Navigation:

Remember, a gold floren is like $45

The Greeks and Romans actually traded with India, thanks to their access to Egypt (and thus the Red Sea, and thus India), but with the rise of Islam, the west lost access to Egypt. So the Muslims, the Genoese, and the Venetians ended up ruling the Mediterranean, forcing everyone in Europe to deal with the Genoese and Venetians (who were middlemen for the Muslims). This drove the rest of Europe (especially Portugal) to try to find a way Around the Mediterranean.

An example of how big of a deal this was: a trader could buy 100-weight of pepper for three florens. This traveled down the Silk Road to the black sea to a Venetian trading port and sold at the market in Venice for 80 gold Florens. Big deal profits.

Everyone wants rid of the middleman, but this will require finding a new trade route. The Portuguese do this initially, but they eventually get steamrolled by others (Spanish, English). This ends the golden age for Italy.

There was a video. What follows is some notes therefrom:

Venice and Portugal got in a big Navigation Fight. Portugal ‘won’ by finding the route around the tip of Africa to India. An Italian spy got his hands on a Portuguese map in 1502. The Portuguese met native Indonesian sailors, with their own maps and trading routes (the Bugis). They used that info to find, and map, the spice islands (more specifically, the northernmost islands where Cloves glow).

Meanwhile, Spain had been carving out an empire in the New World. And the Spanish in Seville had their own hoard of maps. (The Portuguese had Brazil, though)

Eventually, the Portuguese Empire began to fall apart. The first big thing was when Magellan defected to Spain (after getting into a fight with the King of Portugal), along with his plan to sail around the world to the WEST, giving Spain access to the spice islands. Magellan’s crew succeeded (in 1520ish), though the man himself croaked on the way. So now Spain and Portugal got in a mapmaking fight: Spanish mapmakers (read: Portuguese mapmakers hired by the Spanish) put the islands in the Spanish chunk of the world, while the Portuguese put the islands in their chunk.

Diogo Homem fled (from Lisbon)murder charges to England. His relative Andre (‘the prince of cosmographers’) also fled Lisbon and worked for the French. He proposed a plan to the English to raid Portuguese gold stores in Africa, but it was turned down and he was nearly assassinated by the Portuguese.

Meanwhile, the Europeans have been slowly taking over the Spice islands.

And that was the video. Sorry my navigation notes aren’t more coherent; this was one of the units that got cut down by snow days.