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1. In 1534, France’s King Francis I authorized the navigator Jacques Cartier (1491-1557) to lead a voyage to the New World in order to seek gold and other riches, as well as a new route to Asia.
2. Cartier’s three expeditions along the St. Lawrence River would later enable France to lay claim to the lands that would become Canada.
3. Cartier was believed to have traveled to Brazil and Newfoundland before 1534.

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1. Henry Hudson made his first voyage west from England in 1607, when he was hired to find a shorter route to Asia from Europe through the Arctic Ocean.
2. Hudson’s discoveries laid the groundwork for Dutch colonization of the Hudson River region, as well as English land claims in Canada.
3. Hudson believed he might have found the Pacific, but he soon realized he had sailed into a gigantic bay, now known as Hudson Bay.

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1. John Cabot (or Giovanni Caboto, as he was known in Italian) may have developed the idea of sailing westward to reach the riches of Asia while working for a Venetian merchant.
2. John Cabot's landing in 1497 is generally thought to be the first European encounter with the North American continent since Leif Eriksson and the Vikings explored the area they called Vinland in the 11th century.
3. In 1496, King Henry VII issued letters patent to Cabot and his son, which authorized them to make a voyage of discovery and to return with goods for sale on the English market.

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1. Francis Drake participated in some of the earliest English slaving voyages to Africa and earned a reputation for his privateering, or piracy, against Spanish ships and possessions.
2. Sent by Queen Elizabeth II to South America in 1577, he returned home via the Pacific and became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe; the queen rewarded him with a knighthood.
3. In 1588, Drake served as second-in-command during the English victory over the Spanish Armada.

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1. Cortés was a Spanish conquistador (soldier and explorer) who conquered the vast Aztec empire in central America.
2. In 1504 he sailed for Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), moving to Cuba in 1511 where he assisted Diego Velázquez in his conquest of the island and made his reputation for courage and daring.
3. In 1523 Cortés was named governor and captain general of New Spain.

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1. Helped establish the town of Darién on the Isthmus of Panama, becoming interim governor
2. In 1513, he led the first European expedition to the Pacific Ocean, but news of the discovery arrived after the king had sent Pedro Arias de Ávila to serve as the new governor of Darién.
3. Ávila, reportedly jealous of Balboa, had him beheaded for treason in 1519.

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1. Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer who stumbled upon the Americas and whose journeys marked the beginning of centuries of transatlantic colonization.
2. The explorer Christopher Columbus made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain
3. Christopher Columbus was not the first person to propose that a person could reach Asia by sailing west from Europe.

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1. Spanish conquistador who led an expedition that conquered the Inca Empire.
2. He captured and killed Incan emperor Atahualpa, and claimed the lands for Spain.
3. On 10 November 1509, Pizarro sailed from Spain to the New World with Alonso de Ojeda on an expedition to Urabá.

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1. In search of fame and fortune, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-1521) set out from Spain in 1519 with a fleet of five ships to discover a western sea route to the Spice Islands.
2. En route he discovered what is now known as the Strait of Magellan and became the first European to cross the Pacific Ocean.
3. His ambitious expedition proved that the globe could be circled by sea and that the world was much larger than had previously been imagined.

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1. The Portuguese nobleman Vasco da Gama (1460-1524) sailed from Lisbon in 1497 on a mission to reach India and open a sea route from Europe to the East.
2. Da Gama received a hero’s welcome back in Portugal, and was sent on a second expedition to India in 1502, during which he brutally clashed with Muslim traders in the region.
3. Though the local Hindu population of Calicut initially welcomed the arrival of the Portuguese sailors (who mistook them for Christians), tensions quickly flared after da Gama offered their ruler a collection of relatively cheap goods as an arrival gift.

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1. He was castrated before he, at age 10, was placed in servitude of the Prince of Yan, but another source indicates that the castration occurred in 1385.
2. Zheng He's fleets visited Brunei, Java, Thailand and Southeast Asia, India, the Horn of Africa, and Arabia, dispensing and receiving goods along the way.
3. Zheng He generally sought to attain his goals through diplomacy, and his large army awed most would-be enemies into submission.

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1. Became the first European mariner to round the southern tip of Africa, opening the way for a sea route from Europe to Asia.
2. He was at the court of João II, king of Portugal (1455-1495), and was a superintendent of the royal warehouses.
3. Dias named the rocky second cape Cabo das Tormentas (Cape of Storms) for the tempestuous storms and strong Atlantic-Antarctic currents that made ship travel so perilous.