See also: Age of Sail
The Age of Discovery or Age of Exploration was a period from the early 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century, during which European ships traveled around the world in search of new trading routes and partners to feed burgeoning capitalism in Europe. They also were in search of trading goods such as gold, silver and spices. In the process, Europeans encountered peoples and mapped lands previously unknown to them. Among the most famous explorers of the period were Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Pedro Álvares Cabral, John Cabot, and Ferdinand Magellan.
The Age of Exploration was rooted in new technologies and ideas growing out of the Renaissance. These included advances in cartography, navigation, firepower and shipbuilding. Many people wanted to find a route to Asia through the west of Europe. The most important development was the invention of first the carrack and then caravel in Iberia. These vessels evolved from medieval European designs with a fruitful combination of Mediterranean and North Sea designs and the addition of some Arabic elements. They were the first ships that could leave the relatively placid and calm Mediterranean and sail safely on the open Atlantic.

Age of Discovery
Environmental determinism
Regional geography
Quantitative revolution
Critical geography Exploration by Land

Main article: Portugal in the Age of Discovery European colonization of the Americas
Portuguese exploration and colonization continued despite the new rivalry with Spain. The Portuguese became the first Westerners to reach and trade with Japan. Under the King Manuel I the Portuguese crown launched a scheme to keep control of the lands and trade routes that had been declared theirs. The strategy was to build a series of forts that would allow them to control all the major trade routes of the east. Thus forts and colonies were established on the Gold Coast, Luanda, Mozambique, Zanzibar, Mombassa, Socotra, Ormuz, Calcutta, Goa, Bombay, Malacca, Macau, and Timor. The Portuguese also controlled Brazil, which had been discovered in 1500 by Pedro Álvares Cabral and was partly on the Portuguese side of the global "divide" set at Tordesillas.
Portugal had difficulty expanding its empire inland and concentrated mostly on the coastal areas. Over time the nation proved to simply be too small to provide the funds and manpower sufficient to manage and defend such a massive and dispersed venture. The forts spread across the world were chronically undermanned and ill-equipped. They could not compete with the larger powers that slowly encroached on its empire and trade. The days of near monopoly of east trade were numbered. In 1580 the Spanish King Philip II became also King of Portugal, as rightful heir to the Crown after his cousin Sebastião died without sons (Philip II of Spain was grandson of Manuel I of Portugal). The combined empires were simply too big to go unchallenged. The Dutch, French and English explorers ignored the Papal division of the world. During the 17th century as the Dutch, English and French established ever more trading posts in the east, at the expense of Portugal, the wealth gained added to their military might while Portugal's weakened as it lost trading posts and colonies in West Africa, the Middle East and the Far East. Bombay was given away to the English as a marriage gift. Some, like Macau, East Timor, Goa, Angola, and Mozambique, as well as Brazil, remained in Portuguese possession. The Dutch attempted to conquer Brazil, and at one time controlled almost half of the occupied territory, but were eventually defeated.

Decline of the Portuguese monopoly
The nations outside of Iberia refused to acknowledge the Treaty of Tordesillas. France, the Netherlands, and England each had a long maritime tradition and, despite Iberian protections, the new technologies and maps soon made their way north.
The first of these missions (1497) was that of the English expedition lead by the Italian, John Cabot. It was the first of a series of French and English missions exploring North America. Spain had largely ignored the northern part of the Americas as it had few people and far fewer riches than Central America. In 1525, Giovanni da Verrazzano became the first recorded European to visit the East Coast of the present-day United States. The expeditions of Cabot, Jacques Cartier (first voyage 1534) and others were mainly hoping to find the Northwest Passage and thus a link to the riches of Asia. This was never discovered, but in their travels other possibilities were found and in the early seventeenth century colonists from a number of Northern European states began to settle on the east coast of North America.
It was the northerners who also became the great rivals to the Portuguese in Africa and around the Indian Ocean. Dutch, French, and English ships began to flout the Portuguese monopoly and found trading forts and colonies of their own. Gradually the Portuguese and Spanish market and possession share declined, the new entrants surrounding many of their most valuable possessions (like Hong Kong being next to Macau). The northern Europeans also took the lead in exploring the last unknown regions of the Pacific Ocean and the North-American west coast, which was in the Spanish part of the Tordesillas divide. Dutch explorers such as Willem Jansz and Abel Tasman explored the coasts of Australia while in the eighteenth century it was English explorer James Cook who mapped much of Polynesia.

End of the Age of Exploration

Age of Sail
Chinese exploration
Colonialism
Colonization of Africa
Exploration
Global empire
History of the west coast of North America
Land hemisphere
Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
Naval history