what motivated the portuguese to find a water route to india
Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India The plan for working on the Cape Route to India was charted by Portuguese King John II as a cost saving measure in the trade with Asia and also an attempt to monopolize the spice trade. Adding to the increasingly influential Portuguese maritime presence, John II craved for trade routes and for the expansion of the kingdom of Portugal which had already been transformed into an Empire. However, the project would not be realized during his reign. It would be his successor, King Manuel I, who would designate Vasco da Gama for this expedition, while maintaining the original plan.
History of Western civilization In 1492, the Genovese born mariner, Christopher Columbus set out under the auspices of the Crown of Castile to seek an oversea route to the East Indies via the Atlantic Ocean. Rather than Asia, Columbus landed in the Bahamas, in the Caribbean. Spanish colonization followed and Europe established Western Civilization in the Americas. The Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama led the first sailing expedition directly from Europe to India in 1497-1499, by the Atlantic and Indian oceans, opening up the possibility of trade with the East other than via perilous overland routes like the Silk Road. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer working for the Spanish Crown (under the Crown of Castile), led an expedition in 1519â€“1522 which became the first to sail from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific Ocean and the first to cross the Pacific. It also completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth (although Magellan himself was killed in the Philippines).