Beyond the Silk Road

So far, we’ve talked in general terms about civilizations like the Phoenicians and the Polynesians. But we haven’t looked at individual explorers: specific people who set out on quests to discover the wider world.

One of history’s most famous explorers grew up in the Middle Ages – that’s around the same time that dead reckoning was first being used on ships. During this period, the Eurasian continent was home to something called the Silk Road.

It was a sprawling network of overland trade routes, which stretched all the way from China in the east, to North Africa and Europe in the west. Merchants used the Silk Road to transport goods, especially metals, spices and silks.

The Silk Road passed through sun-baked deserts, where sandstorms swirled on the horizon. It passed through mountain passes with frozen walls, and grasslands full of rough-maned stallions. It hugged the edges of inland seas, it wound through patches of damp-smelling forest.

Doesn’t that sound like an interesting place to explore?

In general, merchants didn’t bother to travel the entire length of the Silk Road. Instead, any trade was typically conducted through relayed, segmented journeys.

One merchant would travel a hundred kilometers, and then sell his goods to a second merchant. That second merchant would travel another hundred kilometers… and so on.

It was never an easy journey. The merchants had to deal with storms, landslides, bandits, wolves… but there wasn’t any other option. In theory, a merchant could have sailed their goods from Asia to Europe around the African continent, but no one had ever made that journey. They didn’t know if it was possible.

So merchants used the overland Silk Road. And to make up for all the dangers they faced, they charged staggering prices for their goods. Some Asian spices, like nutmeg and cinnamon, cost more in Europe than the equivalent weight in gold.

A lot of the goods that traveled along the Silk Road found themselves in Venice. This famous city was perfectly located: for anyone traveling in from the east, Venice was the gateway to Europe.

With all the silks and spices passing through the city, Venice became rich and powerful. If a European wanted cinnamon? They could get it in Venice. If a European wanted nutmeg? They could get it there as well.

The city was a sight to behold. Foreign merchants walked the streets, cloaks billowing like sails behind them. Canal boats swept past, piled high with spices: they smelled rich, foreign, sweet.

For hundreds of years, other Europeans scrambled for alliances and trade deals. If Venice decided to cut them off, they’d lose access to the Silk Road, and all the goods coming in from Asia.

At the height of Venetian wealth and power, a little boy was born in the city. He grew up on stories of the Silk Road. He grew up on the smell of spices.

His name was Marco Polo. And he grew up to be one of the most famous explorers the world has ever seen.

As we’ve already mentioned, merchants rarely (if ever) traveled the whole length of the Silk Road. Instead, they relied on a relay system. Traveling 6000 kilometers in a single journey was surely too much to take.

Marco Polo disagreed with this. In 1271, at seventeen years of age, he set out from Venice with one goal in mind: to travel the entire length of the Silk Road, and make it all the way to China.

Marco Polo’s journey east unfolded over several years. He traveled through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, before finally reaching China. Along the way, he battled illness, fought off bandits, saw crocodiles…

He continued through China, and eventually arrived in the capital city of Shangdu. There, he was greeted by Kublai Khan – the Mongol emperor of China. Kublai Khan was a powerful man with a booming voice and a long, dark beard.

Kublai Khan was impressed by Marco Polo. He offered him the chance to work as an advisor at the royal Mongol court. Marco Polo stayed there for seventeen years, before traveling back to Europe.

He wrote an account of his travels: Il Milione. In the history of long-distance exploration, there aren’t many individual people who have been on a journey as long and remarkable as this one.

In the early 15th century, Venice was still one of the richest cities in Europe. For centuries, they had lived off the spoils of the Silk Road – and it didn’t look as though the situation was ever going to change.

Other European powers were jealous. Other European powers were angry. And some of them decided to send out ships, in the hope of finding new sources of income of their own.

This period of history is sometimes referred to as the Age of Exploration. It saw European nations striking outwards, following in the footsteps of the Phoenicians and the Polynesians – those ancient seafarers who explored the world before them.

At the heart of Europe’s Age of Exploration was a man named Henry the Navigator. He was a Portuguese prince, with three older brothers, and little hope of becoming king.

But Henry the Navigator didn’t need to be king. He was too busy changing the world.

Prince Henry the Navigator was obsessed with the idea of long-distance exploration. He was particularly interested in the west coast of Africa, which spread out to the south of Portugal.

Henry viewed Africa as a glittering jewel, just waiting to be exploited. He didn’t care about the people who lived in Africa. He wanted to claim the continent’s riches for Portugal.

Prince Henry knew that it wouldn’t be easy to exploit the coast of West Africa. The Atlantic Ocean was rough and unpredictable, and European ships were too slow and cumbersome to safely make the journey.

So what did he do? He invented a new type of ship. Just like the Phoenicians with their biremes, and the Polynesians with their catamarans, Portugal entered the field of maritime innovation.

Henry built a boat called a caravel. It was small and light and quick across the water, with triangular sails that were capable of sailing directly into the wind. These sails were basically a new-and-improved version of Polynesian crab-claw sails.

Explorers loved the caravel. It didn’t have much space for crew and cargo – but for a small team of sailors, there was no better way to travel.

Prince Henry also invested heavily in a type of ship called a carrack. These traditional vessels were large and square-sailed – they weren’t as nimble as caravels, but they were stable and reliable in choppy seas, and had a lot more space for cargo.

Prince Henry planned to use caravels and carracks in combination. First, the caravels would whip along the coast of West Africa, searching for sources of gold and other tradable goods.

If they found any, the carracks would be sent to the location, where they could be loaded up, then sent back up the coast to Portugal.

It was a simple system, but an innovative one. Henry the Navigator was changing the way that Europeans thought about exploration.

Prince Henry didn’t stop at shipbuilding. He also established a navigational school, where he funded research into navigation techniques, as well as astronomy, geography, and cartography.

He set up this school at Sagres: a little spit of land at the southernmost tip of Portugal.

From the school, Prince Henry could gaze across the ocean, out in the direction of Africa. Behind him, his researchers were hard at work, writing maps, planning routes, testing compasses and astrolabes.

With the nimble caravels, and the stable carracks, Portugal now had the very best ships in Europe. With the school at Sagres, they also had the very best navigators.

Prince Henry had created the perfect set-up: now, he just had to send out his ships and see what they managed to find.

His first ships quickly explored the coast of Morocco, heading down towards modern-day Mauritania.

But this was only the beginning of new era of much more ambitious voyages to come.

All the while the Republic of Venice had been dominating the Mediterranean, and Prince Henry setting up the foundations of Portuguese exploration, a force from the east had been gaining power, and putting pressure on important hubs of trade and transport: the Ottoman empire.

Between the 4th century and 15th century CE, eastern Europe was dominated by the Byzantine Empire, a continuation of the Roman Empire that existed in the eastern Mediterranean.

It was founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine, who made the city of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) the new capital of the Roman Empire.

Because of its location on the edge of Asia and the Mediterranean Sea, the city was a major hub of trade and an entry point to the Silk Road. It connected Europe to the markets of the East.

Yet from the 13th century, Byzantium came under pressure from the increasingly powerful Ottoman empire, led by a series of Turkish-speaking “Sultans”.

And in 1453, the City of Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans, marking a significant turning point in the history of Europe with far-reaching implications for trade.

European states – now used to access to exotic goods from across the globe, had explored new options not via land, but by sea.

Therefore, although Prince Henry died in 1460, the motivation for further-flung exploration only increased.

With every passing year, Portuguese caravels followed the African coastline further south. And an exciting idea started to crop up: what if they could reach the end of Africa, and find a way to sail around it?

The Silk Road was still the only link between Asia and Europe. But if Portugal managed to sail around Africa, they could establish an alternative route. It was a staggering idea and something that even Henry the Navigator might never have dared to imagine.

By 1482, the Portuguese caravels had made it all the way to modern-day Ghana. It was an incredible voyage that no European had managed to make before. When they got there, they set up a trading outpost, and called it Elmina Castle.

Elmina Castle was originally built as a hub for trading gold. There was plenty of it in the region – square-sailed carracks came to port, then sailed away, creaking beneath the weight of those glittering riches.

With powerful trading posts like Elmina Castle where ships could stop to restock, repair, and get to know the local waters, the Portuguese were within reach of their dream to bypass the Silk Road.

In 1488, a convoy of ships, led by a noble explorer named Bartolomeu Dias, set off from southern Portugal. They sailed all the way down the coast of Africa – then looped around the Cape of Good Hope, right at the southern tip.

They didn’t continue to Asia. That day would have to wait. Instead, they traveled back to Portugal.

Ten years after Bartolomeu Dias made his famous trip around the Cape of Good Hope, another Portuguese explorer went one step further. His name was Vasco da Gama.

Vasco da Gama was tall and impressive – the son of a royal knight. He set off from Portugal in 1497 at the head of a powerful carrack. Three other ships came with him, including a second carrack and a caravel.

After a three-month journey, they reached the Cape of Good Hope. They sailed around it – then started to continue upwards. In 1498, a full year after originally departing Portugal, they managed the impossible: they touched down on the coast of Asia.

Historians view Vasco da Gama’s voyage as a landmark in the history of exploration. Nobody had ever made such a journey – and by establishing a sea route between Europe and Asia, this moment changed the course of history forever.

In the first few years of the 16th century, following in Vasco da Gama’s footsteps, Portuguese ships made further voyages to Asia.

When they got there, they set up trading posts, just as they had done along the coast of Africa, in places like Elmina Castle. It was a similar approach to Phoenician explorers hundreds of years earlier.

These trading posts were strategically chosen to help the Portuguese gain a foothold in Asia, and start to challenge the Silk Road.

In the summer of 1511, they established a post in the Moluccas: a cluster of islands which were also known as the Spice Islands. These islands were one of the only places in the entire world where spices like nutmeg and cloves could properly grow.

When they carried these spices home from the Moluccas, the Portuguese ended the old monopoly of the Silk Road. For hundreds of years, that famous route had lived its life unchallenged. But the Portuguese managed to change that. They ushered in a brand new age of European maritime exploration – one that