Allusion has been made to the discovery of America and of the Cape Route to India, two events which occurred at the dawn of the modern era of history, and were destined to exercise a momentous influence upon the commerce of the world as well as the progress and welfare of the human race. Near the close of the fifteenth century the map of the world consisted of central and southern Europe, the north coast of Africa, and Asia as far as Persia. India and the far East was a land of mystery, while the West was a waste of waters enveloped in gloom and superstition. With the aid of the mariner's compass bold navigators had gradually ventured farther from land, and in 1431 a ship captain from Bruges had sighted the Azore Islands. The Atlantic was being gradually explored.

The Portuguese were at this time an enterprising and growing commercial and maritime people and their capital, Lisbon, owing to its frontier position, had become an important distributing point for products on the western coast of Europe. In 1496 a Portuguese navigator, Vasco de Gama, steering his course southward along the shores of Africa, finally doubled the Cape of Good Hope and reached India, to return with fabulous accounts of its wealth and mysteries. The importance of this discovery was enhanced by the fact that at this time the Turks, Moors and Algerians were swarming around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, capturing ships and caravans and destroying commerce, so that the old routes to India overland by caravans were no longer safe. Venice, owing to the decline of her commerce, was no longer able to successfully resist these inroads and attacks, and hence the new route afforded an effectual escape from this serious difficulty. Besides, an all sea route avoided the labor and damage to goods incident to handling them in changing from ship to camels or the reverse, and furthermore, by this sea route the traders were enabled to go to India and see the country for themselves, examine its products and judge of its resources and wants, instead of trading, as hitherto, chiefly through Arabian merchants. Thus we see the importance of the discovery of the new route, and its effect in diverting European commerce from Mediterranean ports, to which it only returned after the completion of the Suez Canal in our own time.

The Portuguese established colonies on the coast of Malabar and the island of Ceylon. After some conflicts with the natives on account of outrages inflicted upon them, aided by the Mohammedan merchants and even by the Venetians who sought to expel their rival from this rich field of commerce, the Portuguese succeeded in firmly establishing an extensive trade with India. By 1515 they had captured a number of cities along the coast, subjugated the spice bearing islands, and really controlled the commerce of the coast of Asia extending from the Persian Gulf to the islands of Japan. Lisbon became the seat of this extensive commerce and the distributing point for the products of India.

Early in the spring of each year a fleet of Portuguese ships set sail for India, convoyed by war ships. The route lay along the west coast of Africa; and after doubling the Cape, the trade winds assisted them in an easy and direct voyage across the Indian Ocean to the city of Goa, on the west coast, their principal port. Returning, the route was much the same, except that the fleet touched at various trading stations along the coast, thence at St. Helena, the Cape Verde and Azore islands, and home. The voyage usually required about eighteen months for its completion, and owing to inferior ships and the imperfect knowledge of navigation which prevailed at that time, frequently resulted in the loss of a portion of the fleet. But the profits of this commerce were very large and the field of adventure enticing.

From India the Portuguese ships brought to Europe in greater abundance those products frequently mentioned heretofore as having been imported by the caravans of Arabia and Persia. From the west coast of Africa and the islands they brought ivory, gold, gum, wine, cotton, and slaves. To Lisbon came the ships of Britain, Flanders, and the Hansa towns of the North and Baltic Sea ports, to receive their cargoes for home consumption, and for a time Lisbon promised to eclipse the wealth and commercial greatness of even Venice or Genoa. Having succeeded so well in the East, the Portuguese turned their faces westward and discovered Brazil with its vast and varied wealth. But the avarice and greed of the Portuguese, their monopolistic spirit, their oppression of other merchants who were their best customers, and their generally narrow and short-sighted policy, together with their neglect to provide for the defense of their colonies and trade possessions, soon brought about their downfall. By 1580 the Portuguese commerce in the East had seriously declined, and in that year the crown was united with that of Spain under Phillip II. This union of the two countries continued until 1640, when they again separated, but since that date Portugal has been too weak and impoverished to achieve any distinction in commerce.

The Spaniards of the sixteenth century were great explorers and discoverers, but their conquests were usually inspired by an inordinate thirst for gold and not for commercial advantages. They were singularly lacking in the commercial faculty, and despised the industries. They not only neglected and failed to build up the waning Portuguese commerce in the East, but soon became involved in a war with the Dutch, which was the means not only of destroying a considerable portion of their own and the Portuguese fleet, but also of driving the Dutch into the commerce of India which the Portuguese had once so jealously kept to themselves. By means of discoveries in the new world, under the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella, by Columbus, Cabot and son and Ponce de Leon, and the inhuman conquests of Mexico by Cortez, of Peru by Pizarro, and of Chili by Almagro, all of which are embraced within a period of fifty years in the last part of the fifteenth and early part of the sixteenth centuries, nearly the whole of the Western Hemisphere came under the control of Spain, and so remained for almost a hundred years. Besides crushing out in Mexico and Peru a civilization which might have instructed Spain, and practicing the most atrocious barbarities upon millions of innocent human beings for greed of gold, and in the name of religion, Spain did almost nothing towards developing the resources of this new world.