THE WORLD IN 1492

THE GRAND TOUR: EUROPE

Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile saw their dynamicmarriage yield the beginning of a united peninsula when Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in Iberia, fell after a ten-year campaign.

Their lands were at the forefront of an aggressive Christendom and were prime markets for expanding Italian commercial activities. Castile's active maritime force competed directly with Portugal's, and in the 1470s the two kingdoms had gone to war over possession of Atlantic islands.

the collapse of Italian alliances upon Lorenzo's death encouraged Charles VIII of France to invade the peninsula, ushering in two generations of struggle in Italy between the Spanish and the French.

The struggle ended in two centuries of Spanish domination, giving Spain even greater access to Italian resources and control over the papacy.

In Rome in 1492, Alexander VI, the notorious Borgia pope from Aragon, was beginning his reign.

Spain's share of America's wealth added greatly to its power The Grand Duke of Muscovy ruled the core of what was then becoming

Russia. Ivan III was the first of his dynasty to shake loose from the grip of the

Golden Horde, as the Mongol rulers of Russia were known. Other countries dominated the rest of northern and eastern Europe in

1492. Sweden, Denmark, and Norway were united in the Kolmar Union under Sten Sture I, the Elder.

In Hungary, Laszlo II fought desperately against encroaching Ottoman Turks, the greatest power in eastern Europe.

THE GRAND TOUR: TURKEY TO AFRICA "the place that is like Paradise“ By the beginning of 1492 Turks and other Islamic peoples dominated a

great swath of land from the south of Spain across North Africa and down into Africa as far as Mozambique.

After the first Muslims spread into the Holy Land and Persia from Arabia, they extended their dominion from India through southeast Asia and penetrated into China and the Philippines.

Islam remained the only religion established throughout the length of the ecumene.

Columbus proved to be the savior of Christianity by handing the Western Hemisphere over to the Spanish, who were bitter foes of Islam.

During 1492, Spain, which had the largest Jewish community in Europe, expelled its Jews.

Columbus noted in his logbook that he was delayed by crowding at harborside. Leaving Palos, his ships swung into the Saltes and passed La Rabada, where his three vessels turned west, and a single accompanying craft, carrying the last of the Jews, turned east.

Many of the 180,000 refugees ended up in the Turkish possessions. Several powerful black empires controlled large parts of sub-Sahara

Africa. The Sudanese people lived south of Timbuktu united in the short-lived, brilliant Songhai empire that spread the Muslim faith all through western Africa.

Travel and trade across the Indian Ocean made Ethiopia an important information post, where soon the Portuguese would discover how to travel on to the Indian subcontinent.

THE GRAND TOUR: SOUTH ASIA

In 1492 most of India was under Muslim domination, except for the Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar in the south.

The Muslim sultan’s regime would soon be swept aside by invaders from central Asia.

In the countries of southeast Asia, the people were Theravada Buddhists, who venerated their leaders as gods.

In Thailand, Rama Thibadi II, a ruler from the Ayuthia Dynasty, would be the first in his line to give trading privileges to the Portuguese.

"No trading port as large as Malacca is known,"

Under Malacca's patronage, Islam spread to the Javanese trading ports and the "Spice Islands," today part of Indonesia.

In 1513 the Portuguese would finally reach the "Spice Island" chain.

THE GRAND TOUR: CHINA AND JAPAN

China was under the paternal rule of the most venerated of its Ming Emperors, Xiao-zong the emperor was locked in a struggle with the Confucian bureaucracy.

Fifteenth-century China had the potential to expand greatly its geographical horizons.

Zheng He brought tribute gifts from sixteen rulers-one such gift was an African giraffe.

China did not have a missionary religion that it wished to spread by force of arms.

Commanders were expected to focus on the immediate threat from land invasion to the north, and rulers spent their money finishing the Great Wall

To the east, Japan remained independent of Chinese domination.

In the Japan that Columbus hoped to visit, not only was there no Great Lord (the emperor Tsuchi-Mikado was a retiring figurehead under the control of the Ashikaga shogunate) but the ruling clan was also dissolving. In 1493 warlords drove Shogun Yoshitane from his capital.

THE GRAND TOUR: THE WESTERNHEMISPHERE In 1492 the Reverend Speaker Ahuitzotl, eighth leader of the Aztecs, was

extending the confederation of the Triple Alliance through Mesoamerica. The ancient Mayan civilization, which long predated the Aztecs, had no

centralized authority in 1492. A half century earlier, the city of Maya pan ruled over the northern

Yucatan peninsula, but in 1492 this city of 12,000 was only one of 16 communities that shared its area.

Only four Mayan books would survive at the hands of Spanish conquerors and priests.

Seacoast Mayas, the Putum had a complex long-distance trading network, centered on Cozumel Island, for waterborne bulk goods, such as salt, cacao, cotton, and ceramics.

The Incas underwent an explosive expansion toward the end of the fifteenth century.

The section of the Capac Nan (Beautiful Road), which snakes through central Ecuador from the high-altitude city of Quito, opened immediately after the Inca's death.

the Inca himself died in 1493, considering himself master of the known world. But despite their naval prowess, the Peruvians, Mayas, and Aztecs never crossed the Atlantic

Dionyse Settie, the first Englishman to publish a personal account of what Europeans called the "New World."

THE STAFF OF LIFE By 1492 the planet had already reached the end of the long warming trend. Three vast land areas depended upon a different staple: wheat in western

Eurasia, rice in eastern Eurasia, and com in the Americas. As cultivated in Europe, wheat (along with barley, oats, and rye) was a low-

yield crop grown on individual plots that required the cooperative labor of humans and animals to turn the soil.

Europeans life was always insecure because the yield per seed was very low, and their crops constantly were at the mercy of the weather or the caprices of long-distance transportation.

Of all the staples, rice demands the most centralized political organization for effective cultivation and leads to the largest population concentrations.

"Work when the sunrises, rest when the sun sets. The emperor is far away."

its central government was subject to cyclical rise and fall, imperial China was by far the most prosperous area of the world in 1492, with a consistently well-fed population.

Today 60 percent of the food eaten by the world's people is of American origin.

Between three-quarters and nine-tenths of the native population died during the next century as they contracted newly-introduced diseases.

THE GREAT TRADITIONS Four major forms of civilization flourished

in the broad landmass of Eurasia. Islam continually expanded its boundaries

by creating a succession of "gunpowder empires," the Hindu population of south Asia relied upon its increasingly elaborate caste structure for stability during the subsequent years of Mughal decline, and China remained focused upon a familial form of governmental organization.

All four great centers of civilization had elaborate bureaucratic structures, significant cities, iron implements, writing, and a high technology.

In southeast Asia, in the African empires, and in the great civilizations of the Americas – "high" culture was confined to temple-palace complexes standing amidst peasant villages.

Hunter-gatherer groups and stable agrarian tribes occupied Australia, much of the Americas, the interior of Africa, the Pacific islands, and the Arctic coastline.

THE EUROPEAN CHALLENGE Europeans do not involve ugly racist claims of superiority. Complex civilizations have developed in a half dozen places – Mesopotamia,

Egypt, the Indus Valley, China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes. "The Portuguese entered India with the sword in one hand and the Crucifix in

the other; finding much gold, they laid the Crucifix aside to fill their pockets." Through commerce and war, European kingdoms improved their shipping and

gained an ultimate advantage over the rest of the world. "The best ships in the world and able to sail anywhere." the Santa Maria, a lumbering carrack, hit a reef and sank on Christmas eve in

1492. Westerners were also willing to push military developments to extremes not

thought of by more inhibited societies. By the end of the sixteenth century, Portuguese and Spanish gunships were

being supplanted by the even more formidable fleets of Dutch and English men-of-war.

Often the encounters between black and white, occidental and Asian, or Amerindian and European, brought misunderstanding and conflict.

Human beings never needed an excuse to be intolerant; history records endless struggles over language, territory, and religion. This latent hostility becomes most apparent in colonialism, imperialism, and slavery.

In 1992 the Columbus Space Sail Cup will call upon design teams in the Americas, Europe, and Asia to develop three solar-powered spacecraft.

Christopher Columbus broke the ancient seal of ignorance that earlier societies had set upon the Ocean Sea. His venture gave him a significant role in the coming together of humanity.