Why are Western Explorers credited as global explorers?
The theme of the 2019 World Economic Forum - the International Organisation for Public-Private Cooperation - in Davos this week is "Globalisation 4.0: Shaping a New Architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution." The Forum’s mission is to engage "the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas." There are 3000 delegates with countries representing emerging markets making up 21% of delegates. China, with 18.4% of the global population and 15.2% of its GDP has only 3.2% of delegates. There are 1189 from Europe including 296 from the UK. One might have hoped for a more representative mix among the “global elite”.
In articles preceding this year’s event, a capstone piece called "A brief history of Globalisation" referenced the contribution of the Age of Discovery also called the Age of Exploration, in which European explorers are credited with connecting the world in the 15th and 17th centuries.
Before the late fifteenth century, most of the world's explorers were not European—but Arabians, Chinese, Indians and Southeast Asians. At the start of the Age of Exploration, compared to the wealth of China and India, western Europe was marginal, weak and poor. So why are western explorers seen as the world’s explorers?
Firstly, before Columbus’s epic voyage in 1492 most seaborne explorers had proceeded incrementally, hugging coastlines or crossing narrow seas, not venturing far, nor for long, from places they knew. Further, explorers always sailed into the wind to ensure a following, homebound wind would return them to their point of departure. In western Europe, the offshore wind systems of the Atlantic required mariners to innovate and learn and gave Columbus the skills necessary to eventually and audaciously break with prevailing norms and disrupt maritime understanding of what was possible.
Da Gama’s voyage to India (1497–1499) via the Atlantic avoided the contested Mediterranean and Arabian Peninsula. Setting off from Lisbon when he and his men moored in St Helena Bay, 100 miles north of the Cape, the voyage of 96 days was the longest completed by European sailors of that time. From Muslim port of Malindi they were navigated by a local pilot to Calicut – beginning a reliance on local sailors - and created for Portugal unopposed access to Indian markets. It was such a prosperous time in India that, as historian Fernandez Arnesto argues “for the most part [the Indian Ocean was] characterised by a shortage of available shipping in relation to commercial demand. This was why the peoples of the Indian Ocean initially welcomed European interlopers, who were ‘truculent, demanding, barbaric, and often violent, but who added to the shipping stock’. Economist Adam Smith, the author of The Wealth of Nations (1776) ultimately ranked it as the “one of the greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind” that “united”, for better or worse, the “most distant parts of the world”.
Thirdly, the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese explorer in the Spanish expedition to the East Indies (1519 to 1522), in search of a western sea route to the Spice Islands, proved the earth, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe were a connected world that could be encircled by sea. Sea routes, rather than land routes, are regarded as more important in global history because they carried goods faster and more economically thus consolidating and diffusing connectivity. Once found there was no going back and in a period of about 40 years, the world had changed dramatically
Momentous as these events proved, what relevance do they have to our thinking about the role of exploration and by extension, the Explorer’s Mindset?
Christopher Columbus is probably the most mythologised of all explorers – as hero and villain. Legend has him harbouring a well rationalised plan to sail west to China but evidence suggests he wavered for several years among many competing alternatives – Japan, China or India but also the mythical destinations of Antilia, the Seven Cities and the Antipodes, mainly drawn towards the seductive unknown by the hope of fame and fortune. Far from a lone visionary he was among many who desired to overcome humble origins and transform his prospects with a feat of daring – it was a common medieval ambition. Despite these factors, or perhaps because of them, Columbus was uniquely able to bring together his experience as a seasoned navigator with his skills, those of an adequate geographer and his knowledge, he’d read many ancient and modern authorities. He also took the final step and acted at a critical moment of opportunity.
Buoyed by ancient cartography, intrigued by Marco Polo’s reflections and confident in his royal commission from Ferdinand and Isabella, he set sail and resolved to write everything “I should do and see and undergo” in his journal. It was this decision to record all his actions and experiences, uncommon for the time, that is perhaps the most important of all.
This is because Columbus’ journal changed the way people understood the world. He explored and he also shared his story. The crucial role of narrative in exploration began here. Explorers must be storytellers and those stories should enrich our understanding of the world in all its forms.
Columbus’ crossing of the Atlantic, from the well-placed Spanish held Canary Islands, took 33 days and the trade winds blew him about 8000 miles off his presumed course. It was a much longer journey than he’d anticipated when he arrived at one of small islands of the Bahamas, he assumed it to be part of Japan, as per his calculations. His journal records his bewilderment as he and his men met the indigenous people of the Caribbean, the Taino and the shock of the encounter was so immense that it simply could not be digested. For weeks Columbus continued to search among the islands for his way to Japan and from there on to China. It wasn’t until his third voyage Columbus acknowledged that “I believe this is a very great continental land that until now has been unknown” (to Europeans at least). Even in his fourth and final voyage, Columbus reverted north to try to round the land into what he believed must be the Indian Ocean on the other side.
The perplexing incompatibility of Columbus' experiences and his beliefs to me exposes an important feature of exploration. Setting out on a journey of discovery is fundamental to exploration - that type of travel which is distinct from a merchant’s caravan or a pilgrimage. In the latter cases, the destination is known, if distant and exotic. Exploration however, is contingent, unfolding in the interaction with the unfamiliar. It is this quality which makes it so enriching and the reason why expeditionary learning can be so potent.
Permanent change was wrought on the “New World” in the decades that followed Columbus as routes of exploration and conquest were carved into the landscape. But there remain enduring factors from the Age of Exploration, which I would humbly suggest the delegates of the World Economic Forum recall as they discuss Globalisation 4.0 this week:
The Age of Exploration began at the margin of the prevailing world order and was driven by need
The best known figures of the Age of Exploration fundamentally overturned what was thought possible
Exploration involves and affects many more people than those in the ships holding the quadrants
Exploration's narrative can change our understanding of our world
and
Explorers act.
If you would like to read more about the history of exploration I recommend
Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (2007) and Exploration: A Very Short Introduction by Stewart Weaver (2015) both OUP..