THE RENAISSANCE

The nations outside of Iberia refused to acknowledge the Treaty of Tordesillas.

France, the Netherlands and England each had a long maritime tradition and, despite Iberian protections, the new technologies and maps soon made their way north.

The first Northern European mission (1497) was that of the English expedition led by the Italian, John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto). It was the first of a series of French and English missions exploring North America.

Spain put limited efforts into exploring the northern part of the Americas as its resources were fully stretched by its efforts in Central and South America where more wealth had been found.

In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano became the first recorded European to visit the East Coast of the present-day United States.

The expeditions of Cabot, Jacques Cartier (first voyage 1534) and others were mainly hoping to find
an oceanic Northwest Passage to Asian trade. This was never discovered, but in their travels other possibilities were found and in the early seventeenth century colonists from a number of Northern European states began to settle on the east coast of North America.

It was the Northern Europeans who also became the great rivals to the Portuguese in Africa and
around the Indian Ocean.

The Dutch, French, and English sent ships which flouted the Portuguese monopoly. They also founded trading forts and colonies of their own.

Gradually the Portuguese and Spanish market share declined.

The Northern Europeans also took the lead in exploring the last unknown regions of the Pacific Ocean and the North-American west coast.

Dutch explorers such as Willem Jansz and Abel Tasman explored the coasts of Australia while in the eighteenth century it was English explorer James Cook who mapped much of Polynesia. Cook travelled
as far as Alaska, leaving his mark with place names on Bristol Bay and Turnagain Arm in Alaska.