Early Atlantic Exploration of the Americas

Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage for the Castilian crown demonstrated a viable Atlantic crossing to Caribbean lands unknown to contemporary Europeans. His return intensified competition among rulers and merchants seeking new routes, commodities and territorial claims, while subsequent voyages produced increasingly detailed information about the geography west of the Atlantic.

John Cabot sailed under the authority of Henry VII and reached the North American coast in 1497, while Amerigo Vespucci participated in voyages that helped establish that the lands encountered across the Atlantic were not simply the eastern edge of Asia. News, maps and commercial intelligence circulated between Iberian, Italian and English networks despite fierce political rivalry.

This phase provides a more specific context than the wider Age of Exploration for works about the competitive Atlantic voyages of the 1490s and early 1500s. David Boyle’s Toward the Setting Sun treats Columbus, Cabot and Vespucci as participants in an interconnected race for routes, patronage and geographical knowledge.