Had Columbus perished in mid ocean, it is doubtful whether America would have remained long undiscovered. In 1497 John Cabot, an Italian in the service of Henry VII of England, reached the Canadian coast probably near Cape Breton Island. In 1500 Cabral with a Portuguese expedition bound for India was so far driven out of his course by equatorial currents that he came upon Brazil, which he claimed for the king of Portugal. Yet America was named for neither Columbus, Cabot, nor Cabral, but for another Italian, the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci, who, returning from voyages to Brazil (1499-1500), published a letter concerning what he called "the new world." It was thought that he had discovered this new world, and so it was called after him,—America.
[Sidenote: First Circumnavigation of the Earth]
Very slowly the truth about America was borne in upon the people of Europe. They persisted in calling the newly discovered lands the "Indies," and even after Balboa had discovered (1513) that another ocean lay beyond the Isthmus of Panama, it was thought that a few days' sail would bring one to the outlying possessions of the Great Khan. Not until Magellan, leaving Spain in 1519, passed through the straits that still bear his name and crossed the Pacific was this vain hope relinquished. Magellan was killed by the natives of the Philippine Islands, but one of his ships reached Seville in 1522 with the tale of the marvelous voyage.
Even after the circumnavigation of the world explorers looked for channels leading through or around the Americas. Such were the attempts of Verrazano (1524), Cartier (1534), Frobisher (1576-1578), Davis (1585-1587), and Henry Hudson in 1609.
ESTABLISHMENT OF COLONIAL EMPIRES
[Sidenote: Portugal]
When Vasco da Gama returned to Lisbon in 1499 with a cargo worth sixty times the cost of his expedition, the Portuguese knew that the wealth of the Indies was theirs. Cabral in 1500, and Albuquerque in 1503, followed the route of Da Gama, and thereafter Portuguese fleets rounded the Cape year by year to gain control of Goa (India), Ormuz, Diu (India), Ceylon, Malacca, and the Spice Islands, and to bring back from these places and from Sumatra, Java, Celebes, and Nanking (China) rich cargoes of "spicery." After the Turkish conquest of Egypt in 1517 the bulk of commerce was carried on by way of the Cape of Good Hope, for it was cheaper to transport goods by sea than to pay taxes to the Turks in addition to caravan cartage. Lisbon rapidly gained prominence as a market for Eastern wares.
The Portuguese triumph was short-lived. Dominion over half the world— for Portugal claimed all Africa, southern Asia, and Brazil as hers by right of discovery—had been acquired by the wise policy of the Portuguese royal house, but Portugal had neither products of her own to ship to Asia, nor the might to defend her exclusive right to the carrying trade with the Indies. The annexation of Portugal to Spain (1580) by Philip II precipitated disaster. The port of Lisbon was closed to the French, English, and Dutch, with whom Philip was at war, and much of the colonial empire of Portugal was conquered speedily by the Dutch.
[Sidenote: Spain]
On the first voyage of Columbus Spain based her claim to share the world with Portugal. In order that there might be perfect harmony between the rival explorers of the unknown seas, Pope Alexander VI issued on 4 May, 1493, the famous bull [Footnote: A bull was a solemn letter or edict issued by the pope.] attempting to divide the uncivilized parts of the world between Spain and Portugal by the "papal line of demarcation," drawn from pole to pole, 100 leagues west of the Azores. A year later the line was shifted to about 360 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. Portugal had the eastern half of modern Brazil, Africa, and all other heathen lands in that hemisphere; the rest comprised the share of Spain.