THE RENAISSANCE

                            

                            The Santa Maria at anchor by Andries van Eertvelt,
                            painted c. 1628,
                            shows the famous carrack of Christopher Columbus.








It was not until the carrack and then the caravelle were developed in Iberia that Western Europeans
seriously considered Asiatic trade and oceanic exploration.

One factor was the lack of Christian European access to the spice and silk trade, for the eastern trade
routes had become controlled by the Ottoman Empire after the Turks took control of Constantinople in
1453, and they barred Europeans from those trade routes, as they did through
North Africa and the historically important combined-land-sea routes via the Red Sea.

Both spice and silk were big businesses of the day, and arguably, spices which were both used as preser-
vatives and used to disguise the taste of poorly preserved foods were something of a necessity—at least
to those Europeans of better than modest means