In short, Cabot made three trips across the Atlantic, but the details of what he actually found are sketchy. Despite him being Italian, the English bankrolled his mission to find the Northwest Passage, and he sailed under the British flag. The next direct attempt to find the Northwest Passage was made by Italian explorer John Cabot, (whose real name was Giovanni Caboto). After his discoveries in the south, he and his patron country of Spain turned all their interests to engorging themselves on the gold of Central and South America. Of course, no one knew if a Northwest Passage existed, but it was reasonable to think that such a sea route might be found – and so one of history’s greatest, centuries-long searches began.Ĭolumbus made only a cursory stab at exploring the northern coasts of the Americas. Thus, there was much interest was in finding the fabled Northwest Passage, which everyone hoped would mean a quick seaway to the riches of the China trade. But in those days, there were no such models or institutions – no real business methods – for making investments now that would start paying off maybe 10 or 20 years after an initial investment. Before anyone could make money by establishing a colony in the New World, a system of long-term economic investment was needed. These were people who had little need for metals with monetary value. Unlike South America, there was no gold-rich civilization to plunder, but rather, primitive Indians living close to nature. They enjoyed an immediate payoff by conquering and robbing the riches of the ancient peoples in those regions.īut for England, realizing any form of wealth from North America would not be so easy. The Spaniards and Portuguese found just that in the form of the Inca and Aztec civilizations of Central and South America. What early explorers needed to do was find quick pay-off resources, especially easy access to gold or silver. Back then, short-term profits were the goal. But in those times, there was no basic economic model that could deliver fast profits for European countries. One might think that after the discovery of a continent as huge and magnificent as North America, all interest in a Northwest Passage and Chinese trade would have taken a back seat to the potential wealth of the New World. Columbus is most known for “discovering America” but less is said about the fact that he also sailed north and became the first European to make a tentative stab at what came to be known as The Northwest Passage. In fact, that was the initial goal of Columbus. Thus, after Columbus discovered the American continent in 1492, a flame of excitement ignited across Europe over the possibility that Cathay could be reached by sailing directly west. The only alternative was to sail south around the Horn of Africa and then head east through the Indian Ocean on the way to Cathay – an agonizingly long journey that drastically reduced the advantage of any trade in the Orient. ![]() But after the Turks took command of the East, sea powers like England, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands had no easy access to the Far East. It was well understood that trade with China, then most often called Cathay, was a source of tremendous wealth. Finding a the Northwest Passage was a 400-year obsession for sea-faring nations. Finding a direct route by sea to China became something of an obsession for the kingdoms of Western Europe in the mid-1400s after the Ottoman Turk Empire gained control of much of the Middle East.
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