western Indian Ocean was Ahmed ibn Majid, who came from a family of hereditary sailors. He was the author of many writings on maritime affairs, widely known among the sailors of Asia; the largest of these was the "Book of useful data on the basics of marine science and its rules." It described in detail the routes along the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf along Africa, to India, to the islands of the Malay Archipelago, to the shores of China and Taiwan, the methods of driving ships both during coastal navigation and on the high seas, instructions on the use of a compass and rhumbs, on astronomical observations, about seashores, reefs, monsoons and currents. Ibn Majid knew especially well the sea routes between Africa and the Malabar coast of India, which the Portuguese later took advantage of during their first voyage to India.
Opening of the sea route from Europe to India and the Far East
Portugal and Spain were the first European countries to undertake the search for sea routes to Africa and India. The nobles, merchants, clergy and royalty of these countries were interested in the search. With the end of the reconquista (in Portugal it ended in the middle of the 13th century, and in Spain at the end of the 15th century), the mass of small-scale nobles - hidalgos, for whom the war with the Moors was the only occupation - was left without work. These nobles despised all activities except war, and when, as a result of the development of a commodity-money economy, their need for money increased, many of them very soon found themselves in debt to the city usurers. Therefore, the idea of getting rich in Africa or in the eastern countries seemed to these knights of the reconquista, left without work and without money, especially exciting. The ability to fight, acquired by them in the wars with the Moors, the love of adventure, the thirst for military booty and glory were quite suitable for a new difficult and dangerous business - the discovery and conquest of unknown trade routes, countries and lands. It was from the environment of poor Portuguese and Spanish nobles that they emerged in the 15th-16th centuries. brave sailors, cruel conquerors-conquistadors who destroyed the states of the Aztecs and Incas, greedy colonial officials. “They walked with a cross in their hands and with an insatiable thirst for gold in their hearts,” writes one contemporary about the Spanish conquistadors. The wealthy citizens of Portugal and Spain willingly gave money for sea expeditions, which promised them the possession of the most important trade routes, rapid enrichment and a dominant position in European trade. The Catholic clergy sanctified the bloody deeds of the conquistadors with a religious banner, since thanks to the latter they acquired a new flock at the expense of tribes and peoples newly converted to Catholicism and increased their land holdings and incomes. The royal authorities of Portugal and Spain were no less interested in opening up new countries and trade routes. The impoverished, feudalized peasantry and underdeveloped cities could not give the kings enough money to cover the expenses demanded by the absolutist regime; in the possession of the most important trade routes and colonies, the kings saw a way out of financial difficulties. In addition, numerous militant nobles who remained idle after the reconquista posed a serious danger to the king and cities, since they could easily be used by large feudal lords in the struggle against the unification of the country and the strengthening of royal power. The kings of Portugal and Spain therefore sought to captivate the nobles with the idea of discovering and conquering new countries and trade routes.
The sea route connecting the Italian trading cities with the countries of North-Western Europe passed through the Strait of Gibraltar and skirted the Iberian Peninsula. With the development of maritime trade in the XIV-XV centuries. the importance of coastal Portuguese and Spanish cities increased. However, the expansion of Portugal and Spain was possible only towards the unknown Atlantic Ocean, because trade in the Mediterranean had previously been captured by the powerful sea cities of the Republics of Italy, and trade in the North and to the Baltic Seas- the union of German cities - the Hansa. The geographical position of the Iberian Peninsula, pushed far to the west into the Atlantic Ocean, favored this direction of the expansion of Portugal and Spain. When in the 15th century in Europe, the need to look for new sea routes to the East increased, the Hansa, which monopolized all trade between the countries of North-Western Europe, and Venice, which continued to profit from the Mediterranean trade, were least interested in these searches.
As a result of these internal and external reasons, Portugal and Spain were pioneers in the search for new sea routes across the Atlantic Ocean.
The Portuguese were the first to enter the ocean routes. After the conquest by the Portuguese troops in 1415 of the Moroccan port of Ceuta - the fortress of the Moorish pirates, located on the southern coast of the Strait of Gibraltar, the Portuguese began to move south, along the western coast of Africa to Western Sudan, from where gold dust, slaves and ivory were brought north by land . The Portuguese sought to penetrate further south from Ceuta, into the "sea of darkness", as the southern part of the Atlantic Ocean, unknown to Europeans, was then called. Strong Arab states in Northwest Africa did not allow the Portuguese to expand eastward along the Mediterranean coast of Africa. The western part of the Mediterranean was actually in the hands of Arab pirates.
In the organization of expeditions of the Portuguese in the first half of the XV century. along the West African coast, the Portuguese prince Enrico, better known in history under the name of Henry the Navigator, took part. On the southwestern coast of Portugal, in Sagris, on a rocky promontory protruding far into the ocean, an observatory and shipyards were built for the construction of ships, and a nautical school was also founded. Sagrish became a maritime academy for Portugal. In it, Portuguese fishermen and sailors, under the guidance of Italian and Catalan sailors, were trained in maritime affairs, there they improved ships and navigational instruments, drew sea charts according to information brought by Portuguese sailors, and developed plans for new expeditions to the south. Since the Reconquest, the Portuguese have been familiar with Arabic mathematics, geography, navigation, cartography and astronomy. Heinrich drew funds for the preparation of travels from the income of the spiritual and knightly order of Jesus headed by him, and also received through the organization of a number of trading companies on shares with wealthy nobles and merchants who hoped to increase their income through overseas trade.
At first, seafaring developed slowly in Portugal; it was difficult to find daredevils who would risk going into the "sea of darkness." But the situation improved significantly after the Portuguese captured the Azores in 1432 in the west, and in 1434 Zhil Eannish rounded Cape Bojador, south of which life was considered impossible in the Middle Ages; 10 years later, another Portuguese sailor sailed 400 miles south of this cape and brought gold and Negro slaves to Portugal, initiating the Portuguese slave trade. In the mid-40s, the Portuguese had already rounded Cape Verde and reached the coast between the Senegal and Gambia rivers, densely populated and rich in golden sand, ivory and spices. Following this, they penetrated deep into the mainland. Prince Henry the Navigator, objecting in words to the slave trade, in fact encouraged it in every possible way; his ships began to regularly go to West Africa to catch slaves and acquire golden sand, ivory and spices, exchanged with negroes for trinkets; usually the prince received a significant share of the brought booty.
The hope of plundering the entire African coast accelerated the Portuguese advance to the south. In the 60s and 70s, Portuguese sailors reached the coast of the Gulf of Guinea and crossed the equator; new characteristic names appeared on the Portuguese maps of Africa: "Pepper Coast", "Ivory Coast", "Slave Coast", "Gold Coast". In the early 80s, the sailor Diego Cao made three trips to the south of the Gold Coast, passed the mouth of the Congo River and set up his “padran” at the southern tropic - a stone pillar erected in an open area as a sign of its accession to the possessions of the King of Portugal. Finally, in 1487, Bartolomsu Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope, rounded it and entered the Indian Ocean. However, the crew of his ships, tired of the difficulties of the journey, refused to continue sailing, and Diaz was forced to return to Lisbon without reaching the shores of India. But he claimed that South Africa you can go by sea to the coast of India. This was also confirmed by Pedro Covellano, who was sent in 1487 by the Portuguese king in search of the shortest route to India through the countries of North Africa and the Red Sea and visited the Malabar coast of India, the cities of East Africa and Madagascar; in his report to the king, sent from Cairo, he, according to a contemporary, reported that the Portuguese caravels, “which trade in Guinea, sailing from one country to another on a course to this island (Madagascar) and Sofala, can easily pass into these eastern sea and approach Calicut, for, as he learned, the sea is everywhere here.
To complete the search sea route in India, the Portuguese king Manoel sent an expedition led by one of his courtiers, Vasco da Gama, who came from poor nobles. In the summer of 1497, four ships under his command left Lisbon and, having circled Africa, passed along its eastern coast to Malindi, a rich Arab city that traded directly with India. The Portuguese entered into an “alliance” with the Sultan of this city, which allowed them to take with them the famous Ahmed ibn Majid as a pilot, under whose leadership they completed their voyage. On May 20, 1498, the ships of Vasco da Gama anchored near the Indian city of Calicut, one of the largest trading centers in Asia, “the pier of the entire Indian Sea,” as the Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin, who visited India in the second half of the 15th century, called this city. With the permission of the local rajah, they began to buy spices in the city. The Arab merchants, who held in their hands all the overseas trade of the city, saw this as a threat to their monopoly and began to restore the rajah and the population of the city against the Portuguese. The Portuguese had to hastily leave Calicut and head back. In September 1499, Vasco da Gama returned to Lisbon. By the end of a two-year difficult voyage, less than half of the crew had survived.
The return to Lisbon of Portuguese ships loaded with spices from India was solemnly celebrated.
With the opening of the sea route to India, Portugal began to master the entire maritime trade of South and East Asia. The Portuguese waged a fierce struggle against Arab trade and shipping in the Indian Ocean and began to seize the most important trade and strategic points in South Asia. In 1501, the navigator Cabral arrived in Indian waters with a military flotilla, bombarded Calicut and bought a cargo of spices in Cochin. Two years later, Vasco da Gama again set off for the Indian Ocean; as "Admiral of India" he plundered and sank the ships of Arab merchants and, returning to Lisbon with a huge booty, left a permanent military squadron in Indian waters to piracy the plunder of ships plying between Egypt and India. Soon the Portuguese captured the island of Socotra, at the entrance to the Gulf of Aden, and the fortress of Diu on the northwestern coast of India, and thus established their control over the sea routes connecting the Red Sea and South Asia. “Replenishments began to come to them from Portugal, and they began to cross the road to the Muslims, capturing, robbing and forcibly seizing all kinds of ships,” reports one Arab historian of the 16th century. The lands and cities they captured in India became a stronghold for the further expansion of Portugal into Asia. Viceroy of Portuguese India d "Albuquerque took possession of the Goa fortress on the western coast of India and the Iranian port of Hormuz, and in 1511 took Malacca, a rich trading city in the Strait of Malacca, blocking the entrance to the Indian Ocean from the east. "The best of all that is in the world, "- this is how Albuquerque assessed Malacca. With the capture of Malacca, the Portuguese cut off the main route connecting the countries of Asia Minor with the main supplier of spices - the Moluccas, and entered the Pacific Ocean. A few years later they seize these islands and establish maritime trade with the South Finally, in 1542, they reach the shores of distant Japan and establish the first European trading post there.
Carrying out this expansion to the East, the Portuguese conquerors used the methods of navigation of the sailors of the East, Arabic and Javanese maps of the countries and seas of South Asia. One map of a Javanese helmsman, which fell into the hands of the Portuguese in 1512, showed the Cape of Good Hope, the Portuguese possessions, the Red Sea, the Moluccas, the sea routes of the Chinese with straight roads through which ships pass, and the interior of the country. According to this map, the Portuguese ships moved through the seas of the Malay Archipelago to the Moluccas. The captains of the Portuguese ships were ordered by instructions to involve Ceylon and Javanese helmsmen as pilots.
Thus, the sea route from Western Europe to India and East Asia was opened. Together with this discovery, through conquest, a huge colonial empire of Portugal was created, stretching from Gibraltar to the Strait of Malacca. The Portuguese Viceroy of India, who was in Goa, was subject to five governors governing Mozambique, Hormuz, Muscat, Ceylon and Malacca. The Portuguese also subjugated the largest cities of East Africa. The discovery of the sea route that connected Europe with Asia, the most important in the history of mankind, was used by feudal Portugal for its own enrichment, for plunder and oppression of the peoples of Africa and Asia.
From that time until the digging of the Suez Canal in the 60s of the XIX century. the sea route around South Africa was the main road along which trade was carried out between the countries of Europe and Asia and the penetration of Europeans into the basins of the Indian and Pacific Oceans took place.
Discovery of America and Spanish conquests
In the spring of 1492, the Spaniards took Granada, the last stronghold of the Moors on the Iberian Peninsula, and on August 3 of the same year, three caravels of Christopher Columbus set off from the Spanish port of Paloe on a long voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in order to open the western route to India and East Asia. Not wanting to aggravate relations with Portugal, the Spanish kings Ferdinand and Isabella initially preferred to hide the real purpose of this trip. Columbus was appointed "admiral and viceroy of all the lands that he discovers in these seas-oceans", with the right to keep for his own benefit one tenth of all income from them, "whether it be pearls or precious stones, gold or silver, spices and others things and goods".
Biographical information about Columbus is very scarce. He was born in 1451 in Italy, not far from Genoa, in the family of a weaver, but there is no exact information about where he studied and when he became a navigator. It is known that in the 80s he lived in Lisbon and, obviously, participated in several voyages to the coast of Guinea, but these voyages were not what fascinated him. He hatched a project to open the shortest route from Europe to Asia across the Atlantic Ocean; he studied the work of Pierre d'Agli (which was mentioned above), as well as the works of Toscanelli and other cosmographers of the 14th-15th centuries, who proceeded from the doctrine of the sphericity of the Earth, but significantly underestimated the length of the western route to Asia. However, to interest the Portuguese king in his Columbus’s project failed The “Council of Mathematicians” in Lisbon, which had previously discussed the plans of all expeditions, rejected his proposals as fantastic, and Columbus had to leave for Spain, where the project of opening a new route unknown to the Portuguese to Asia was supported by Ferdinand and Isabella.
On October 12, 1492, 69 days after departure from the Spanish port of Palos, Columbus' caravels, having overcome all the difficulties of the journey, reached San Salvador (apparently, modern Watling), one of the islands of the Bahamas group, located off the coast of a new, unknown Europeans of the mainland: this day is considered the date of the discovery of America. The success of the expedition was achieved not only thanks to the leadership of Columbus, but also to the stamina of the entire crew, recruited from the inhabitants of Palos and other seaside cities of Spain who knew the sea well. In total, Columbus made four expeditions to America, during which he discovered and explored Cuba, Hispaniola (Haiti), Jamaica and other islands of the Caribbean Sea, the eastern coast of Central America and the coast of Venezuela in the northern part of South America. On the island of Hispaniola, he founded a permanent colony, which later became the stronghold of the Spanish conquests in America.
During his expeditions, Columbus proved to be not only a passionate seeker of new lands, but also a man who strove for enrichment. In the diary of his first trip, he wrote: “I do everything possible to get to where I can find gold and spices ...” “Gold,” he writes from Jamaica, “is perfection Gold creates treasures, and the one who owns it , can do whatever he wants, and is even capable of introducing human souls into paradise "To increase the profitability of the islands he discovered, on which, as it soon turned out, there was not so much gold and spices, he suggested taking slaves out of there to Spain:" And let, - he writes to the Spanish kings, - even slaves die on the way, yet not all of them face such a fate.
Columbus was unable to geographically correctly assess his discoveries and conclude that he had discovered a new continent unknown to him. Until the end of his life, he assured everyone that he had reached the shores of Southeast Asia, about the fabulous riches of which Marco Polo wrote and the Spanish nobles and merchants dreamed , kings. He called the lands he discovered "Indies" and their inhabitants - "Indians". Even during his last trip, he reported to Spain that Cuba is South China, and the coast of Central America is part of the Malay Peninsula and that south of it there should be a strait through which you can get into rich India.
The news of the discovery of Columbus caused great alarm in Portugal. The Portuguese believed that the Spaniards had violated their right to own all the lands south and east of Cape Bojador, confirmed earlier by the Pope, and ahead of them in reaching the shores of India; they even prepared a military expedition to seize the lands discovered by Columbus. In the end, Spain turned to the pope to resolve this dispute. With a special bull, the pope blessed the seizure by Spain of all the lands discovered by Columbus. In Rome, these discoveries were evaluated in terms of spreading the Catholic faith and increasing the influence of the church. The dispute between Spain and Portugal was resolved by the pope as follows: Spain was granted the right to own all the lands located to the west of the line passing through the Atlantic Ocean in a hundred leagues (about 600 km) west of the islands Cape Verde In 1494, on the basis of this bull, Spain and Portugal divided the spheres of conquest among themselves under an agreement concluded in the Spanish city of Tordesillas; the boundary line between the colonial possessions of both states was established 370 leagues (over 2 thousand km) west of the above islands. Both states arrogated to themselves the right to pursue and seize all foreign ships that appeared in their waters, impose duties on them, judge their crews according to their laws and etc.
But the discoveries of Columbus gave Spain too little gold, and soon after the success of Vasco da Gama, the country became disillusioned with the Spanish "Indies", Columbus began to be called a deceiver, who instead of the fabulously rich India discovered a country of grief and misfortune, which became the place of death of many Castilian nobles. The Spanish kings deprived him of the monopoly right to make discoveries in the western direction and that share of the income received from the lands discovered by him, which was initially determined for him. He lost all his property, which went to cover debts to his creditors. Columbus, abandoned by all, died in 1506. Contemporaries forgot not a single navigator, they even gave the name of the mainland he discovered by the name of the Italian scientist Amerigo Vespucci, who in 1499-1504 took part in exploration of the shores of South America and whose letters aroused great interest in Europe. "These countries should be called the New World .." - he wrote.
After Columbus, other conquistadors in search of gold and slaves continued to expand the colonial possessions of Spain in America. In 1508, two Spanish Nin courts received royal patents for the establishment of colonies on the American mainland. The following year, the Spanish colonization of the Isthmus of Panama began; the first detachment of Europeans crossed the Isthmus of Panama and went to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, which he called the "South Sea". A few years later, the Spaniards discovered the Yucatan and Mexico, and also reached the mouth of the Mississippi River. Attempts were made to find the strait connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific, and thus complete the work begun by Columbus - to reach the shores of East Asia by the western route. This strait was searched for in 1515-1516. the Spanish sailor de Solis, who, moving along the Brazilian beret, reached the La Plata River; the Portuguese navigators, who made their expeditions in great secrecy, also looked for him. In Europe, some geographers were so sure of the existence of this not yet discovered strait that they put it on maps in advance.
A new plan for a large expedition to search for a southwestern passage to the Pacific Ocean and reach Asia by the western route was proposed to the Spanish king by Fernando Magellan, a Portuguese sailor from poor nobles who lived in Spain. Magellan fought under the banner of the Portuguese king in Southwest Asia on land and at sea, participated in the capture of Malacca, in campaigns in North Africa, but returned to his homeland without great ranks and wealth; after being denied even a minor promotion by the king, he left Portugal. While still in Portugal, Magellan began to develop an expedition project to search for the southwestern strait from the Atlantic Ocean to the open Balboa "South Sea", through which, as he assumed, it was possible to reach the Moluccas. In Madrid, in the "Council of Indian Affairs", which was in charge of all matters relating to the Spanish colonies, they became very interested in Magellan's projects; the council members liked his assertion that the Moluccas, under the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas, should belong to Spain and that the shortest route to them was through the southwestern strait into the "South Sea", which was owned by Spain. Magellan was absolutely sure of the existence of this strait, although, as subsequent facts showed, the only source of his confidence was the maps on which this strait was plotted without any reason. Under the agreement concluded by Magellan with the Spanish king Charles I, he received five ships and the funds needed for the expedition; he was appointed admiral with the right to keep for his own benefit a twentieth of the income that the expedition and the new possessions that he added to the Spanish crown would bring. “Since I,” the king wrote to Magellan, “is known for certain that there are spices on the Molucco islands, I send you mainly in search of them, and it is my will that you go straight to these islands.”
On September 20, 1519, five ships of Magellan left San Lucar for this journey. It went on for three years. Having overcome the great difficulties of navigation in the unexplored southern part of the Atlantic Ocean, he found the southwestern strait, later named after him. The strait was much further south than indicated on the maps that Magellan believed. Having entered the "South Sea", the expedition headed for the shores of Asia. Magellan called the "South Sea" the Pacific Ocean, "because, - as one of the expedition members reports, - we have never experienced the slightest storm." For more than three months the flotilla sailed across the open ocean; part of the crew, who suffered greatly from hunger and thirst, died from scurvy. In the spring of 1521, Magellan reached the islands off the east coast of Asia, later called the Philippine.
Pursuing the goal of conquering the lands he discovered, Magellan intervened in the feud between two local rulers and was killed on April 27 in a skirmish with the inhabitants of one of these islands. The crew of the expedition, after the death of their admiral, completed this most difficult voyage; only two ships reached the Moluccas, and only one ship, the Victoria, was able to continue on its way to Spain with a cargo of spices. The crew of this ship, under the command of d "Elcano, made a long voyage to Spain around Africa, managing to avoid meeting with the Portuguese, who were ordered from Lisbon to detain all members of Magellan's expedition. Of the entire crew of Magellan's expedition, unparalleled in courage (265 people), only 18 returned to their homeland people; but "Victoria" brought a large cargo of spices, the sale of which covered all the expenses of the expedition and gave a significant profit.
The great navigator Magellan completed the work begun by Columbus - he reached the Asian mainland and the Moluccas by the western route, opening a new sea route from Europe to Asia, although it did not gain practical importance due to the distance and difficulty of navigation. This was the first circumnavigation in the history of mankind; it irrefutably proved the spherical shape of the earth and the inseparability of the oceans washing the land.
In the same year, when Magellan went in search of a new sea route to the Moluccas, a small detachment of Spanish conquistadors, who had horses and armed with 13 cannons, set off from Cuba to the interior of Mexico to conquer the Aztec state, whose wealth was not inferior to the wealth of India. hidalgo Hernando Cortes. Cortes, who came from a family of impoverished hidalgos, according to one of the participants in this campaign, "had little money, but a lot of debt." But, having acquired plantations in Cuba, he was able to organize an expedition to Mexico, partly at his own expense.
In their clashes with the Aztecs, the Spaniards, who possessed firearms, steel armor and horses not previously seen in America and instilled panic in the Indians, as well as using improved combat tactics, received an overwhelming superiority of forces. In addition, the resistance of the Indian tribes to foreign conquerors was weakened by the enmity between the Aztecs and the tribes they conquered. This explains the rather easy victories of the Spanish troops.
Having landed on the Mexican coast, Cortes led his detachment to the capital of the Aztec state, the city of Tenochtitlan (modern Mexico City). The path to the capital passed through the area of Indian tribes who were at war with the Aztecs, and this made the trip easier. Entering Tenochtitlan, the Spaniards were amazed at the size and wealth of the Aztec capital. Soon they managed to treacherously capture the supreme ruler of the Aztecs, Montezuma, and on his behalf begin to rule the country. They demanded from the Indian leaders subject to Montezuma an oath of allegiance to the Spanish King I, paying tribute in gold. In the building where the Spanish detachment was located, a secret room was discovered, in which there was a rich treasure of gold items and precious stones. All the gold things were poured into square bars and divided among the participants in the campaign, and most of it went to Cortes, the king and governor of Cuba.
Soon the country broke out great uprising against the power of greedy and cruel strangers; the rebels laid siege to the Spanish detachment, which sat down with the captive supreme ruler in his household. With heavy losses, Cortés managed to break out of the siege and withdraw from Tenochtitlan; many Spaniards died because they rushed to riches and took so much that they could hardly walk.
And this time, the Spaniards were helped by those Indian tribes who took their side and were now afraid of the revenge of the Aztecs. In addition, Cortes replenished his squad with Spaniards who arrived from Cuba. Having gathered an army of 10,000, Cortes again approached the capital of Mexico and laid siege to the city. The siege was long; during it, most of the population of this populous city died of hunger, thirst and disease. August 1521, the Spaniards finally entered the ruined Aztec capital.
The Aztec state became a Spanish colony; the Spaniards seized a lot of gold and precious stones in this country, distributed the lands to their colonists, and turned the Indian population into slaves and serfs. “The Spanish conquest,” says Engels about the Aztecs, “cut off any further independent development of them” ( F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Gospolitizdat, 1953, p. 23.).
Shortly after the conquest of Mexico, the Spaniards conquered Central America Guatemala and Honduras, and in 1546, after several invasions, subjugated the Yucatan Peninsula, inhabited by the Mayan people. “There were too many rulers and they plotted against each other too much,” one of the Indians explained the defeat of the Maya.
The Spanish conquest in North America did not extend beyond Mexico. This is explained by the fact that in the regions located to the north of Mexico, the Spanish seekers of profit did not find cities and states rich in gold and silver; on Spanish maps, these areas of the American mainland were usually indicated by the inscription: "Lands that do not generate income."
After the conquest of Mexico, the Spanish conquistadors turned all their attention to the south, to the mountainous regions of South America, rich in gold and silver. In the 30s, the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, an illiterate man who was a swineherd in his youth, undertook the conquest of the "golden kingdom", the state of the Incas in Peru; about his fabulous wealth, he heard stories from local residents on the Isthmus of Panama during the Balboa campaign, of which he was a member. With a detachment of 200 people and 50 horses, he invaded this state, having managed to use the struggle of two heir brothers for the throne of the country's supreme ruler; he captured one of them - Atahualpa, and on his behalf began to rule the country. A large ransom was taken from Atahualpa in gold things, many times greater than the treasure that the detachment of Cortes took possession of; this booty was divided among the members of the detachment, for which all the gold was turned into ingots, destroying the most valuable monuments of Peruvian art. The ransom did not give Atahualpa the promised freedom; the Spaniards treacherously put him on trial and executed him. After that, Pizarro occupied the capital of the state - Cusco and became the complete ruler of the country (1532); he put on the throne the supreme ruler of his adherent, one of the nephews of Atahualpa. In Cuzco, the Spaniards plundered the treasures of the rich temple of the Sun, and in its building they created a Catholic monastery; in Potosi (Bolivia) they seized the richest silver mines.
In the early 40s, the Spanish conquistadors conquered Chile, and the Portuguese (in the 30s-40s) - Brazil, which was discovered by Cabral in 1500 during his expedition to India (Cabral's ships were on the way to the Cape of Good Hope to the west by the South Equatorial Current). In the second half of the XVI century. The Spaniards took control of Argentina.
Thus the New World was discovered and the colonial possessions of feudal-absolutist Spain and Portugal were created on the American mainland. The Spanish conquest of America interrupted the independent development of the peoples of the American continent and placed them under the yoke of colonial enslavement.
Discoveries in North America and Australia
Despite the agreement on the division of the spheres of conquest between Porgalia and Spain, sailors and merchants from other European countries began to penetrate into unexplored parts of the globe in search of profit and wealth. So, John Cabot (Italian Giovanni Caboto, who moved to England), who went on an expedition to find a northwestern route to the Indian Ocean, first reached Newfoundland or the Labrador Peninsula in 1497, and his son, Sebastian Cabot, in 1498 reached northeast coast of North America and explored it. Subsequently, English and French navigators explored the eastern part of North America, and the Dutch, as a result of a series of voyages made during the 17th century, discovered Australia, about which ancient geographers had vague information. In 1606, a Dutch ship under the command of Willem Janz reached the northern coast of Australia for the first time, and in 1642-1644. The Dutch navigator Tasman made two voyages to the Australian shores and, passing south of Australia to the island of Tasmania he discovered, proved that Australia was an independent new continent.
London merchants, in their own words, "seeing how surprisingly quickly the wealth of the Spaniards and Portuguese is growing due to the discovery of new countries and the search for new trading markets", organized in 1552 an expedition of three ships under the command of Willoughby, who attempted to find a northeast passage to China, rounding the coast of Siberia. The ships of the Willoughby expedition in the Barents Sea were separated by a storm, two of them were covered with ice in the southern part of this sea, and their entire crew froze, and the third passed into the White Sea, reached the mouth of the Northern Dvina; his captain Chancellor traveled to Moscow and was received by Ivan the Terrible. In 1556 and 1580. the British again tried to find the northeastern passage, but their ships could not pass further than the entrance to the Kara Sea due to solid ice.
Dutch merchants at the end of the 16th century. three expeditions were sent to search for this passage, led by the Dutch navigator Bill Barents, but these ships could not pass east of Novaya Zemlya, on which Barents wintered during his last expedition (1596-1597), as his ship was covered with ice.
Russian geographical discoveries of the 16th - 17th centuries.
The Russian people contributed to the great geographical discoveries first half of the 17th century significant contribution. Russian travelers and navigators made a number of discoveries (mainly in the northeast of Asia) that enriched world science.
The reason for the increased attention of Russians to geographical discoveries was further development commodity-money relations in the country and the related process of folding the all-Russian market, as well as the gradual inclusion of Russia in the world market. During this period, two main directions of the northeast were clearly outlined (Siberia and Far East) and southeast (Central Asia, Mongolia, China), along which Russian travelers and sailors moved.
The trade and diplomatic trips of Russian people in the 16th-17th centuries were of great educational value for contemporaries. to the countries of the East, a survey of the shortest land routes for communication with the states of the Middle and Central Asia and with China.
By the middle of the XVII century. Russians thoroughly studied and described the routes to Central Asia. Detailed and valuable information of this kind was contained in the embassy reports (“article lists”) of the Russian ambassadors I. D. Khokhlov (1620-1622), Anisim Gribov (1641-1643 and 1646-1647) and others.
Distant China aroused close attention among the Russian people. Back in 1525, while in Rome, the Russian ambassador Dmitry Gerasimov informed the writer Pavel Jovius that it was possible to travel from Europe to China by water through the northern seas. Thus, Gerasimov expressed a bold idea about the development of the Northern Route from Europe to Asia. Thanks to Jovius, who published a special book on Muscovy in the Gerasimov embassy, this idea became widely known in Western Europe and was received with lively interest. It is possible that the organization of the expeditions of Willoughby and Barents was caused by the messages of the Russian ambassador. In any case, the search for the Northern Sea Route to the east was already in the middle of the 16th century. led to the establishment of direct maritime links between Western Europe and Russia.
The first reliable evidence of a journey to China is information about the embassy of the Cossack Ivan Petlin in 1618-1619. Petlin from Tomsk through the territory of Mongolia passed to China and visited Beijing. Returning to his homeland, he presented in Moscow "a drawing and painting about the Chinese region." The information collected as a result of Petlin's trip about the routes to China, about the natural resources and economy of Mongolia and China contributed to the expansion of the geographical horizons of contemporaries.
Great importance in the history of geographical discoveries of that era, there was a survey of the vast expanses of the north and northeast of Asia from the Ural Range to the coast of the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, that is, all of Siberia.
The annexation of Siberia was started in 1581 by a campaign of a detachment of the Cossack ataman Ermak Timofeevich. His detachment, consisting of 840 people, carried away by rumors about the untold riches of the Siberian Khanate, was equipped at the expense of large landowners and salt producers of the Urals Stroganovs. The government-supported campaign of Yermak (1581-1584) led to the fall of the Siberian Khanate and the annexation of Western Siberia to the Russian state.
Even in the middle of the XVI century. Sailings of Russian polar sailors from the European part of the country to the Gulf of Ob and to the mouth of the Yenisei are mentioned. They moved along the coast of the Arctic Ocean on small keel sailing ships - koches, well adapted to sailing in the ice of the Arctic due to the egg-shaped hull, which reduced the danger of ice compression. Used by Russian sailors of the XVI-XVII centuries. compass ("womb") and maps. In the first two decades of the 17th century there was already a fairly regular water communication of the West Siberian cities with Mangazeya along the Ob, the Gulf of Ob and the Arctic Ocean (the so-called "Mangazeya way"). The same message was maintained between Arkhangelsk and Mangazeya. According to contemporaries, from Arkhangelsk to "Mangazeya, many trading and industrial people go at night with all sorts of German (i.e. foreign, Western European) goods and bread." It was extremely important to establish the fact that the Yenisei flows into the very “Cold Sea”, along which people from Western Europe swim to Arkhangelsk. This discovery belongs to the Russian merchant Kondraty Kurochkin, who was the first to explore the fairway of the lower Yenisei up to the mouth.
A serious blow to the "Mangazeya move" was inflicted by government prohibitions of 1619-1620. use the sea route to Mangazeya, aimed at preventing the penetration of foreigners there.
Moving east into the taiga and tundra of Eastern Siberia, the Russians discovered one of the largest rivers in Asia - the Lena. Among the northern expeditions to the Lena, the Penda campaign (until 1630) stands out. Starting his journey with 40 companions from Turukhansk, he went through the entire Lower Tunguska, crossed the portage and reached the Lena. Having descended along the Lena to the central regions of Yakutia, Penda then sailed along the same river in the opposite direction almost to the upper reaches. From here, passing through the Buryat steppes, he got to the Angara (Upper Tunguska), the first Russian sailed down the entire Angara, overcoming its famous rapids, after which he went to the Yenisei, and returned along the Yenisei to his starting point - Turukhansk. Penda and his companions made an unparalleled circular journey of several thousand kilometers through difficult terrain.
In 1633, brave seafarers Ivan Rebrov and Ilya Perfilyev went east from the mouth of the Lena at night, who reached the river by sea. Yana, and in 1636, the same Rebrov made a new sea voyage and reached the mouth of the Indigirka.
Almost simultaneously, detachments of Russian service and industrial people (Posnik Ivanova and others) moved along the mainland in a northeast direction, discovering the mentioned rivers from land. Posnik Ivanov "and his comrades" made their long and difficult journey through the mountain ranges on horseback.
An important discovery in northeast Asia ended in the early 40s of the 17th century. Expedition of Mikhail Stadukhin. The detachment of the Cossack foreman and merchant Stadukhin, in which Semyon Dezhnev was, descended on a koch along the Indigirka, in 1643 reached the Kov River by sea, that is, reached the mouth of the Kolyma River. Here the Nizhne-Kolyma winter hut was laid, from which, a few years later, Cossack Semyon Ivanovich Dezhnev and industrial man Fedot Alekseev (known by the surname Popov) set out on their famous voyage around the northeastern tip of the Asian mainland.
An outstanding event of this era was the discovery in 1648 of the strait between America and Asia, made by Dezhnev and Fedot Alekseev (Popov).
Back in 1647, Semyon Dezhnev tried to go by sea to the mysterious Anadyr River, which was rumored among the Russian people, but “the ice didn’t let the river through to Anadyr”, and he was forced to return back. But the determination to achieve the intended goal did not leave Dezhnev and his comrades. On June 20, 1648, a new expedition set off from the mouth of the Kolyma in search of the Anadyr River on seven horses. The expedition, led by Dezhnev and Alekseev, included about a hundred people. Soon after the start of the campaign, four kochas disappeared from sight and the participants in this extremely difficult ice voyage had no further news about them. The remaining three ships under the command of Dezhnev, Alekseev and Gerasim Ankudinov continued their journey to the northeast. Not far from the Chukchi nose (later named after Dezhnev), Koch Ankudinov died. The crews of the other two ships took on board the wrecked and stubbornly advanced across the Arctic Ocean. In September 1648, the Dezhnev-Alekseev expedition rounded the extreme northeastern tip of Asia - the Chukchi (or Bolshoy Kamenny) nose and passed through the strait separating America from Asia (later called the Bering Strait). In bad sea weather, Kochi Dezhnev and Alekseev lost sight of each other. Koch Dezhnev, on which there were 25 people, was carried along the waves for a long time and, finally, was thrown onto the shore of the sea, which was later called the Bering Sea. Semyon Dezhnev then moved with his comrades deep into the mainland and after a heroic 10-week transition, during which his participants walked through a completely unfamiliar country “cold and hungry, naked and barefoot”, he reached the goal of his expedition - the Anadyr River. So it was, an outstanding geographical discovery was made, which proved that America is separated by sea from Asia and is an isolated continent, and a sea route around Northeast Asia was opened.
There are reasons to believe that Kamchatka in the middle of the 17th century. was discovered by Russian people. According to later reports, Koch Fedot Alekseev and his companions reached Kamchatka, where the Russians lived for a long time among the Itelmens. The memory of this fact was preserved among the local population of Kamchatka, and the Russian scientist of the first half of the 18th century. Krasheninnikov reported about him in his work "Description of the Land of Kamchatka". There is an assumption that part of the ships of the Dezhnev expedition, which disappeared on the way to the Chukchi nose, reached Alaska, where they founded a Russian "settlement. In 1937, during earthworks on the Kenai Peninsula (Alaska), the remains of 300-year-old dwellings were discovered, which were classified by scientists as those built by Russian people.
In addition, Dezhnev and his companions are credited with discovering the Diomede Islands, where the Eskimos lived, and exploring the Anadyr River basin.
The discovery of Dezhnev - Alekseev was reflected on the geographical maps of Russia in the 17th century, which marked the free passage from the Kolyma to the Amur.
During 1643-1651. Russian detachments of V. Poyarkov and E. Khabarov made campaigns on the Amur, which delivered a number of valuable information about this river not studied by Europeans.
So, over a relatively short historical period (from the 80s of the 16th century to the 40s of the 17th century), Russian people traveled through the steppes, taiga, tundra through the whole of Siberia, sailed through the seas of the Arctic and made a number of outstanding geographical discoveries.
Consequences of geographical discoveries for Western Europe
During the XV-XVII centuries. thanks to the bold expeditions of navigators and travelers from many European countries, a large part of the earth's surface, seas and oceans washing it was discovered and explored; Many inland areas of America, Asia, Africa and Australia have fallen into the unknown. The most important sea routes were laid that connected the continents with each other. But at the same time, geographical discoveries laid the foundation for the monstrous enslavement and extermination of the peoples of open countries, which became the object of the most shameless robbery and exploitation for European profit-seekers: treachery, deceit, consumption of local residents were the main methods of the conquerors. This price was the creation in Western Europe of the conditions for the emergence of capitalist production.
The colonial system, which arose as a result of geographical discoveries, contributed to the accumulation in the hands of the bourgeoisie in Europe of large amounts of money necessary for the organization of large-scale capitalist production, and also published a market for its products, thus being one of the levers of the process of so-called primitive accumulation. With the establishment of the colonial system, the world market began to take shape, which served as a powerful impetus to the emergence and development of capitalist relations in Western Europe. “The colonies,” writes Marx, “provided a market for rapidly emerging manufactories, and the monopoly possession of this market ensured increased accumulation. Treasures obtained outside of Europe through robbery, enslavement of the natives, murders flowed into the metropolis and then turned into capital.
The so-called price revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries also contributed to the rise of the European bourgeoisie. It was caused by the importation from America to Europe of a large amount of gold and silver mined by the cheap labor of serfs and slaves. In the middle of the XVI century. in the colonies, gold and silver were mined 5 times more than they were mined in Europe before the conquest of America, and the total number of voiced coins circulating in European countries increased more than 4 times over the 16th century. This influx of cheap gold and silver into Europe led to a sharp decrease in the purchasing power of money and to a strong increase in prices (2-3 times or more) for all goods, both agricultural and industrial. In the city, everyone suffered from this rise in prices, he received wages, and the bourgeoisie enriched itself. In the countryside, the main benefit was received by those nobles who started a new type of economy, using hired labor and selling products to the market at high prices, and wealthy peasants, who also sold a significant part of agricultural products. In addition, landowners who leased land on a short-term lease benefited. Finally, the long-term tenants, the peasant holders, who paid the traditional fixed cash rent, benefited. leased out credential terms on the condition of receiving a fixed annuity in cash.
Where it seemed possible, the feudal lords compensated for their losses by intensifying their offensive against the peasants, by increasing the monetary rent, by switching from cash quitrent to natural duties, or by driving the peasants off the land. The "price revolution" also affected the poorest peasants, forced to partly live by selling their labor power, and agricultural wage workers. Marx writes about the “revolution of prices”: “The consequence of the increase in the means of exchange was, on the one hand, the depreciation wages and land rent, and on the other hand, the growth of industrial profits. In other words: to the extent that the class of landowners and the class of working people, the feudal lords and the people, have declined, the class of capitalists, the bourgeoisie, has risen to the same extent. K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., vol. 4, p. 154.) Thus, the "price revolution" was also one of the factors contributing to the development of capitalism in Western Europe.
As a result of the great geographical discoveries, Europe's ties with the countries of Africa, South and East Asia increased, and relations with America were established for the first time. Trade has become global. The center of economic life moved from the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, the countries of Southern Europe fell into decline, primarily the Italian cities through which Europe had previously connected with the East, new centers of trade rose up: Lisbon - in Portugal, Seville - in Spain, Antwerp - in the Netherlands. Antwerp became the richest city in Europe, colonial goods, especially spices, were traded on a large scale, large-scale international trade and credit operations were carried out, which was facilitated by the fact that, unlike other cities, complete freedom of trade and credit transactions was established in Antwerp. In 1531, a special building was built in Antwerp for the implementation of trade and financial transactions - the stock exchange with a characteristic inscription on the pediment: "For the needs of merchants of all nations and languages." Concluding a trade deal on the stock exchange, the buyer examined only samples of goods. The debt obligations of the bill were quoted on the stock exchange as securities; appeared the new kind profit stock exchange speculation.
During travels, expeditions sometimes discover new, previously unknown geographical objects - mountain ranges, peaks, rivers, glaciers, islands, bays, straits, sea currents, deep depressions or elevations on the seabed, etc. These are geographical discoveries.
In ancient times and the Middle Ages, geographical discoveries were usually made by the peoples of the most economically developed countries. Such countries included Ancient Egypt, Phoenicia, later - Portugal, Spain, Holland, England, France. In the XVII-XIX centuries. many major geographical discoveries were made by Russian explorers in Siberia and the Far East, navigators in the Pacific Ocean, in the Arctic and Antarctic.
Discoveries of particular importance were made in the 15th-18th centuries, when feudalism was replaced by a new social formation - capitalism. At this time, America was discovered, the sea route around Africa to India and Indochina, Australia, the strait separating Asia and the North. America (Bering), many islands in the Pacific Ocean, the northern coast of Siberia, sea currents in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It was the era of the great geographical discoveries.
Geographical discoveries have always been made under the influence of economic factors, in pursuit of unknown lands, new markets. In these centuries, powerful maritime capitalist powers were formed, enriched by seizing discovered lands, enslaving and plundering the local population. The era of the great geographical discoveries in the economic sense is called the era of the primitive accumulation of capital.
The actual course of geographical discoveries in its most important stages developed in the following sequence.
In the Old World (Europe, Africa, Asia), many discoveries were made in ancient times by the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks (for example, during the military campaigns of Alexander the Great in Central Asia and India). On the basis of the information accumulated then, the ancient Greek scientist Claudius Ptolemy in the II century. compiled a map of the world that covered the entire Old World, though far from accurate.
A significant contribution to the geographical discoveries on the east coast of Africa and in South and Central Asia was made by Arab travelers and merchants of the 8th-14th centuries.
In search of sea routes to India in the 15th century. Portuguese navigators bypassed Africa from the south, opening the entire western and southern coast of the mainland.
Having embarked on a voyage in search of a route to India across the Atlantic Ocean, the Spanish expedition of Christopher Columbus in 1492 reached the Bahamas, the Greater and Lesser Antilles, initiating the discoveries of the Spanish conquerors.
In 1519–1522 the Spanish expedition of Ferdinand Magellan and El Cano for the first time bypassed the Earth from east to west, opened the Pacific Ocean for Europeans (it was known to the local residents of Indo-China and South America from ancient times).
Great discoveries in the Arctic were made by Russian and foreign sailors in the 15th-17th centuries. The British explored the coast of Greenland from 1576 to 1631 and discovered Baffin Island. Russian sailors in the XVI century. already hunted a sea animal near Novaya Zemlya, at the beginning of the 17th century. passed along the northern coast of Siberia, discovered the Yamal, Taimyr, Chukotsky peninsulas. S. Dezhnev in 1648 passed through the Bering Strait from the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.
in the southern hemisphere in the seventeenth century. the Dutchman A. Tasman discovered the island of Tasmania, and in the 18th century. Englishman J. Cook - New Zealand and the east coast of Australia. Cook's travels laid the foundation for knowledge about the distribution of water and land on Earth, completing the discovery of the Pacific Ocean.
In the XVIII century. and the beginning of the 19th century. expeditions have already been organized for special scientific purposes.
By the beginning of the XIX century. only the Arctic and Antarctic remained unexplored. The largest of the expeditions in the XVIII century. was supplied by the Russian government. These are the First (1725–1728) and Second (1733–1743) Kamchatka expeditions, when the northern tip of Asia was discovered - Cape Chelyuskin and many other objects in the North. In this expedition, V. Bering and A. I. Chirikov discovered Northwestern America and the Aleutian Islands. Many islands in the Pacific Ocean were discovered by Russian round-the-world expeditions, starting from swimming in 1803-1807. I. F. Kruzenshtern and Yu. F. Lisyansky. The last continent, Antarctica, was discovered in 1820 by F. F. Bellingshausen and M. P. Lazarev.
In the 19th century "white spots" disappeared from the interior of the continents, especially Asia. The expeditions of P. P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky and especially Ya. M. Przhevalsky for the first time studied in detail vast regions of Central Asia and northern Tibet, almost unknown until that time.
D. Livingston and R. Stanley traveled in Africa.
The Arctic and Antarctic remained unexplored. IN late XIX in. new islands and archipelagos were discovered in the Arctic, and separate sections of the coast in Antarctica. The American R. Piri reached the North Pole in 1909, and the Norwegian R. Amundsen reached the South Pole in 1911. In the XX century. The most significant territorial discoveries have been made in Antarctica, and maps of its overglacial and underglacial relief have been created.
The study of Antarctica with the help of aircraft in 1928–1930. conducted by the American J. Wilkins, then the Englishman L. Ellsworth. In 1928–1930 and in subsequent years, an American expedition led by R. Byrd worked in the Antarctic.
Large Soviet complex expeditions began to study Antarctica in connection with the holding in 1957-1959. International Geophysical Year. At the same time, a special Soviet scientific station was established - "Mirny", the first inland station at an altitude of 2700 m - "Pionerskaya", then - "Vostok", "Komsomolskaya" and others.
The scale of the work of the expeditions was expanding. The structure and nature of the ice cover, the temperature regime, the structure and composition of the atmosphere, and the movement of air masses were studied. But the most important discoveries were made by Soviet scientists while surveying the coastline of the mainland. The bizarre outlines of more than 200 previously unknown islands, bays, capes and mountain ranges appeared on the map.
In our time, significant territorial discoveries on land are impossible. The search is in the oceans. In recent years, research has been carried out so intensively, and even with the use of the latest technology, that much has already been discovered and mapped, which have been published in the form of an atlas of the World Ocean and individual oceans.
Now there are few "white spots" left at the bottom of the oceans, huge deep-water plains and trenches, vast mountain systems are open.
Does all this mean that geographical discoveries are impossible in our time, that “everything is already open”? Far from it. And they are still possible in many areas, especially the World Ocean, in the polar regions, in the highlands. But in our time, the very meaning of the concept of “geographical discovery” has changed in many ways. Geographical science now sets itself the task of identifying the interrelations in nature and economy, establishing geographical laws and regularities (see Geography).
Mankind gradually mastered the surface globe. This cost him great sacrifices, but neither the harsh nature, nor the warlike tribes, nor the diseases could no longer reverse this process.
Great Silk Road
Until the II century BC. the path from Europe to Asia ended at the spurs of the Tien Shan, which hid the civilization of China. Everything changed with the visit of the Chinese Ambassador Zhang Qian to Central Asia, who was amazed at the unprecedented wealth of these lands in his country.
Gradually, small segments of trade roads were united into a gigantic highway 12,000 kilometers long, linking East and West. However, the Great Silk Road should not be considered as a single route.
When approaching Dunhua, a city on the outskirts of the Great Wall of China, the path forked, bordering the Taklamakan desert from the north and south. The northern road went to the valley of the Ili River, and the southern one led to Bactria (northern Afghanistan). Here the Southern Road again diverged into two directions: one went to India, the other to the West - to Iraq and Syria.
The Great Silk Road is not a journey of people, but of goods that, before reaching the buyer, passed through many hands. Silk, due to its lightness, high cost and huge demand, was an ideal commodity for transportation over long distances. At the end point of the Silk Road - Rome - the price of this fabric was three times higher than the cost of gold.
Empires appeared and disappeared, establishing their control over the transit of rich caravans, but the arteries of the Great Silk Road continued to feed the markets of the largest continent.
In the middle of the 14th century, along with goods, death flowed along the Great Silk Road. An epidemic of bubonic plague from the depths of the Gobi, covering the road with corpses, reached Europe by caravan routes.
The Cambridge Encyclopedia sums up a terrible result: about 60 million people, or 25% of the world's population - such is the number of victims of a deadly epidemic, such is the price of trade relations between Europe and Asia.
Greenland
The most remarkable thing in this story is that the largest island on the planet was discovered by a fugitive criminal - Eirik, nicknamed Red. The Norwegian Viking was tired of the Icelandic exile and in 982 he sailed with his fellow tribesmen to the west. Eirik called the discovered land Greenland (“Green Country”), not at all from the riot of vegetation: he believed that if the island had a good name, then people would be drawn there.
Eirik managed to persuade some of the Icelanders to move to the "Green Country". In 985, a flotilla of 25 ships set off for the coast of Greenland. Entire families sailed, with belongings, utensils and even cattle.
It was the triumph of Red Eirik: from a hunted outcast, he turned into the owner of vast possessions.
The first settlers of Greenland found abandoned dwellings on its east coast. Most likely, they belonged to the indigenous population of the island - the ancestors of the modern Inuit, who, for unknown reasons, left their habitats.
The arrangement of life was not easy for the Vikings. In order to have the necessary minimum, they had to enter into trade relations with Europe: bread and building materials were delivered to the colonists from the continent, and whalebone and skins of marine animals were sent in return.
However, by the end of the 14th century, the colonies fell into decay - almost all of their population died out. Perhaps the reason for this was the Little Ice Age, which created unbearable conditions for life on the island.
Greenland eventually became a springboard for the further advance of the Vikings to the west. Already after the death of Eirik the Red, his sons dared to sail to the ends of the Earth and reached the shores of America.
The last written record of the Greenland Vikings dates back to 1408. It tells about a wedding in the Hwalsi church. The ruins of this church have survived to this day as a monument to the dedication of the first European conquerors of the impregnable North.
West coast of Africa
From the beginning of the 15th century, Portuguese navigators intensified their exploration of the western coast of Africa. In the midst of the Reconquista, the kings of Portugal needed new sources of fame and fortune.
But there was another reason - Turkish dominance in the Eastern Mediterranean, which blocked the traditional merchant routes to Asia.
To understand the complexity and significance of the expeditions undertaken by the Portuguese along the West African coast, it should be remembered that not a single European had crossed the equator by that time.
Moreover, Europe continued to live with the ideas of Ptolemaic geography, according to which the inhabited world ended in an ocean washing the western outskirts of Africa. In 1482, Diogo Can overcame the equator and reached the mouth of the Congo River, refuting Ptolemy's hypothesis about the impassability of the tropics along the way.
On the coast of the Gulf of Guinea, Portuguese sailors found what they set off on such a long journey for - large deposits of gold. The news of the found gold spread quickly and already Spanish, British, Dutch businessmen are sailing here to organize mines in the hope of making fabulous profits.
In 1442 black men and women were brought to Lisbon. This was the delivery of the first batch of African slaves. From now on, already black gold» becomes the most popular product first in the European and later in the American market.
At the same time, a new phenomenon for mankind arises in the Cape Verde Islands (Cape Verde) - a mixture of Europeans and Africans. This is how Creoles appeared. According to historians, this is due to a banal reason - the almost complete absence of white women in the Portuguese colonies.
America
Instead of answering many questions, the discovery of America seems to have puzzled Europeans even more: the inhabited world here did not end, but continued further west into the frightening unknown. Nevertheless, the pioneers too self-confidently began to master the alien environment, irrevocably violating the natural and cultural balance of both continents.
Thanks to the "Columbian Exchange" (Alfred Crosby's term), animals, cultivated plants, technologies and diseases migrated to the west in a much larger volume, radically changing the face of the New World. One of the diseases - malaria - was destined to affect the geopolitical map of North America.
Malaria was brought to the New World along with African slaves, but since the latter had immunity to infection, it was mainly Europeans who died from the disease. The distribution zone of disease carriers - malarial mosquitoes - is humid tropics. As a result, it formed a conditional geographical line, above which mosquitoes did not breed.
To the south of this line were the slave-owning states, and to the north the territories free from slaves, where European settlers mainly went. Today, this line almost coincides with the so-called Mason-Dixon line, which separates the state of Pennsylvania from the states of West Virginia and Maryland located to the south.
The development of the vast territories of the New World allowed Europe to cope with the problem of overpopulation that threatened it in the future. However, the expansion of Europeans on both American continents led to the largest humanitarian and demographic catastrophe in the history of mankind.
The Indian Reservation Removal Act, which appeared in the United States in 1867, was only a formal step towards the preservation of the natives. Indians were often sent to places completely unsuitable for farming. A number of Indian organizations claim that from 1500 to 1900 the indigenous population of America decreased from 15 million to 237 thousand people.
Antarctica
Antarctica, like an alluring and at the same time repulsive forbidden fruit, slowly and gradually let sailors close to it. Dirk Geeritz reaches 64°S in 1559. latitude, James Cook in 1773 - 67 ° 5′ S. sh. Trapped among icebergs near Tierra del Fuego, the English navigator declares that there is no Southern Continent.
For almost half a century, Cook's skepticism discouraged the search for a sixth continent. But in 1820, Bellingshausen and Lazarev managed to reach 69°21′ S. sh. - now such a treasured land is at a distance of a cannon shot. Only the Norwegian expedition of Carsten Borchgrevink in 1895 made the first recorded landing on the Southern Continent.
According to the "Treaty on Antarctica", signed in 1959, only 7 states declare claims to certain sectors of the continent - Great Britain, Norway, France, Chile, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand. But everyone's territorial appetites are different.
If France claims a narrow strip of land - Adélie Land, which occupies 432,000 km², then Australia counts on almost half the area of Antarctica. At the same time, Chile, New Zealand, Great Britain and Argentina dispute almost the same territory.
Each of the countries is trying to look into the future of the southern mainland. The British, for example, seriously intend to develop the Antarctic shelf rich in hydrocarbons. It is possible that Antarctica may be populated in the near future. Already today, due to global warming, tundra is beginning to form on the most distant parts of the land from the pole, and in 100 years, scientists predict the appearance of trees here.
Geographic discoveries
People traveled and made discoveries at all times, but during the history of mankind there was a period when the number of travelers and their discoveries increased dramatically - the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries.
The great geographical discoveries are a period in the history of mankind that began in the 15th century and lasted until the 17th century, during which new lands and sea routes were discovered. Thanks to the brave expeditions of navigators and travelers from many countries, a large part of the earth's surface, seas and oceans washing it was discovered and explored. The most important sea routes were laid that connected the continents with each other.
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The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that the economic development of our country should be based on a preliminary analysis of historical information, that is, it is necessary to realize the importance of the territories that were conquered by our ancestors.
The purpose of this work is to consider the expeditions and geographical discoveries of domestic researchers and scientists. As part of achieving this goal, the following tasks were set:
Briefly describe the economic and political situation of the country in a certain period of time;
· indicate the names of Russian travelers and discoverers of the era of great geographical discoveries;
· describe the discoveries of new lands and routes.
Places of development. pioneers
At the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century, the formation of the Russian state was completed, which developed along with world civilization. It was the time of the Great Geographical Discoveries (America was discovered in 1493), the beginning of the era of capitalism in European countries (the first in Europe began in the Netherlands bourgeois revolution 1566-1609). The great geographical discoveries are a period in the history of mankind that began in the 15th century and lasted until the 17th century, during which Europeans discovered new lands and sea routes to Africa, America, Asia and Oceania in search of new trading partners and sources of goods that were in great demand in Europe. Historians usually relate the "Great Discoveries" to the pioneering long-distance sea voyages of Portuguese and Spanish travelers in search of alternative trade routes to the "India" for gold, silver and spices. But the development of the Russian state took place in rather peculiar conditions.
The Russian people contributed to the great geographical discoveries of the 16th - the first half of the 17th centuries. significant contribution. Russian travelers and navigators made a number of discoveries (mainly in the northeast of Asia) that enriched world science. The reason for the increased attention of Russians to geographical discoveries was the further development of commodity-money relations in the country and the associated process of folding the all-Russian market, as well as the gradual inclusion of Russia in the world market. During this period, two main directions were clearly outlined: northeast (Siberia and the Far East) and southeast (Central Asia, Mongolia, China), along which Russian travelers and sailors moved. Of great educational importance for contemporaries were the trade and diplomatic trips of Russian people in the 16th-17th centuries. to the countries of the East, a survey of the shortest land routes for communication with the states of Central and Central Asia and with China.
In the middle of the 16th century, the Moscow kingdom conquered the Kazan and Astrakhan Tatar khanates, thus annexing the Volga region to its possessions and opening the way to the Ural Mountains. The colonization of new eastern lands and the further advance of Russia to the east were directly organized by the wealthy merchants Stroganovs. Tsar Ivan the Terrible granted huge possessions in the Urals and tax privileges to Anikey Stroganov, who organized a large-scale resettlement of people to these lands. The Stroganovs developed Agriculture, hunting, salt production, fishing and mining in the Urals, and also established trade relations with the Siberian peoples. There was a process of development of new territories in Siberia (from the 1580s to 1640s), the Volga region, the Wild Field (on the rivers Dnieper, Don, Middle and Lower Volga, Yaik).
The great geographical discoveries contributed to the transition from the Middle Ages to the New Age.
The conquest of Siberia by Ermak Timofeevich
Of great importance in the history of geographical discoveries of this era was the exploration of the vast expanses of the north and northeast of Asia from the Ural Range to the coast of the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, i.e. throughout Siberia.
The process of conquering Siberia included the gradual advance of the Russian Cossacks and service people to the East until they reached the Pacific Ocean and secured themselves in Kamchatka. The ways of movement of the Cossacks were predominantly water. Getting acquainted with the river systems, they went by dry route only in the places of the watershed, where, having crossed the ridge and having arranged new boats, they descended along the tributaries of new rivers. Upon arrival in the area occupied by some tribe of natives, the Cossacks entered into peace negotiations with them with a proposal to submit to the White Tsar and pay yasak, but these negotiations did not always lead to successful results, and then the matter was decided by arms.
The annexation of Siberia was started in 1581 by a campaign of a detachment of the Cossack ataman Ermak Timofeevich. His detachment, consisting of 840 people, carried away by rumors about the untold riches of the Siberian Khanate, was equipped at the expense of large landowners and salt producers of the Urals Stroganovs.
On September 1, 1581, the detachment plunged onto plows and climbed along the tributaries of the Kama to the Tagil Pass in the Ural Mountains. With an ax in their hands, the Cossacks made their own way, cleared the rubble, felled the trees, cut the clearing. They did not have the time and energy to level the rocky path, as a result of which they could not drag ships along the ground using rollers. According to the participants of the campaign, they dragged the ships uphill "on themselves", in other words, on their hands. On the pass, the Cossacks built an earthen fortification - Kokuy-gorodok, where they wintered until spring.
The first skirmish between the Cossacks and the Siberian Tatars took place in the area of the modern city of Turinsk (Sverdlovsk region), where the soldiers of Prince Yepanchi fired at Yermak's plows with bows. Here Yermak, with the help of squeakers and cannons, dispersed the cavalry of Murza Epanchi. Then the Cossacks occupied the town of Chingi-tura (Tyumen region) without a fight. Many treasures were taken from the site of modern Tyumen: silver, gold and precious Siberian furs.
November 8, 1582 n.st. Ataman Ermak Timofeevich occupied Kashlyk, the then capital of the Siberian Khanate. Four days later, the Khanty from the river. Demyanka (Uvatsky district), brought furs and food supplies, mainly fish, as a gift to the conquerors. Yermak greeted them with "kindness and greetings" and released them "with honor." The local Tatars, who had previously fled from the Russians, reached out for the Khanty with gifts. Yermak received them just as kindly, allowed them to return to their villages and promised to protect them from enemies, primarily from Kuchum. Then the Khanty from the left-bank regions began to appear with furs and food - from the rivers Konda and Tavda. Yermak imposed an annual obligatory tax on all those who came to him - yasak.
At the end of 1582, Yermak sent an embassy to Moscow, headed by his faithful assistant Ivan Koltso, to inform the tsar of the defeat of Kuchum. Tsar Ivan IV gave the Cossack delegation of Ivan Koltso a gracious welcome, generously endowed the envoys - among the gifts was chain mail of excellent workmanship - and sent them back to Yermak.
In the winter of 1584-1585, the temperature in the vicinity of Kashlyk dropped to -47 °, icy northern winds began to blow. Deep snow made it impossible to hunt in the taiga forests. In the hungry winter time, wolves gathered in large packs and appeared near human dwellings. Streltsy did not survive the Siberian winter. They died without exception, without taking part in the war with Kuchum. Semyon Bolkhovskoy himself, who was appointed the first governor of Siberia, also died. After a hungry winter, the number of Yermak's detachment was catastrophically reduced. To save the surviving people, Yermak tried to avoid clashes with the Tatars.
On the night of August 6, 1585, Yermak died along with a small detachment at the mouth of the Vagai. Only one Cossack managed to escape, who brought the sad news to Kashlyk. The Cossacks and service people who remained in Kashlyk gathered a circle, on which they decided not to spend the winter in Siberia.
At the end of September 1585, 100 servicemen arrived in Kashlyk under the command of Ivan Mansurov, sent to help Yermak. They did not find anyone in Qashlyk. When trying to return from Siberia along the path of their predecessors - down the Ob and further "through the Stone" - the service people were forced, because of the "freezing of ice", to put "hail over the Ob against the mouth of the river" Irtysh and "winter gray hair" in it. Having withstood the siege "from many Ostyaks", the people of Ivan Mansurov returned from Siberia in the summer of 1586.
The third detachment, which arrived in the spring of 1586 and consisted of 300 people under the leadership of the voivode Vasily Sukin and Ivan Myasnoy, brought with them “a written head of Danila Chulkov” “to start business” on the spot. The expedition, judging by its results, was carefully prepared and equipped. To establish the power of the Russian government in Siberia, she had to establish the first Siberian government prison and the Russian city of Tyumen.
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China research. The first voyages of Russian sailors
Distant China aroused close attention among the Russian people. Back in 1525, while in Rome, the Russian ambassador Dmitry Gerasimov informed the writer Pavel Jovius that it was possible to travel from Europe to China by water through the northern seas. Thus, Gerasimov expressed a bold idea about the development of the Northern Route from Europe to Asia. Thanks to Jovius, who published a special book on Muscovy and Gerasimov's embassy, this idea became widely known in Western Europe and was received with lively interest. It is possible that the organization of the expeditions of Willoughby and Barents was caused by the messages of the Russian ambassador. In any case, the search for the Northern Sea Route to the east was already in the middle of the 16th century. led to the establishment of direct maritime links between Western Europe and Russia.
Even in the middle of the XVI century. Mention is made of the voyages of Russian polar sailors from the European part of the country to the Gulf of Ob and to the mouth of the Yenisei. They moved along the coast of the Arctic Ocean on small keeled sailing ships - koches, well adapted to sailing in the ice of the Arctic due to the egg-shaped hull, which reduced the danger of ice compression.
The 16th century is known for the reign of the Russian Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible. Special attention I would like to draw on the oprichnina policy of the then ruler. The state terror agitated the population, "gladness and pestilence" reigned in the country, peasants fled from the ruined landowners and "draged between the yard." It can be assumed that it was the runaway peasants who became the "discoverers" of new lands, and only later more status individuals made "discoveries" at the state level.
Most likely, in the 16th century, Russian travels, which resulted in geographical discoveries, experienced a period of “birth”. The first attempts to travel to other countries through new lands were made. One of the most important and promising was the conquest of Siberia by Yermak. But our ancestors did not stop there, they tried their hand at traveling on the water. No great discoveries have yet been made in this industry, but already in the 17th century certain successes were made.
There were a sufficient number of factors stimulating people to further develop new lands, the main of which was the lack of access to the seas.
Major travel destinations in the 17th century
"Mangazeya move". Campaign of Penda
Already in the first two decades of the 17th century, there was a fairly regular water communication between the West Siberian cities and Mangazeya along the Ob, the Gulf of Ob and the Arctic Ocean (the so-called "Mangazeya way"). The same message was maintained between Arkhangelsk and Mangazeya. According to contemporaries, "from Arkhangelsk to Mangazeya, many merchants and industrial people with all sorts of German (i.e. foreign, Western European) goods and bread go for years." It was extremely important to establish the fact that the Yenisei flows into the very “Cold Sea”, along which people from Western Europe swim to Arkhangelsk. This discovery belongs to the Russian merchant Kondraty Kurochkin, who was the first to explore the fairway of the lower Yenisei up to the mouth.
A serious blow to the "Mangazeya move" was inflicted by government prohibitions of 1619-1620. use the sea route to Mangazeya, aimed at preventing the penetration of foreigners there.
Moving east into the taiga and tundra of Eastern Siberia, the Russians discovered one of the largest rivers in Asia - the Lena. Among the northern expeditions to the Lena, the Penda campaign (until 1630) stands out. Starting his journey with 40 companions from Turukhansk, he went through the entire Lower Tunguska, crossed the portage and reached the Lena. Having descended along the Lena to the central regions of Yakutia, Penda then sailed along the same river in the opposite direction almost to the upper reaches. From here, passing through the Buryat steppes, he got to the Angara (Upper Tunguska), the first Russian sailed down the entire Angara, overcoming its famous rapids, after which he went to the Yenisei, and returned along the Yenisei to the starting point - Turu-khansk. Penda and his companions made an unparalleled circular journey of several thousand kilometers through difficult terrain.
Mission Petlin
The first reliable evidence of a journey to China is information about the embassy of the Cossack Ivan Petlin in 1618-1619. (Mission Petlin). The journey was made on the initiative of the Tobolsk voivode, Prince I. S. Kurakin. The mission of 12 people was headed by Tomsk Cossacks teacher Ivan Petlin (who spoke several languages) and A. Madov. The mission was instructed to describe new routes to China, collect information about it and neighboring countries, and also establish the sources of the Ob River. In China, Petlin was supposed to announce where the mission came from and to find out the possibility of establishing further relations with China.
Leaving Tomsk on May 9, 1618, together with the ambassadors of the Mongolian "Altyn-Tsar", the mission climbed the Tom valley, crossed Mountain Shoria, crossed the Abakan Range, the Western Sayan and penetrated into Tuva. Then she crossed the upper reaches of the Kemchik (the Yenisei basin), crossed several ridges and went to the mountain low-salt lake Uureg-Nuur. Turning east and descending into the steppe, three weeks after leaving Tomsk, the mission arrived at the headquarters of the Mongol Khan near the drainless Lake Usap.
From here, the travelers moved to the southeast, crossed the Khan-Khuhei - the northwestern spur of the Khangai Range - and Khangai itself - and walked along its southern slopes for about 800 km. At the bend of the Kerulen River, we turned southeast and crossed the Gobi Desert. Short of Kalgan, Petlin saw the Great Wall of China for the first time.
At the end of August, the mission reached Beijing, where it negotiated with representatives of the Ming government.
Due to the lack of gifts, Petlin was not received by Emperor Zhu Yijun, but received his official letter addressed to the Russian Tsar with permission for the Russians to send embassies again and trade in China; as for diplomatic relations, it was proposed to conduct them by correspondence. The diploma remained untranslated for decades, until Spafariy (a Russian diplomat and scientist; known for his scientific works and embassy to China) began to study it, preparing for his embassy. The common expression “Chinese letter” refers to this particular document, which was in the embassy order, and the content of which remained a mystery.
Returning to his homeland, Ivan Petlin presented in Moscow "a drawing and painting about the Chinese region." His mission was of great importance, and the trip report - "Painting to the Chinese state and Lobinsky, and other states, residential and nomadic, and uluses, and the great Ob, and rivers and roads" - became the most valuable, most full description China, containing information about the overland route from Europe to China through Siberia and Mongolia. Already in the first half of the 17th century, "Painting" was translated into all European languages. The information collected as a result of Petlin's trip about the routes to China, about the natural resources and economy of Mongolia and China contributed to the expansion of the geographical horizons of contemporaries.
Russian discoveries in the Pacific. Explorers of Siberia
The conquest of Siberia was accompanied by a very rapid expansion of the geographical outlook. Less than 60 years have passed since the campaign of Yermak (1581-1584), as the Russians crossed the entire continent of Asia from the Ural Mountains to the eastern limits of this part of the world: in 1639, the Russians first appeared on the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
Campaign of Moskvitin (1639-1642)
Ataman Dmitry Kopylov, sent from Tomsk to Lena, founded in 1637 at the confluence of Map and Aldan a winter hut. In 1639 he sent the Cossack Ivan Moskvitin. They crossed the ridge and went to the Sea of Okhotsk at the mouth of the river. Uli, west of the current Okhotsk. In the coming years, people from the Moskvitin detachment reconnoitered the coast of the Sea of \u200b\u200bOkhotsk to the east to the Tauiskaya Bay, and to the south along the river. Oody. From the mouth of the Cossacks went further east, towards the mouth of the Amur. He returned to Yakutsk in 1642.
Dezhnev's campaign (1648)
The Yakut Cossack, a native of Ustyug, Semyon Dezhnev, passed through the Bering Strait for the first time. On June 20, 1648, he left the mouth of the Kolyma to the east. In September, the explorer rounded Bolshoi Kamenny Nose - now Cape Dezhnev - where he saw the Eskimos. Against the cape he saw two islands. Here we have in mind the islands of Diomede or Gvozdev lying in the Bering Strait, on which then, as now, the Eskimos lived. Then storms began, which carried Dezhnev's boats across the sea until, after October 1, they were thrown south of the mouth of the Anadyr; from the crash site to this river had to walk 10 weeks. In the summer of the following year, Dezhnev built a winter hut on the middle course of the Anadyr - later the Anadyr prison.
"Parcels" Remezov
Semyon Ulyanovich Remezov - cartographer, historian and ethnographer, can rightly be considered the first explorer of the Trans-Urals. Traveling on behalf of the Tobolsk authorities to collect dues in the central part West Siberian Plain and some other areas of the eastern slope of the Urals, i.e. being in his words in "parcels", he created a scheme for the study of these territories, which was later implemented in an expanded form during the work of the Academic detachments of the Great northern expedition. At first, the description of the places visited was a secondary matter for Remezov. But since 1696, when he spent half a year as part of a military detachment (April-September) in the waterless and impenetrable stone steppe beyond the river. Ishim, this occupation has become the main one. In the winter of 1696-1697. with two assistants, he carried out a survey of the Tobol basin. He drew the main river from the mouth to the top, photographed its large tributaries - the Tura, Tavda, Iset and a number of rivers flowing into them, including the Miass and Pyshma.
The cartographic image was also received by the river. Irtysh from the confluence of the Ob to the mouth of the river. Tara and its three tributaries. In 1701, Remezov completed the Drawing Book of Siberia. She played a huge role not only in the history of Russian, but also in world cartography.
Discovery of Kamchatka by Atlasov
Information about Kamchatka was first obtained in the middle of the 17th century, through the Koryaks. But the honor of discovery and geographical description belongs to Vladimir Atlasov.
In 1696, Luka Morozko was sent from Anadyrsk to the Koryaks on the Opuka River (Opuka flows into the Berengovo Sea). He penetrated much further south, namely to the river. Tigil. At the beginning of 1697, Atlasov left Anadyrsk. From the mouth of the Penzhina, two weeks went on reindeer along the western coast of Kamchatka, and then turned east, to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, to the Koryaks - the Olyutors, who sit along the river. Olyutor. In February 1697, at Olyutor, Atlasov divided his detachment into two parts: the first went south along the eastern bank of Kamchatka, and the second part went with him to the western bank, to the river. Palan (flows into the Sea of Okhotsk), from here to the mouth of the river. Tigil, and finally, on the river. Kamchatka, where he arrived on July 18, 1697. Here they first met the Kamchadals. From here, Atlasov walked south along the western coast of Kamchatka and reached the river. Golygina, where the Kurils lived. From the mouth of this river he saw the islands, meaning the northernmost of Kuril Islands. With Golygina Atlasov across the river. Ichu returned to Anadyrsk, where he arrived on July 2, 1699. This is how Kamchatka was discovered. Atlasov made its geographical description.
Hiking E.P. Khabarova and I.V. Poryakova on Amur
Erofey Pavlovich Khabarov continued the work begun by another explorer, V. D. Poyarkov. Khabarov was from Veliky Ustyug (according to other sources, from Solvychegodsk). Life was hard at home, and the debts forced Khabarov to go to the distant lands of Siberia. In 1632 he arrived at Lena. For several years he was engaged in fur trade, and in 1641 he settled on empty land at the mouth of the river. Kirenga - the right tributary of the Lena. Here he started arable land, built a mill and a salt pan. But the Yakut governor P. Golovin took away from Khabarov both arable land and a salt pan and transferred them to the treasury, and put Khabarov himself in prison. Only in 1645 Khabarov was released from prison "a goal like a falcon." In 1649, he arrived in the Ilimsk jail, where the Yakut governor stopped for the winter. Here Khabarov learned about the expedition of V. D. Poyarkov and asked permission to organize his expedition to Dauria, to which he received consent.
In 1649, Khabarov with a detachment climbed up the Lena and Olekma to the mouth of the river. Tungir. In the spring of 1650 they reached the river. Urki, a tributary of the Amur, and fell into the possession of the Daurian prince Lavkai. The cities of the Daurs turned out to be abandoned by people. Each city had hundreds of houses, and each house - for 50 or more people. The houses were bright, with wide windows covered with oiled paper. Rich grain reserves were stored in the pits. Prince Lavkai himself was found near the walls of the third city, which was just as empty. It turned out that the Daurs, having heard about the detachment, were frightened and fled. From the stories of the Daurs, the Cossacks learned that on the other side of the Amur lies a country richer than Dauria and that the Daurs pay tribute to the Manchu prince Bogda. And that prince had large ships with goods sailing along the rivers, and he has an army with cannons and squeakers.
Khabarov understood that the forces of his detachment were small and he could not take possession of the region where the population was hostile. Leaving about 50 Cossacks in the town of Lavkaya, in May 1650 Khabarov returned to Yakutsk for help. A report on the campaign and a drawing of Dauria were sent to Moscow. And Khabarov began to collect a new detachment for a campaign in Dauria. In the autumn of 1650, he returned to the Amur and found the abandoned Cossacks near the fortified town of Albazin. The prince of this city refused to pay yasak, and the Cossacks tried to take the city by storm. With the help of Khabarov's detachment, who came to the rescue, the Daurs were defeated. The Cossacks captured many prisoners and large booty.
Great geographical discoveries- an era in the history of the world that began in the 15th century and lasted until the 17th century.
During era of the great geographical discoveries Europeans discovered new lands and sea routes to Africa, America, Asia and Oceania in search of new trading partners and sources of goods that were in great demand in Europe.
Historians usually relate the "Great Discoveries" to the pioneering long-distance sea voyages of Portuguese and Spanish travelers in search of alternative trade routes to the "India" for gold, silver and spices.
Sasha Mitrahovich 22.12.2017 08:07
The main reasons for the great geographical discoveries
- Depletion of precious metals resources in Europe; overpopulation in the Mediterranean
- With the fall of Constantinople in the 15th century. the overland routes by which oriental goods (spices, fabrics, jewelry) got to Europe were captured by the Ottoman Turks. They blocked the former trade routes of Europeans with the East. This necessitated the search for a sea route to India.
- Scientific and technical progress in Europe (navigation, weapons, astronomy, printing, cartography, etc.)
- The desire for wealth and fame.
- In open lands, Europeans founded colonies, which became a source of enrichment for them.
Sasha Mitrahovich 22.12.2017 08:07
Great geographical discoveries. Briefly
- 1492 Columbus discovers America
- 1498 Vasco da Gama discovers a sea route to India around Africa
- 1499-1502 - Spanish discoveries in the New World
- 1497 John Cabot discovers Newfoundland and the Labrador Peninsula
- 1500 - discovery of the mouth of the Amazon by Vicente Pinson
- 1519-1522 - the first circumnavigation of Magellan, the discovery of the Strait of Magellan, Mariana, Philippine, Moluccas
- 1513 - Vasco Nunez de Balboa discovers the Pacific Ocean
- 1513 - Discovery of Florida and the Gulf Stream
- 1519-1553 - discoveries and conquests in South America by Cortes, Pizarro, Almagro, Orellana
- 1528-1543 - Spanish discoveries of the interior of North America
- 1596 - discovery of the island of Svalbard by Willem Barents
- 1526-1598 - Spanish discoveries of the Solomon, Caroline, Marquesas, Marshall Islands, New Guinea
- 1577-1580 - the second round-the-world voyage of the Englishman F. Drake, the discovery of the Drake Strait
- 1582 - Yermak's campaign in Siberia
- 1576-1585 - British search for a northwestern passage to India and discovery in the North Atlantic
- 1586-1629 - Russian campaigns in Siberia
- 1633-1649 - the discovery by Russian explorers of the East Siberian rivers to the Kolyma
- 1638-1648 - discovery by Russian explorers of Transbaikalia and Lake Baikal
- 1639-1640 - Ivan Moskvin's exploration of the coast of the Sea of \u200b\u200bOkhotsk
- The last quarter of the 16th - the first third of the 17th century - the development of the eastern shores of North America by the British and French
- 1603-1638 - French exploration of the interior of Canada, discovery of the Great Lakes
- 1606 - Independently from each other, the discovery of the northern coast of Australia by the Spaniard Kyros, the Dutchman Janson
- 1612-1632 - British discoveries of the northeast coast of North America
- 1616 - discovery of Cape Horn by Schouten and Le Mer
- 1642 Tasman discovers the island of Tasmania
- 1643 Tasman discovers New Zealand
- 1648 - opening of the Dezhnev Strait between America and Asia (Bering Strait)
- 1648 - Fyodor Popov discovers Kamchatka
Sasha Mitrahovich 22.12.2017 08:07
In the photo: Portrait of Vasco Nunez de Balboa by an unknown artist.
At the beginning of the 16th century, Europeans continued to "discover" the Earth; researchers attribute this time to the first period of the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries. The main role was then played by the Spaniards and the Portuguese, who rushed to the unexplored lands of America, Africa and Asia.
In 1513 in America, the Spaniards built their first settlements, moving steadily from east to west. They were attracted by stories about the mythical Eldorado, immersed in gold and precious stones.
In September, the enterprising conquistador Vasco Nunez de Balboa, with 190 Spanish soldiers and many Indian guides, advanced from the city of Santa Maria la Antigua, which he had founded three years earlier. For about fifteen years he had been looking for luck in America, skillfully combining "carrot and stick" in relations with the local population. He could caress and bestow, or he could in anger and hunt down an objectionable Indian with dogs that inspired indescribable horror on the natives.
For more than three weeks, the detachment literally “waded” through the mountains covered with thickets of lianas and ferns, suffering from fever in the swampy lowlands and repelling the attacks of militant local residents. Finally, having overcome the Isthmus of Panama, from the top of Mount Balboa he saw the boundless expanse of the sea. Entering the water with a drawn sword in one hand and a Castilian banner in the other, the conquistador declared these lands to be the possessions of the Castilian crown.
Having received a pile of pearls and gold from the natives, Balboa was convinced that he had found a fabulous country from the stories of El Dorado. He called the sea he reached "South".
So Vasco Nunez de Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean. continued.
By the way, when Balboa in 1510 persuaded the first Spanish colonists to follow him deep into the mainland, among the latter was Francisco Pizarro, who later became famous. Then Pizarro did not want to go with the future discoverer of the Pacific Ocean. Pizarro's finest hour came twenty years later. In 1532, he conquered Peru, the Inca empire, becoming the owner of an unprecedented amount of gold.
Sasha Mitrahovich 22.12.2017 08:14
Throughout modern history, the world familiar to Europeans (that is, for them, in general, the “world”) has become larger and larger. In 1642, this "world" was replenished with another territory - it was called New Zealand. This ended.
New Zealand discovered by Abel Tasman
Abel Tasman was a very inquisitive and purposeful person. How else to explain the miraculous transformation of a child from a poor Dutch family into a real "sea wolf", a famous navigator, discoverer of new lands? Self-taught, born in 1603, at the age of thirty (that is, quite serious) he entered the service of the Dutch East India Company as a simple sailor, and already in 1639 commanded a ship sent to establish trade contacts with Japan.
Dutch merchants in those days dreamed of expanding their sphere of influence, this was the golden age of the Dutch bourgeoisie. There were rumors about a mysterious land south of Australia, full of untold riches; it was called the Southern Continent. To search for this mainland and sent the Dutch East India Campaign of Tasman. He did not find the mythical mainland, but he discovered New Zealand. So often happened in that era - remember how Columbus accidentally discovered America.
Two ships left Batavia in August 1642. Rounding Australia from the south and heading east, on November 24, Tasman discovered an island later named after him (Tasmania), and on December 13, a new land: it was the South Island of New Zealand. Dropping anchor in the bay, he met the natives. The meeting was not without tragedy - Maori warriors killed four Europeans, for which the bay received from Tasman the gloomy nickname of Killer Bay.
On the way back to Batavia, the lucky Dutchman discovered the islands of Tonga and the islands of Fiji. The rank of commander he soon received was, of course, well-deserved. From 1651, Tasman was engaged exclusively in trade. He—after so many adventures—could afford it.
The next European to visit New Zealand was the famous Captain James Cook. But this happened only in 1769.
Sasha Mitrahovich 22.12.2017 08:14
Sasha Mitrahovich 23.12.2017 07:55