AGE OF SEASACQUIRING SIGNAL
Event archive · 1415—1763
Enter by period or mechanism to see how war, navigation, treaties, trade and companies drove one another. Each dossier expands the participants, local powers, immediate results, long-term effects and limits of the evidence.
Event matrix
Routes explain how oceans became continuously navigable; conquest and sea power trace violence; treaties show claims entering law; trade reveals how capital, labour and ports made control durable.
1415—1763 · All mechanisms
Portugal seized the port of Ceuta in North Africa with large military expeditions, linking war, commercial objectives and the subsequent decades of Atlantic expansion.
The advance along the West African coast was accelerated by the passage and return of Gil Eanes across an area that had long been regarded by Portuguese navigators as insurmountable.
The Madeira sugar industry began using bonded labour; the Elmina Castle, built in 1482, fixed the West African gold trade as a defensive stronghold.
For the first time in a documented European voyage, the Diyas fleet bypassed the southern end of Africa, proving that the Atlantic Ocean was capable of connecting the Indian Ocean.
The plan to find an Asian route unexpectedly arrived in the Caribbean, opening up continuous contacts between Europe and the Americas, also leading to colonization, forced labour and the spread of disease.
Castile and the Portuguese royal family draw the line between overseas claims and place occupation of established populations and lands in the European imperial order.
The trans-African route is connected to the East African ports and the Indian Ocean monsoon network, and the European fleet, for the first time, completes its full voyage to India from the Atlantic Ocean.
The same fleet connects South America, Africa and India, and Portugal's territorial claims to Brazil enter the same imperial route as the armed trade in the Indian Ocean.
Albuquerque seized Goa and Malacca in turn, using key ports as its anchor, linking commercial access, diplomatic alliances and maritime violence.
The Magellan team passed through the Straits and the Pacific Ocean and died in the Philippines; the El Cano rate of Victoria returned to Spain and completed its first recorded global voyage.
Cortez and Pizarro seized two imperial capitals with local allies, violence and disease; indigenous resistance continued, while Spanish colonization began deep into the continent.
The trans-Pacific return route was opened in 1565, and Spain controlled Manila in 1571; as a result, there was a large exchange of Chinese and Asian goods between the American Silver Bank.
This is both the second completed voyage of the Globe and the private expedition against the Spanish Pacific system, supported by the Crown of England.
Spain had failed to achieve the goal of invasion of England; that was not the immediate end of Spanish maritime rights, but had been a sign of the escalation of Nordic maritime competition.
The Crown and the Republic have granted trade monopolies and extensive powers to commercial companies, and capital, armed fleets and overseas strongholds have begun to drive ocean competition together.
Following the destruction of Jakarta, a headquarters was established at its original site to organize Asian trade with violence, monopoly and a vast network of strongholds.
The Europe-Asia route has a fixed repeater; the supply facility quickly expanded into a colonial society that has taken the Koikoi land and imported slave labour.
Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Africa and India are interlinked, and the years of 1763 and around have established a clear British advantage in North America and India.