Age of Discovery
One of the most important technological development of the Renaissance was the invention of the caravel. This combination of European and Niger ship building technologies for the first time made extensive trade and travel over the Atlantic feasible. While first introduced by the Italian states, and the early captains, such as Giovanni Caboto, who were Italian, the development would end Northern Italy’s role as the trade crossroads of Europe, shifting wealth and power westards to Spain, Portugal, England, and the Netherlands. These states all began to conduct extensive trade with Africa and Asia, and in the Americas began extensive colonisation activities. This period of exploration and expansion has become known as the Age of Discovery. Eventually European power spread around the globe.
Read more about this topic: Northern Renaissance
Famous quotes containing the words age of, age and/or discovery:
“This ... is an age of specialization, and in such an age the repertory theater is an anachronism, a ludicrous anachronism.”
—Minnie Maddern Fiske (1865–1932)
“Youth no less becomes
The light and careless livery that it wears
Than settled age his sables and his weeds,
Importing health and graveness.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)