French East India Company

French East India Company

The French East India Company was one of several companies created to promote Western European commercial interests in Asia, particularly in India, beginning in the 17th century.

Lured by Spanish and Portuguese traders’ tales of lucrative spice exports from the European and other Asian markets.

France entered the Asia trading arena significantly later than Great Britain, which founded the British East India Company in 1600, and the Netherlands, which founded the Dutch East India Company (Indonesia/ Batavia) in 1602. While France attempted to cultivate trade connections with Asia in the early 17th century as well, initial expeditions failed to secure any trading posts or settlements.


During the reign of King Louis XIV (1643–1715), however, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, minister of finance, reorganized earlier unsuccessful trade ventures into the French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes Orientales) in 1664.

Colbert sent an expedition that reached India in 1668 and built the first French factory (production center) in Surat on the western coast, and soon after another in Masulipatam on the eastern coast. In 1673, the company established its headquarters in Pondicherry, on the southeastern coast below Madras (now Chennai), and founded Chandannagar on the northeastern coast, north of Calcutta.

Madras and success rivaling that of Calcutta.

While France never became the dominant European authority in the region, for more than 50 years the French East India Company made great efforts to capitalize upon the expanding demand for textiles, dyes, and other goods that could be supplied by Indian merchants.

French accounts of the activities in port towns such as Surat detail the intricate steps involved in creating the fabrics, known collectively as indiennes (Indians). Particularly on the southeastern coast, Indian weaving villages generated thousands of bolts of textiles for eager European companies.

Most in demand were guinee cloths (cotton longcloth, usually 35 to 50 m in length), salempores (staple cotton cloth), and morees (cotton cloth of superior quality). Also coveted were the stunning toiles peintes (painted cloths) and toiles imprimés (printed cloths), as well as the magnificent silks and dyes.

The textiles were adored not only in Europe, but also in other parts of Asia; indeed, India had engaged in Asian textile trading centuries before Europeans arrived. In the Indonesian archipelago, China, and Japan, Indian cotton was popular for its lightweight, yet sturdy qualities.

In due course, the French, British, and Dutch acquired materials from India not only for their home countries, but for transport to Malacca or Java, for example, where they were traded for spices—cloves, nutmeg, mace, sugar, and pepper—crucial in Britain and Europe to preserve meats during harsh winters.

By the 18th century, the French had secured agreements to provide woven products tailored to Asian buyers’ interests: they had colored, patterned handkerchiefs specially woven for particular island markets, for example, which proved a successful entrepreneurial venture. Moreover, cloths of different types played a symbolic role in rites of passage and were sought after for use in birth, marriage, and death ceremonies, and bolts of cloth were commonly given as offerings or gifts.

A salient corollary to the French East India Company’s textile exchange is that its movements between Asia and Europe also supported the exchange of slaves. While the slave trade is often described as triangular, with the three corners Europe, Africa, and the Americas (the “New World”), trade between Europe and Asia also helped to sustain slavery.

French ships traded European goods in Asia, where they acquired cowry shells and Indian textiles highly valued in West Africa. Traders exchanged these goods in Africa for slaves, who were sent to France’s colonies in the Americas. “The circle was completed,” notes the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, “when sugar and other goods from the Americas were loaded on board and shipped back to France.”

In commencing trade with India, the French East India Company entered an already well established, complex economic system, an intricate network of production, negotiation, delivery, and distribution. Indian merchants operated large commercial fleets as well as prosperous shore-based businesses.

Inland weavers and merchants worked with overland freight deliverers and brokers, who worked with shipowners and exporters. All of these agents had to negotiate with local politicians and state officials for commercial privileges.

Regional and individual trading groups developed their own intra- and intercountry rules and practices as well. In order to gain access to the goods they desired, moreover, the French had to learn these rules and practices and successfully collaborate with indigenous envoys.

The French were able to develop manufacturing centers in various Indian states, but cooperating with Indian middlemen sometimes proved trying. In addition to conflicts between French traders and middlemen, clashes between traders and local authorities (and between middlemen and local authorities) often impeded successful business transactions.

The Dutch and the English had mastered the art of working with indigenous traders, shippers, and rulers much earlier than the French, and although their interactions were was not always seamless, they operated with that distinct advantage. In most of the towns and ports in which the French operated, there were also English and Dutch associates.

Where there was a French factory, there were likely to be English and Dutch factories as well. At the peak of the Indian trade, during which the demand for Indian goods exceeded the volume weavers and other artisans could produce, the presence of several East India companies, even in the same town, did not lead to serious rivalry.

As the three companies grew more competitive, however, the Dutch and particularly the English, better funded and more conversant in local business etiquette, were able to expand their factory outposts to larger industrial towns under their jurisdiction. These commercial strongholds became political enclaves, eventually enabling Great Britain to consolidate its power and control throughout India.

Despite its numerous settlements, after the death of Louis XIV, the French economy faltered and by 1719, the French East India Company was nearly bankrupt. The French East India Company resumed its independence in 1723.

While the British East India Company began as primarily a trading company, it increasingly became a governing power. As the British expanded not only economic but also political and colonial influence, tensions between Britain and France grew.

In 1742, Joseph Dupleix was appointed governor general of all French settlements in India and dedicated himself to exerting French power. He envisioned a French empire and to this end began to interfere in local Indian politics, playing local rulers against each other for his French benefit. In French port towns, officials equipped factories for defense.

The battle for supremacy led to a series of military conflicts between France and Britain, with triumph and defeat alternating between the two. In 1747, the French besieged and captured Madras. In 1751 and 1752, however, Englishman Robert Clive dislodged Dupleix’s forces in Arcot and Trichinopolgy, taking many French prisoners.

In 1754, the French government, anxious to make peace, recalled Dupleix to France. During the next half-century, British forces further colonized and forcefully subjugated much of India. While several Indian ports remained under French directive, Britain became the definitive Western authority of the Indian subcontinent.

Clive’s victory in the Battle of Plassey in 1757, which brought the state of Bengal under British control, is often cited as the landmark turning point of the British colonial heyday in India. Bereft of both authority and capital, Dupleix returned to the country for which he had so vigorously labored and died penniless in 1763.

Despite its earlier successes in both inter- and intra-continental trade, the French East India Company never regained its former eminence. Ultimately, King Louis XV suspended the enterprise; took over its forts, ships, and other properties; and in 1769, the French East India Company essentially dissolved.

Dutch East India Company (Indonesia/Batavia)

Dutch East India Company (Indonesia/Batavia)

The Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) is better known in English as the Dutch East India Company, a joint stock company formed in 1602 and granted a monopoly for all trade between the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan.

The VOC had a twofold purpose: first, to organize and promote Dutch trade in the East Indies, vital because the area produced extremely precious spices; second, to raise revenue for the Dutch War of Independence against Spain.

In East Asia, the VOC was successful in evicting the Portuguese from their holdings and establishing a base at Batavia (modern Jakarta) from which to control the island of Java. In time, the VOC was transformed from a military-trading organization to eksekutif of a colonial empire. By 1799 the company’s usefulness had been outlived and because of corruption was dissolved by the Dutch government.


From its inception the VOC was premitted by the Dutch government to enter into diplomatic relations with foreign powers and to engage in military actions to further Dutch interests, including seizing land and building forts. In Southeast Asia, Protestant Dutch and English contended for influence with Catholic Portuguese and French.

While Portugal and France were interested in religious conversion of local people as well as trade, Britain and the Netherlands were primarily interested in commerce. Its first Dutch overseas base at Ambon was won from the Portuguese and used as a staging post for the import and reexport of pepper and other spices. It next established a permanent base on Java in order to play a greater role in trade throughout Southeast Asia.

They selected a site and named it Batavia, which became their permanent headquarters. The VOC overcame local opposition with their superior weapons and the British decided to focus on India.

The VOC gradually controlled all of Java and spread its influence to other islands. Through a series of naval campaigns, it attempted to create a monopoly of trade in the islands and so fought against local powers and against Indian and Malay states also. It gained control of land and regulated the growth of pepper and other crops. Dutch rule was harsh, forcibly relocating local people and exploiting them.

In 1740, conflict broke out between the Chinese community in Batavia and Dutch officials. It became known as the Chinese War and resulted in 10,000 Chinese deaths.

By the end of the 18th century, the Dutch state had become exhausted by the effects of prolonged warfare in Europe, especially the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War of 1780–81. The VOC was also facing stiff competition from the British. It was dissolved in 1799 by the Dutch government, which decided to assume direct responsibility for overseas possessions. Java and other VOC holdings in the East Indies were transferred to the Dutch government.

Dutch in South Africa

Dutch in South Africa

The year 1652 marks the beginning of the Cape Colony, which started with the founding of Cape Town by Dutch commander Jan van Riebeeck, who worked for the Dutch East India Company, known in Dutch as the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC). The colony was situated halfway between the so-called Dutch East Indies and the Dutch West Indies.

The early 16th century saw the start of many European nations, such as Spain and Portugal, pursuing the sea route rather than the land route to India and establishing a colonial global empire outside continental Europe. From the late 16th century, the Netherlands was a preeminent naval power. The Dutch founded the VOC trading company as early as 1602.

They reigned supreme at sea, and dominated global commerce by the second half of the 17th century. This epoch coincides with the cultural flowering known as the Dutch golden age with such figures as the philosopher Baruch de Spinoza, the mathematician and physicist Christiaan Huygens, and the painter Johannes Vermeer.


In 1647, while exploring a route to India, a ship named Nieuwe Haerlem ran aground in Table Bay. The survivors, including possibly the captain, Leendert Janszen, with some crew remained onshore for about a year to look after the shipment.

Only 12 months later, a Dutch ship returned Janszen and his crew to Europe. Upon disembarking in Holland, Janszen wrote a feasibility report called Remonstrantie to the Council of Seventeen of the Dutch East India Company, in which he recommends the founding of a station where ships can resupply before sailing onto India.

Jan Anthoniszoon van Riebeeck was later appointed by the VOC to establish the station and eventually founded Cape Town in 1652, which soon opened South Africa to white settlement. The town’s purpose was “to provide fresh water, fruit, vegetables, and meat for passing ships en route to India as well as build a hospital for ill sailors.”

The development of Cape Town was slow at first, owing to crop failures and organizational chaos. Van Riebeeck advocated the introduction of more workers to save the colony and encouraged importation of slaves. Though the VOC did not send slaves for five years, captains on passing ships gave Van Riebeeck some in the meantime.

In 1654, the first Cape-based slave expedition was sent to Madagascar and Mozambique and three years later the first group of slaves was brought to the Cape from Angola and West Africa to meet the needs of the construction of a solid station.

Starting in 1655, Van Riebeeck’s exploration outside Cape Town eventually led to a war between the small colony and the local Khoikhoi (named Hottentots by the whites). The Khoikhoi were a pastoral people, inhabiting the coast of the Cape of Good Hope until the arrival of European colonizers. When Van Riebeeck left the Cape in 1662, the settlement had more than 100 colonists.

The Netherlands lost many of its colonial possessions to the British when the motherland surrendered to French conquest led by Napoleon, and more territory annexation to the French from 1795 to 1814. Subsequently Great Britain seized the colony in 1797 during the Fifth Anglo-Dutch War, and annexed it in 1805.

The Dutch colonists who remained after the British took over are now known as Afrikaners. Their language, Afrikaans, is derived from a creolized variety of a colonial dialect of Cape Dutch, influenced by both indigenous Khoikhoi peoples who speak the Khoisan language and the imported slave population.

Hudson’s Bay Company

Hudson’s Bay Company logo

It is one of the ironies of history that the British owe the beginnings of the famous Hudson’s Bay Company to their traditional enemies in North America: the French. Pierre-Esprit Radisson (who posthumously gave his name to the famed modern hotel chain) and his older brother-in-law, Médard Chouart, sieur des Groseilliers, were two of the famed French coureurs de bois, or “runners of the woods,” who began the trade in beaver skins.

In 1659, the hoard of pelts that Radisson and des Groseilliers brought to Quebec was so great it aroused the greed of the governorgeneral of New France, Pierre de Voyer, the vicomte d’Argenson. He had arrived in Quebec on July 11, 1658, to serve as the fifth governor-general of the colony.

Charles II, enjoying a fortunate beginning to his reign, was never one to miss the opportunity of seeking riches, in part because the British parliament sought to limit his power by the amount of money it voted him each year. According to Empire of the Bay, Radisson wrote, “The King gave good hope that we should have a ship ready for an expedition for the next spring. And he granted us 40 shillings a week for our maintenance.”

Queen Elizabeth I had made her mark by chartering the Honorable East India Company in 1600, and King Charles II had decided to do the same by chartering a company to trade with New France. However, before committing his limited royal funds to outright backing for what would become known as the “Empire of the Bay,” Charles II first commissioned an exploratory voyage.


On June 3, 1668, des Groseilliers and Radisson headed back to New France, this time on two English vessels, the Eaglet and the Nonsuch. The mission was so urgent that Charles sent the ships in 1668, barely a year after the end of the Second Dutch War, a naval conflict with the Netherlands.

Fierce Atlantic storms off the west coast of Ireland buffeted the ships, and the Eaglet was forced to return to England. However, the Nonsuch continued its voyage successfully to New France. To Charles II, the voyage had proved the worth of the dreams of des Groseilliers and Radisson.

The king formally chartered the Governors and Company of Adventurers Trading into Hudson’s Bay, forever known as the Hudson’s Bay Company. To oversee the company, he appointed his relative, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who had served his father, Charles I, as a commander of cavalry in the English Civil War.

However, it would not be long before the French in New France took action against this new British threat along the remote shores of Hudson’s Bay. In 1686 and 1697, the French mounted combined land and sea assaults that effectively broke the back of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

With the British main effort in the New World fixed on protecting the colonies on the East Coast of the Americas, little could be spared for the outposts in the frozen north. Besides, the French attacking from New France had far less distance to travel to attack the forts of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The main Hudson’s Bay posts, York Factory, Rupert House, and Albany Fort, fell into the hands of the French.

Throughout the 18th century, a series of wars was fought between England and France for the control of New France and the vast wealth in fur in the interior. Called the French and Indian Wars in the United States, the conflicts saw French and English pitted in savage battles along the eastern coast of North America; both sides generally ignored the frozen north of Hudson’s Bay.

On September 13, 1759, a French army under Louis-Joseph, marquis de Montcalm, was soundly defeated outside Quebec by a British force under General James Wolfe. Both men were killed from battle wounds, but the battle marked the decisive defeat of the French in North America. Although the British later lost a battle outside Quebec, the French were finally forced to surrender at Montreal in 1760. By the terms of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, all of New France became part of the British Empire.

The leaders of the Hudson’s Bay Company felt they could exploit the great wealth of the fur trade, free from the raids of the French and their Indian allies. The French alliance against England in the American Revolution, however, brought war again to Hudson’s Bay.

The company’s first great explorer, Samuel Hearne, was forced to surrender Fort Prince of Wales to a French squadron under Jean-François de Galoup, comte de La Pérouse. After the Treaty of Paris ended the war, however, Hearne was able to return to open a new post at Churchill. But a new threat came from an unexpected corner: from within the British Empire in North America.

By the 1770s, rival fur traders began to appear to contest the monopoly of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Formally chartered in 1779 as the North West Fur Company in Montreal, the newcomers determined to wrest control of the fur trade from the Hudson’s Bay Company trappers by any means necessary.

The North West Fur Company proved much more aggressive than the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose long monopoly had bred in it a spirit of complacency that the “Nor’westers” were quick to exploit. As a result of this competition, exploration and the expansion of trade moved into the interior of the continent.

The North West Company was much more flexible than the London-based Hudson’s Bay Company; while Hudson’s Bay’s men had to defer to their distant management, the partners in the North West Company were in the field and met every summer on the Lake Superior shore to determine trapping and harvesting strategies for the coming season.

Spurred on by the enterprising spirit of the Nor’westers, the company produced two of the greatest explorers in all of North American history: David Thompson and Alexander Mackenzie. Significantly, Thompson had first signed on the roster of the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1784, moving to the North West Fur Company in 1797.

During his tenure, he charted the course of the Columbia River, located the source of the Mississippi River, and explored throughout the Missouri River area. He retired in 1812, having logged nearly 55,000 miles in the wilderness by canoe and on foot.

Alexander Mackenzie would equal Thompson in the annals of North American exploration. In June 1789, Mackenzie began with a party of Indians to explore for the Arctic Sea, seeking the Northwest Passage to the Orient, which had lured English mariners since the time of Queen Elizabeth I.

On July 14, 1789, Mackenzie found the Arctic Sea. The Scotsman would crown his exploring career with a search for an overland route to the Pacific. He began this trek in May 1793 and with the aid of the Bella Coola tribe reached the Pacific on July 22.

The great explorations of Thompson and Mackenzie opened more territory to the Canadian West for the North West Company at a time when the original territory worked by the trappers of the Hudson’s Bay Company was now suffering from diminishing animal population; the hunters were trapping to the brink of extinction.

The Hudson’s Bay Company was being encircled by the new fur trading posts, and the Nor’westers were moving into the United States as well. In his 1806 expedition to claim the northern regions of the Louisiana Purchase for the United States, the U.S. army explorer Zebulon Pike staked his claim on a North West Company post by having his soldiers shoot down the British flag and raise the American one.

The climax came when Thomas Douglas, the fifth earl of Selkirk, bought a controlling interest in Hudson’s Bay Company. The company awarded the earl a massive tract of land—which was right in the middle of the western territory now being exploited by the North West Company. In 1812 Scottish immigrants arrived in what became known as the Selkirk Settlement.

Many of these were Scots dispersed during the Highland Clearances, when their own lords expelled them from their ancestral “crofter” farms to make room for the raising of sheep. Immediately, the Nor’west Company began a guerrilla war against the newcomers, its ranks filled with métis, the offspring of French Canadians and Native Americans.

The climax came at Seven Oaks, in modern-day Winnipeg, on June 19, 1816. Robert Semple, with a force of Hudson’s Bay men, met a force of Nor’wester Métis under Cuthbert Grant. In the skirmish that followed, Grant and his Nor’westers massacred Semple and the Hudson’s Bay men.

Despite this, the odds were in favor of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The buccaneering tactics of the North West Company frightened off staid City of London investors, and the Hudson’s Bay Company still held the Royal Charter of 1670.

Finally, London stepped in to end the hostilities, essentially giving title of the North West Fur Company to the Hudson’s Bay Company. This gave the Hudson’s Bay Company a tract of nearly 3 million square miles—most of North America. Today, the company still operates, supplying goods and services for remote settlements in western Canada.

Edo Period in Japan

Edo Period in Japan

The Edo period in Japanese dates between 1600 and 1867. It denotes the government of the Tokugawa Shogunate from Edo. The shogunate was officially established in 1603 with the victory of Tokugawa Ieyasu over supporters of Toyotomi Hideyori in the Battle of Sekigahara (1600). The Tokugawa shoguns ruled Japan for more than 250 years with iron fists and tight discipline.

Ieyasu had centralized control over the entire country with his strategic power sharing arrangement between daimyo (feudal lords) and samurai (warriors). Daimyos were ordered to be present every second year in Edo to give an account of their assigned work.

Tokugawa Ieyasu promoted economic development through foreign trade. He established trading relations with China and the Dutch East India Company (Indonesia/ Batavia). While Osaka and Kyoto became emerging centers for trade and handicraft production, his capital Edo became the center for supply of food, construction, and consumer items.


To ensure its control, the shogunate banned all Japanese people from travel abroad in 1633. Japan thus was isolated except for limited commercial contact with the Dutch in the port of Nagasaki. All Western books were banned in Japan.

Despite Japan’s cultural isolation from the rest of the world, new indigenous art forms such as Kabuki theater and ukiyo-e, woodblock prints and paintings of the emerging urban popular culture, gained increasing popularity. Intellectually the most important state philosophy during the Edo period was Neo-Confucianism. Neo-Confucianism stressed the importance of morals, education, and hierarchical order in the government.

A rigid class system also took shape during the Edo period with samurai at the top, followed by the peasants, artisans, and merchants. Below them were outcasts (burakumin) or pariahs or those who were deemed impure. Neo-Confucianism contributed to the development of kokugaku (national learning) that stressed the study of Japanese history.

In 1720, with the lifting of the ban on Western literature, some Japanese began studying Western sciences and technologies, rangaku (Dutch studies). The fields that drew most interest were related to medicine, astronomy, natural sciences, art, geography, languages, as well as physical sciences including mechanical and electrical engineering.

External pressure on Japan grew toward the end of the 18th century. The Russians tried to establish a trade link with Japan to export their Russian goods, particularly vodka and wine. Other European nations also became interested.

Finally the United States forced Japan to open to the West when Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Edo Bay with a flotilla of warships. Meanwhile, anti-Tokugawa sentiments had been growing that demanded the restoration of imperial power.

In 1867–68, the Tokugawa government collapse was partly due to foreign threat and to tensions that had been growing against a political and social system that had outlived its usefulness. The shogunate surrendered power in 1867 to Emperor Meiji, who began the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

Zheng Chenggong (Cheng Ch’eng-Kung)

Zheng Chenggong

Zheng Chenggong (or Koxinga) led the longest and most sustained opposition to the Qing (Ch’ing) conquest of China, first from the southern Chinese coast, later from Taiwan after he expelled the Dutch from their forts on the island. His sons held on to Taiwan against Qing forces until 1683.

The Ming dynasty (1368–1644), long in decline, collapsed in 1644, when the last emperor and his family killed themselves rather than suffer capture by the rebel forces of Li Zicheng (Li Tzu-ch’eng).

General Wu Sangui (Wu San-kuei), the Ming general guarding the eastern terminus of the Great Wall of China, then asked the Manchus in the northeast to help him to oust the rebels. As Wu pursued the rebels, the Manchu leader, Prince Dorgon, installed his nephew on the vacant throne as Emperor Shunzi (Shun-chih) of the Qing dynasty.


While northern China was quickly pacified, Ming loyalists resisted tenaciously in the Yangzi (Yangtze) River valley and throughout southern China. Several Ming princes were elevated to be emperors or “caretaker rulers” to rally loyalists against the alien rule. The kala up to 1662 is called the Southern Ming when the last Ming pretender was killed.

An important supporter of the first Southern Ming emperor was Zheng Zhilong (Cheng Chihlung), who controlled a powerful mercantile empire and large fleet that operated along the southern coast of China and Japan.

One of his sons by a Japanese mother so impressed the Ming prince of Tang (T’ang) who became the Longwu (Lung-wu) emperor that in 1646 he conferred on him the imperial surname Zhu (Chu) and also gave him the name Chenggong which means “successful.”

He came to be known as Lord of the imperial surname, from which the Dutch derivation Koxinga comes. In China he was called Zheng Chenggong. Zheng Zhilong defected to the Manchus in 1646, but his son remained faithful to his pledge to defend the Ming.

With his base in Amoy and the nearby island of Jinmen (Quemoy), Zheng gained control of Fujian (Fukien) province. He also expanded his trading empire to raise revenue for his cause. In 1658, his fleet of 1,000 ships and 130,000 soldiers raided the coast of Zhejiang (Chekiang) province.

It sailed up the Yangzi River in 1659 to attack Nanjing (Nanking), the southern capital of the Ming dynasty, hoping that the action would rally Ming loyalists to rise up in rebellion. It did not happen and facing Qing counterattack he withdrew across the sea to Taiwan.

There he forced the Dutch East India Company (Indonesia/Batavia) to surrender its Fort Zeelandia in southern Taiwan, ending its presence on the island. Zheng died in 1662 (his father and some relatives who had surrendered to the Qing were executed in 1661 for failing to persuade him to surrender), but his son Zheng Ching continued to resist.

To deprive the Zheng forces from obtaining supplies from the mainland coast the Qing had to adopt draconian measures, forcing inhabitants in Fujian to relocate at least 20 miles inland and forbidding ships to take off from southern coastal ports. In 1683, Taiwan was conquered by the Qing and made a part of Fujian Province. With the fall of Taiwan the Qing dynasty completed the conquest of China.

Zheng Chenggong, or Koxinga, is honored in Chinese and Japanese folklore as a brave commander. He is also respected as a Ming loyalist.

Voyages of Discovery

The first voyage of Spanish exploration

Since ancient times, mariners have traveled large distances, usually in search of opportunities for trade or military expansion. The Phoenicians are believed to have sailed from modern-day Lebanon to England for tin, and accounts by the Romans and later the Vikings show the great skills in seamanship.

The adventurer Thor Heyerdahl showed that it was possible to sail in relatively simple vessels across the Pacific in his epic voyage in the raft Kon-Tiki. A later expedition on the Tigris grew from a stone carving of Queen Hatshepsut, who commissioned the first visual record of a voyage of discovery in 1493 b.c.e.

However the voyages of discovery from the 15th century were a concerted effort by European powers to map as much of the world as possible, as well as expand trade, make Christian converts, and carve out an empire.


Although the most well documented, the European voyages were not the first with some of these objects in mind. In 1421, the great Chinese admiral Zheng He headed one of the largest fleets ever when he set out from China to travel around Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.

There is also the possibility that some of his ships reached New Zealand and even the American continent. When he returned owing to palace machinations Zheng He was never able to repeat his voyage, and China entered a period of self-isolation, never again sending a large fleet to sea.

the great Chinese admiral Zheng He

Curiously this change in Chinese policy coincided with a move by European countries to begin journeys of exploration. The Portuguese were the first to take up this challenge. Under Henry the Navigator (1394–1460), following the Portuguese capture of the Moroccan city of Ceuta, Henry encouraged seafarers to travel around the coasts of Africa.

The Italian Marco Polo in 1271–95 and a few other intrepid adventurers had reached China by land, but with the Ottoman Turks in control of much of the Middle East and Central Asia, the cost of importing spices into Europe was very high and Henry was in the position to encourage many people to embark on great voyages, even if he himself never traveled farther than Morocco.

Dias and Columbus

A replica of one of the caravelles Bartolomeu Dias sailed round the tip of Africa

In 1434, Portuguese ships reached Cape Bojador in West Africa, and it was another 26 years before they reached modern-day Senegal. Some 22 years after that, Portuguese mariners were off the coast of modern-day Angola, and in 1488 the navigator Bartolomeu Dias (c. 1450–1500) passed the Cape of Good Hope and found a route to the Indian Ocean.

Being on the westernmost part of the European mainland had put the Portuguese in an ideal position to begin the European age of voyages of discovery, but other mariners from other countries had already achieved some enormous feats. English ships sailed regularly to Scandinavia and the Baltic.

There are also references in English court records to a ship returning from “Brazil” in the 1470s. This does not necessarily mean the country of that name, but scholars have conjectured, more plausibly, that this might be Newfoundland, where some English sailors probably went in search of fish. Arab sailors were also involved in voyages down the east coast of Africa and around the Indian Ocean.

Many settled in places like Zanzibar, the Maldives, and Sumatra. One of the great Arab travelers of the period was Ibn Batuta, who, between 1325 and 1353, traveled around north Africa, into Mali, down the east coast of Africa, throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, into parts of Russia, and around the coasts of India, and modern-day Myanmar (Burma), Malaysia, and Vietnam to China, keeping a detailed record of the voyages.

When Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), an Italian in the service of Spain, set sail across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492 and returned in the following year, news of his voyage and discovery of the Americas swept across the capitals of Europe like wildfire. By this period, most people accepted that the world was a sphere, and some had even worked out, correctly, its size.

For this reason it was thought that a voyage from Europe to China, India, or Japan would be far too long and it would be impossible to equip a ship for that voyage. Columbus believed that the world was smaller, and hence it was possible to reach China or Japan, and this idea gave him enough confidence to lead his men on their first voyage.

Christopher Columbus voyage

One of the results of the first voyage of Columbus was that the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 was signed between Portugal and Spain by which they divided the world at a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. The land to the west went to Spain, and that to the east to Portugal.

As a result, Portuguese seafarers limited themselves to Africa, to the Indian Ocean, and to establishing of the Portuguese Empire in Africa and Asia. It was only later that Brazil was discovered and found to be in the Portuguese sphere. Spain, on the other hand, sent ships to the Americas.

An Italian in the service of Spain, Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512), sailed to modern-day Brazil in the late 1490s and had the honor of America’s being named after him. In 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa (c. 1475–1519) was the first European to sight the Pacific Ocean and realize that Columbus was wrong in his estimation of the size of the world.

Cortés and Pizarro

Hernán Cortés sacked the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán

As well as voyages purely of discovery, the Portuguese were able to trade extensively and their ships brought back large quantities of spices, and also slaves. The initial Spanish voyages found very little in the way of gold or silver until 1521, when Hernán Cortés (1484–1547) sacked the Aztec capital of Francisco Pizarro (c. 1475–1541) plundered and destroyed the Inca Empire.

This wealth suddenly made Spain the richest country in Europe. Many of the early explorers also found much agricultural land, and in August 1535, one of the largest expeditions to leave Spain for the New World during that century sailed from Cádiz. Led by Pedro de Mendoza, it had 11 ships, more than 1,000 men, 100 horses, pigs, and cattle. The voyages of discovery had led to a desire to colonize the Americas.

This expedition sailed up the river Plate and then the Río Paraguay in search of the Inca kingdoms. In a bend in the river they established the city of Asunción (now the capital of Paraguay). Within 50 years of Columbus’s first voyage, the kings of Spain had carved out an empire nearly 23 times the size of Spain itself.

The Portuguese had also embarked on more ambitious voyages, and their great navigator Vasco da Gama (c. 1469–1525) was able to take a fleet on a two year voyage the 13,000 miles to Calicut in India, from which he was able to take back spices.

The next of the great explorers was Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480–1521) from Portugal, who sailed in the service of the king of Portugal from 1505 until 1512 and then in the service of the king of Spain from 1519. He sailed down the eastern coast of South America until he found what were later named the Straits of Magellan. Sailing through them, he was able to reach the Pacific.

His voyage was the first to circumnavigate the world, although he was killed in the Philippines, halfway through the journey. By this time the Portuguese under Afonso de Albuquerque (1453–1515) had started to carve out a colonial empire in Asia taking the cities of Ormuz, Goa, and Malacca.

The English had tried to embark on a few voyages but never had much success. With Italian-born John Cabot (c. 1450–98) and later his son, Sebastian Cabot (c. 1476–1557), the English had tried to find the North-west Passage—a route to the Pacific north of the Americas.

They found no gold, although they did discover areas rich in fish, and eventually Sebastian Cabot joined the service of Spain. The next major English effort was through the Muscovy Company sailing to Russia. This had more success and led to the mapping of north coast of Scandinavia and some of the Russian coastline.

However there was great interest in these voyages in England with Richard Hakluyt (1552–1616), a lawyer to the Muscovy Company, publishing a large number of accounts of the early voyages in his Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589).

Drake and La Salle

When England and Spain went to war, many English privateers set to sea. These were privately owned ships with the queen of England’s authority to attack Spanish possessions and ships around the world. The Spanish viewed them as pirates, the English as heroes.

One of these, Sir Francis Drake (ca. 1540–96), in 1577 set out in his ship Pelican (later renamed Golden Hind), which, in the next three years, circumnavigated the world. He was able to map out parts of the coast of Chile, reaching modern-day California, before heading across the Pacific.

His return not only was a feat of seamanship, but carrying many spices, a massive financial windfall for investors. The fortunes to be made encouraged further English voyages including Henry Hudson’s making another attempt for the Northwest Passage.

The French had not been involved in the earlier voyages of discovery but with Samuel de Champlain (1567–1635) managed to map the St. Lawrence River in modern-day Canada and founded Quebec in 1608. He became lieutenant-governor of New France from 1613 until 1625.

Another French voyager, trained in a Jesuit seminary, René Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle (1643–87), sailed to the Americas several times, navigating the St. Lawrence and Ohio Rivers, and later the Mississippi River. With settlers he founded what became French Louisiana.

During the 17th century, the Dutch became particularly active and took control of a part of Java, in modern-day Indonesia. Their military skills in the 1630s and 1640s ensured that they were able to capture a number of the Portuguese settlements and establish their own colonial empire.

By this time, Portuguese power had waned and the Dutch took Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Malacca from them. Some early Dutch seamen also mapped parts of modern-day Australia and New Zealand.

By the early 18th century, the Russians were beginning to fund explorers. The Bering expedition in 1728, led by a Danish mariner, Vitus Jonassen Bering (1681–1741), was the first to include a number of scientists.

After traveling across Siberia, a feat in itself, he sailed from Russia to modern-day Alaska, with the Bering Sea named after him. Bering died during the voyages, and only many years later was good use made of the reports by scientists from his voyages.

The last part of the world to be explored by ship was the Pacific. Englishman William Dampier (1652–1715) and Abel Tasman (c. 1603–59) had mapped some of the coast of modern-day Australia. Louis de Bougainville sailed the Pacific and his book, when published back in France, became an immediate bestseller.

Captain James Cook ship, HMS Endeavour

When Captain James Cook (1728–79) sailed the Pacific, using better instruments than Dampier and Tasman, he was able to map the coastline of Australia more accurately. He kept a very detailed journal and did not allow his crew to keep a journal so that his book, when published, would be the only accurate account of the voyage.

Cook was killed in Hawaii in 1779, but his example was followed by several other mariners including one of his former officers, William Bligh (1754–1817), who tried to sail to the Pacific via Cape Horn but was forced to turn back, unable to fulfill his ambition of circumnavigating the world. He was also subject to a mutiny in 1789, which he managed to survive.