History 1810E Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Inter Caetera, Adventure Game, Iberian Peninsula
Document Summary
Reading material is under resources on owl. Secondary source assignment on the spice wars coming up. Can"t miss more than (cid:887) tutorials or you fail the class. Medieval europe"s contacts with the east and the beginnings of exploration. 3 continents known - europe, asia, africa. The most sophisticated continent was asia, then africa, then europe (europe. September 11th is at the far end of the international trade routes) Higden world map 1350- asia (top), europe (south west), africa (south east) and jerusalem is in the center. Earliest contact with the rest of the world: crusades, 1096 onwards, marco polo c. 1270-95: venetian, travelled to china. What interested them: prester john- christian figure, mythical but europeans did not know this could only get in the east, spices- rare, exotic, expensive, consistent commodity that europeans. Europeans didn"t know where these spices came from they only knew.