Chapter II
European Roots
More than a thousand years ago, some Vikings came to Kyiv. About the same time, the Vikings in their homeland, Scandinavia, began to build much better ships. They sailed down the Atlantic into the Mediterranean all the way to Constantinople. Others sailed far out into the Atlantic where they found the Shetland Islands, Iceland, and Greenland. Some of them found America. However, this was in the period before the Europeans had guns. The Vikings could not live in America because the Indians were strong enough to chase them away. So the Vikings wrote about their discovery in a manuscript, which they put in a monastery. Soon everybody forgot about the Viking discovery of America. Only many years later did historians read the manuscripts and know that the Vikings had found America.
During the thirteenth century, a man from Italy named Marco Polo went to China. He brought back nice cloth made of silk. Soon all the kings and queens and rich people of Europe wanted silk clothing. Many merchants began going to China to buy silk to sell in Europe. Other merchants went to India to buy pepper and spices. A large trade developed.
The road to India and China went through Constantinople. In 1453, the Turks captured Constantinople from the Greeks. The new name for that city is Istanbul. The Turks closed the road to India and China. Rich people could not buy silk, pepper, or spices. Merchants knew they could earn a lot of money if they found a new route to India and China.
The Portuguese thought they could sail around the southern tip of Africa to find India. Therefore, they began to explore the coast of Africa, but it was many years before they found India.
Columbus believed that the world was round like a ball. Educated people had known that from the times of the ancient Greeks. However, Columbus thought that the earth was much smaller than it really is. He thought that if he sailed west across the Atlantic, he could easily get to India and China. He talked to the Queen of Spain. She knew that Spain could earn a lot of money if it controlled trade with India and China, so she gave him three ships. But Columbus could not find enough sailors. The sailors were not educated men. They thought the world was flat. They thought that if they sailed west, they would fall off the edge of the world and are unable to climb back up again. That is why they were afraid to sail far to the west. So the Queen of Spain sent to the prisons for men to work as sailors for Columbus.
Columbus sailed west. After they had sailed for more than two months, the sailors became very afraid. They thought that soon their ship would fall off the edge of the world. Some of them wanted to kill Columbus and go back to Spain. Then one of them saw a branch with green leaves in the water. This showed they were near land. On October 12, 1492, they found the small island of San Salvador. Soon they found Cuba and other islands. Columbus did not know he had found a new world. He thought he had found India, so he called the people that lived there Indians. It was only after he died that people realized that he found a new world.
Soon other Spanish people began coming to the New World. They learned that sugarcane grew well in Cuba and the other islands. One could earn a lot of money by growing sugarcane in the islands and selling the sugar in Spain. However, the Spanish needed workers. They tried to make slaves of the Indians, but other Indians would rescue the Indian slaves. Then the Spanish brought slaves from Africa. Nobody tried to rescue African slaves.
By 1519, there was a large Spanish population in Cuba. Ships from Spain had brought horses to the island. The Spanish began to hear stories about Aztec gold in Mexico. A small Spanish army under Cortez sailed to Mexico. He had only 200 men, but his soldiers had horses and guns. The Aztecs had never seen a horse before. The horse frightened them. Nor had the Aztecs ever seen a gun before. The Spanish were able to defeat an Aztec army of 70,000 men. They went on to capture Mexico City, which was as large and beautiful as any city in Europe. Cortez captured the palace of the Aztec king. In it, he found many nice things made of gold. The gold was sent to Spain. The Spanish told the Aztecs that they had to dig more gold out of the ground. It was also sent to Spain. Spain became the richest country in Europe. A few years later, another group of Spanish soldiers went to Peru. They captured all of the Inca gold and sent it to Spain.
As the gold poured in, Spain became stronger and stronger. All of Spain was searched for tall trees to be made into masts for its sailing ships. After a while, Spain had the most powerful navy in the world. At the other end of the Mediterranean Sea was another strong power, Turkey, which had overrun the Middle East, the Balkans, and a large part of Ukraine. Turkey was threatening central Europe. In 1571, Spain fought the Turkish navy in the Mediterranean and defeated it. That ended the Turkish threat to central Europe.
Spain said that Portugal could have Brazil, but all the rest of the New World belonged to Spain. The New World consisted of three parts, the continents of North America, South America and the islands of the Caribbean. Spain said it would not allow French, English or Dutch colonies in the New World. In 1564, the French tried to settle in Florida, but the Spanish came and killed all of the French settlers. France was not strong enough to do anything about it. All of Europe was afraid of Spain.