The Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Exploration, was a period in history starting in the 15th century and continuing into the 17th century, during which Europeans and their descendants intensively explored and mapped the world. Historians often refer to the Age of discovery as the period of Portuguese and Spanish pioneer oceanic explorations, between the 15th and 16th centuries, that established links with Africa, Asia and the Americas in search for an alternative trade route to Asia, moved by the trade of gold, silver and spices. These explorations in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans were soon followed by France, England and the Netherlands, who explored the Portuguese and Spanish trade routes into the Pacific Ocean, reaching Australia in 1606 and New Zealand in 1642. European exploration spanned until accomplishing the global mapping of the world, resulting in a new worldview and distant civilizations acknowledging each other, reaching the most remote boundaries much later.

The Age of Discovery marks the passage from the feudal Middle Ages of the 15th century to the Early Modern Period with the rise of European nation-states in the 16th century. Along with the Renaissance and the rise of humanism, it was an important motor for the start of Modern era, ushering in a new age of scientific and intellectual inquiry.European overseas expansion led to the rise of colonial empires, with the contact between the Old and New Worlds producing the Columbian Exchange, involving the transfer of plants, animals, foods, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases, and culture between the Eastern and Western hemispheres, in one of the most significant global events concerning ecology, agriculture, and culture in history.

Medieval expeditions by land

thumb|250px|Map of Marco Polo exploration (1271-1295)
The prelude to the Age of Exploration was a series of European expeditions crossing Eurasia by land in the late Middle Ages. While the Mongols had threatened Europe with pillage and destruction, the Mongol states also unified much of Eurasia creating trade routes and communication lines stretching from the Middle East to China.Jensen, De Lamar (1992), Renaissance Europe 2nd ed. pg. 328 A series of Europeans took advantage of these to explore eastwards. These were almost all Italians as the trade between Europe and the Middle East was almost completely controlled by traders from the Italian city-states. The close Italian links to the Levant created great curiosity and commercial interest in countries which lay further east. Christian leaders, such as Prince Henry the Navigator, also launched expeditions in hopes of finding converts, or the fabled Prester John. There were many different types of causes and effects of the Age of Exploration.

The first of these travellers was Giovanni de Plano Carpini who journeyed to Mongolia and back from 1241–1247. The most famous traveller, however, was Marco Polo who wrote of journeys throughout Asia from 1271 to 1295 in which he described being a guest at the Yuan Dynasty court of Kublai Khan. His journey was written up as Travels and the work was read throughout Europe. In 1439, Niccolò Da Conti published an account of his travels to India and Southeast Asia. In 1466-1472, a Russian merchant Afanasy Nikitin of Tver travelled to India, which he described in his book A Journey Beyond the Three Seas.

These journeys had little immediate effect. The Mongol Empire collapsed almost as quickly as it formed and soon the route to the east became far more difficult and dangerous. The Black Death of the fourteenth century also blocked travel and trade. The land route to the East was controlled by Mediterranean commercial interests and Islamic empires that both controlled the flow and price of goods. The rise of the aggressive and expansionist Ottoman Empire further limited the possibilities of European overland trade.

Oceanic exploration

thumb|250px|The important [[Silk Road and Spice trade routes that were blocked by the Ottoman Empire spurring exploration motivated by finding alternative sea routes]]
thumb|250px|Path of [[Vasco da Gama's 1497 travel to India (black), the first navigation around Africa. Previous travels of Pêro da Covilhã (orange) and Afonso de Paiva (blue), and their common route (green)]]
For the first oceanic exploration Western Europeans used the compass, progressive new advances in cartography and astronomy and sailing ships, the most important being the creation of the caravel and carrack designs. These vessels evolved from medieval European designs from the North Sea and both the Christian and Islamic Mediterranean. They were the first ships that could leave the coastal cabotage navigation and the relatively placid Mediterranean, Baltic or North Sea, and sail safely on the open Atlantic.
It was not until the caravel was developed in Iberia that Western Europeans seriously considered Asiatic trade and oceanic exploration. One factor was the lack of Christian European access to the spice and silk trade, for the eastern trade routes had become controlled by the Ottoman Empire after the Turks took control of Constantinople in 1453, and they barred Europeans from those trade routes, as they did through North Africa and the historically important combined-land-sea routes via the Red Sea. Both spice and silk were big businesses of the day, and arguably, spices which were both used as preservatives and used to disguise the taste of poorly preserved foods were a highly profitable luxury good desired by the wealthy nobility, upper echelons of the church, and the emerging urban rich.

Portuguese Atlantic expeditions (1419–1498)

Before Prince Henry's time, European sailing had been primarily close to land, with short and risky voyages out of sight of land guided by portolan charts. These charts specified proven ocean routes by means of coastal landmarks: sailors would depart from a known point, follow a compass heading, and on landfall try to identify their location by its land features.
Nautical myths warned of oceanic monsters or an edge of the world, but Prince Henry's navigation challenged such beliefs. The Portugese discovered and colonized the Madeira Islands (1419), then the Azores (1427).

Henry's main endeavor was to explore and chart the West Coast of Africa in search of lucrative trade, new lands for his kingdom, and the expansion of Christendom.
For centuries the slave and gold trade routes linking West Africa with the Mediterranean passed over the Western Sahara Desert, which was controlled by the hostile Muslim states of North Africa. The Portuguese monarchs hoped to bypass these rival states and trade with West Africa directly by sea, and also to find allies in imagined Christian lands to the south. In 1434 the Portuguese explorer Gil Eanes passed the obstacle of Cape Bojador, and the Papal bull Romanus Pontifex granted Portugal the trade monopoly for the newly discovered countries beyond.>
Westward exploration continued over the same period: Diogo Silves discovered the Azores island of Santa Maria in 1427 and in the following years Portuguese discovered and settled the rest of the Azores.
Within two decades of exploration, Portugese ships bypassed the Sahara and trade in slaves and gold began in what is now Senegal. Leading names of these decades were Nuno Tristão, Cadamosto, Dinis Dias and Fernão Pó. A trading fort was built at Elmina, and Cape Verde became the first sugar producing colony.
In 1482 an expedition under Diogo Cão made contact with the Kingdom of Kongo.

The next crucial breakthrough was in 1487 when Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, proving that the Indian Ocean was accessible from the Atlantic, hence the name of the cape. In 1489, the King of Bemobi gave his realms to the Portuguese king and became Christian. At the same time, Pêro da Covilhã reached Ethiopia over land, having collected important information about the Red Sea and Quenia coast.

After Columbus' voyage, Terceira became a naval base for the exploration of Terra Nova and Newfoundland under the Corte Real brothers Gaspar and Miguel , later continued by Fagundes. Some authors even claim that João Vaz, father of the Corte Real brothers, had reached America before Columbus.

The New World: Columbus Central America and Cabral's Brazil (1492-1500)

thumb|right|350px|The [[Cantino planisphere (1502), the earliest surviving Portuguese chart showing the explorations of Vasco da Gama to India, Columbus to Central America, Gaspar Corte-Real to Newfoundland and Pedro Álvares Cabral to Brazil. Tordesillas line is depicted]]

Portugal's rival Castile (predecessor of Spain) had been somewhat slower than its neighbour to begin exploring the Atlantic. It was not until the late fifteenth century, following the unification of Castile and Aragon and the completion of the reconquista that Spain emerged and became fully committed to looking for new trade routes and colonies overseas. In 1492 the joint rulers of the nation conquered the Moorish kingdom of Granada, which had been providing Castile with African goods through tribute, and they decided to fund Christopher Columbus' expedition that they hoped would bypass Portugal's lock on Africa and the Indian Ocean reaching Asia by travelling west.

Columbus and other Spanish explorers were initially disappointed with their discoveries - unlike Africa or Asia the Caribbean islanders had little to trade with the Spanish ships. The islands thus became the focus of colonization efforts. It was not until the continent itself was explored that Spain found the wealth it had sought in the form of abundant gold. In the Americas the Spanish found a number of empires that were as large and populous as those in Europe. However, small bodies of Spanish conquistadors, with large armies of indigenous Americans groups, managed to conquer these states. The most notable amongst the conquered states were the Aztec empire in Mexico (conquered in 1521) and the Inca empire in modern Peru (conquered in 1532). During this time, pandemics of European disease such as smallpox devastated the indigenous populations. Once Spanish sovereignty was established, the Spanish focused on the extraction and export of gold and silver.

Columbus did not reach Asia, but rather found what was to the Europeans a New World: America. For the two European monarchies a division of influence became necessary to avoid conflict. This was resolved by Papal intervention in 1494 when the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the world between the two powers. The Portuguese "received" everything outside of Europe east of a line that ran 270 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands; this gave them control over Africa, Asia and eastern South America (Brazil). The Spanish received everything west of this line, territory that was still almost completely unknown, and proved to be mostly the western part of the American continent plus the Pacific Ocean islands. In 1500, the Portuguese navigator, Pedro Álvares Cabral explored the land that is today called Brazil.

Portuguese Indian Ocean expeditions (1498-1542)

thumb|left|350px|Portuguese explorations: first arrival places and dates; main Portuguese King John III rule (1521-1557) (green)/" class="wiki">spice trade routes (blue); territories under King John III rule (1521-1557) (green)
Protected from direct Spanish competition by the treaty of Tordesillas, Portuguese exploration and colonization continued apace. In 1484, Portugal officially rejected Christopher Columbus's idea of reaching India from the east, because it was seen as unreasonable. Some historians claim that the Portuguese had already performed fairly accurate calculations concerning the size of the world and therefore knew that sailing west to reach the Indies would require a far longer journey than navigating to the east.

After the turning of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartolomeu Dias in 1487, and Pêro da Covilhã reaching Ethiopia by land, showing that the richness of the Indian Sea was accessible from the Atlantic, Vasco da Gama sailed for India, and arrived at Calicut on 20 May 1498, returning in glory to Portugal the next year. In 1500, travelling to India Pedro Álvares Cabral sighted the Brazilian coast; ten years later, Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Goa, in India.

Under King Manuel I the Portuguese crown launched a scheme to control the trade routes then 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, Mombasa, Socotra, Ormuz, Calcutta, Goa, Bombay, Malacca, Macau, and Timor.

In the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, one of Cabral's ships reached Madagascar (1501), which was partly explored by Tristão da Cunha (1507); Mauritius was discovered in 1507, Socotra occupied in 1506, and in the same year Lourenço de Almeida visited Ceylon.

On the Asiatic mainland the first factories (trading-posts) were established at Cochin and Calicut (1501) and then Goa (1510). In 1511 Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Malacca to Portugal, then the center of Asian trade. East of Malacca, Albuquerque sent Duarte Fernandes as the first European envoy to the kingdom of Siam (now Thailand) in 1511. Getting to know the secret location of the so-called "spice islands" - the Banda Islands in the Moluccas, then the single world source of nutmeg and cloves, main purpose for the travels in the Indian sea- he sent an expedition led by António de Abreu to Banda, where they were the first Europeans to arrive in early 1512. Abreu then left for Ambon Island while his vice-captain Francisco Serrão sank off Ternate, where he obtained a license to build a Portuguese fortress-factory: the Fort of São João Baptista de Ternate, which founded the Portuguese presence in the Malay Archipelago. The acquisition of Diu occurred (1535) by Martim Afonso de Sousa.
thumb|350px|Map c.1550 of Eastern Africa, Asia and Western Oceania
In 1513 the Portuguese reached China. Although Jorge Álvares was the first to land on Lintin Island in the Pearl River Delta in May, it was Rafael Perestrello—a cousin of the famed Christopher Columbus—who became the first European explorer to land on the southern coast of mainland China and trade in Guangzhou in 1516, commanding a Portuguese vessel with a crew from a Malaysian junk that had sailed from Malacca.Pfoundes (1882), 89. Fernão Pires de Andrade visited Canton in 1517 and opened up trade with China, where after an initial resistance in 1557 the Portuguese were permitted to occupy Macau.

The Portuguese became the first Westerners to reach and trade with Japan. Accidentally reached by three Portuguese traders in 1543, soon attracted large numbers of merchants and missionaries.

In the Red Sea, Massawa was the most northerly point frequented by the Portuguese until 1541, when a fleet under Estevão da Gama penetrated as far as Suez. Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf, was seized by Afonso de Albuquerque in 1515, who also entered into diplomatic relations with Persia. In 1521, a force under Antonio Correia conquered Bahrain ushering in a period of almost eighty years of Portuguese rule of the Gulf archipelago (for further information see Bahrain as a Portuguese dominion).

First world circumnavigation by Fernão de Magalhães (1519-1522)

thumb|left|350px|Map of Ferdinand Magellan voyage around the world (1519-1522)
In 1519, the Spanish crown funded the expedition of the Portuguese navigator Fernão de Magalhães or Fernando de Magallanes, as he was known in Spain. The goal of the mission was to reach the Spice Islands by travelling west, trying to reclaim the islands under Spain's economic and political sphere.

The expedition managed to cross the Pacific Ocean and reach the Spice Islands in 1521, and was the first to circumnavigate the world upon its return in 1522. Magalhães died in the battle of Mactan in the Philippines, leaving the Spaniard Juan Sebastián Elcano the task of completing the voyage. This round-the-world voyage gave Spain valuable knowledge of the world and its oceans which later helped in the exploration and settlement of the Philippines. Although this was not a realistic alternative to the Portuguese route around Africa (the Strait of Magellan was too far south, and the Pacific Ocean too vast to cover in a single trip from Spain) succesive Spanish expeditions used this information to travel from the Mexican coast via Guam to Manila.

After Magellan's expedition, Charles V sent another expedition led by García Jofre de Loaísa to colonize the Moluccas islands, claiming that they were in his zone of the Treaty of Tordesillas. The conflict with Portugal sprung as the expeditions of both kingdoms reached the Pacific Ocean, since there was not a set Tordesillas limit to the east. García Jofre de Loaísa expedition reached the Moluccas, docking at Tidore. The conflict with the Portuguese already established in Ternate there was inevitable, starting nearly a decade of skirmishes that were resolved only with the Treaty of Zaragoza, signed on 1529 between Spain and Portugal.

Finally, the Spanish established a presence in the Pacific with the expedition of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi that sailed from Acapulco, New Spain in 1565. Thus, a cross-Pacific route was established, between Mexico and the Philippines. The eastbound route to the Philippines was first sailed by Alvaro de Saavedra in 1527. The westbound return route was harder to find, but was eventually discovered by Andrés de Urdaneta in 1565. For a long time these routes were used by the Manila galleons, thereby creating a trade link joining China, the Americas, and Europe via the trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic routes.

Northern European involvement (1600's)

thumb|350px|Hollandia Nova (Australia), 1659 map by Joan Blaeu
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.

Portugal had difficulty expanding its empire inland and concentrated mostly on the coastal areas. Over time the Portuguese state proved to be simply too small to provide the funds and manpower sufficient to manage and defend such a massive and dispersed venture. Portugal could not compete with the larger powers that slowly encroached on its trade. The days of near monopoly of the east trade were numbered. In 1580 the Spanish King Philip II became also King of Portugal, as rightful heir to the Crown. The combined empires were simply too big to go unchallenged. The Dutch, French and English explorers ignored the Papal division of the world and during the 17th century as the Dutch, English and French established ever more trading posts in the east, at the expense of Portugal.

The first Northern European mission (1497) was that of the English expedition led by the Italian, John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto). It was the first of a series of French and English missions exploring North America. Spain put limited efforts into exploring the northern part of the Americas as its resources were fully stretched by its efforts in Central and South America where more wealth had been found. In 1524, 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 an oceanic Northwest Passage to Asian trade. 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 Northern Europeans who also became the great rivals to the Portuguese in Africa and around the Indian Ocean. The Dutch, French, and English sent ships which flouted the Portuguese monopoly, which due to its vast extent and Portugal's limited resources, impossible to defend. They also founded trading forts and colonies of their own. Gradually the Portuguese and Spanish market share declined.

See Major explorations after the Age of Discovery for later exploration.

Global impact of the Age of Discovery

thumb|200px|The world map from [[Johannes Kepler's Rudolphine Tables (1627), incorporating many of the new discoveries of the Age of Exploration.]]
thumb|200px|A Portuguese [[carrack in Nagasaki, Japan, 17th century. The arrival of the Portuguese in 1543 initiated the Nanban trade period]]

European overseas expansion led to the contact between the Old and New Worlds producing the Columbian Exchange, named after Columbus. It involved the transfer of goods unique to one hemisphere to another. Europeans brought cattle, horses, and sheep to the New World, and from the New World Europeans received tobacco, potatoes, and bananas. Other items becoming important in global trade were the sugarcane and cotton crops of the Americas, and the gold and silver brought from the Americas not only to Europe but elsewhere in the Old World.

The new trans-oceanic links and their domination by the European powers led to the Age of Imperialism, where European colonial powers came to control most of the planet. The European appetite for trade, commodities, empire and slaves greatly affected many other areas of the world. Spain participated in the destruction of aggressive empires in America, only to substitute for its own and forcibly replaced the original religions. The pattern of territorial aggression was repeated by other European empires, most notably the Dutch, Russian, French and British. New religions replaced older "pagan" rituals, as were new languages, political and sexual cultures, and in some areas like North America, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina, the indigenous peoples were abused and driven off most of their lands, being reduced to small, dependent minorities.

Similarly, in coastal Africa, local states supplied the appetite of European slave traders, changing the complexion of coastal African states and fundamentally altering the nature of African slavery, causing impacts on societies and economies deep inland. (See Atlantic slave trade).

Aboriginal Peoples were living in North America at this time and still do today. There were many conflicts between Europeans and Natives. The Europeans had many advantages over the Natives. They gave them diseases that they had not been exposed to before and this wiped out 50-90% of their population. (See Population history of American indigenous peoples.)

Since being introduced by Portuguese in the 16th century, maize and manioc have replaced traditional African crops as the continent’s most important staple food crops. Alfred W. Crosby speculated that increased production of maize, manioc, and other American crops "enabled the slave traders drew many, perhaps most, of their cargoes from the rain forest areas, precisely those areas where American crops enabled heavier settlement than
before."

During the 16th century Chinese economy, under the Ming Dynasty, was stimulated by trade with the Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch. China became involved in a new global trade of goods, plants, animals, and food crops known as the Columbian Exchange. Trade with European powers and the Japanese brought in massive amounts of silver, which then replaced copper and paper banknotes as the common medium of exchange in China. During the last decades of the Ming the flow of silver into China was greatly diminished, thereby undermining state revenues and indeed the entire Ming economy. This damage to the economy was compounded by the effects on agriculture of the incipient Little Ice Age, natural calamities, crop failure, and sudden epidemics. The ensuing breakdown of authority and people's livelihoods allowed rebel leaders such as Li Zicheng to challenge Ming authority.

New crops that had come to Asia from the Americas via the Spanish colonizers in the 16th century contributed to the Asia's population growth. Although the bulk of imports to China were silver, the Chinese also purchased New World crops from the Spanish Empire. This included sweet potatoes, maize, and peanuts, foods that could be cultivated in lands where traditional Chinese staple crops—wheat, millet, and rice—couldn't grow, hence facilitating a rise in the population of China.Crosby (2003), 198-201. In the Song Dynasty (960-1279), rice had become the major staple crop of the poor; after sweet potatoes were introduced to China around 1560, it gradually became the traditional food of the lower classes.Crosby (2003), 200.
The arrival of the Portuguese to Japan in 1543 initiated the Nanban trade period, with the Japanese adopting several technologies and cultural practices, like the arquebus, European-style cuirasses, European ships, Christianity, decorative art, and language. After the Chinese had banned direct trade by Chinese merchants with Japan, the Portuguese filled this commercial vacuum as intermediaries between China and Japan.Spence (1999), 19-20. The Portuguese bought Chinese silk and sold it to the Japanese in return for Japanese-mined silver; since silver was more highly valued in China, the Portuguese could then use Japanese silver to buy even larger stocks of Chinese silk. However, by 1573—after the Spanish established a trading base in Manila—the Portuguese intermediary trade was trumped by the prime source of incoming silver to China from the Spanish Americas.Spence (1999), 20.Brook (1998), 205.
thumb|200px|1675 image of a Chinese astronomer with an elaborate [[armillary sphere. In the 17th century, Chinese astronomers collaborated extensively with Jesuit scholars, who brought the Copernican and Tychonic systems from Europe. ]]

Economic and cultural impact of the Age of Exploration on Europe

As a wider variety of global luxury commodities entered the European markets by sea, previous European markets for luxury goods stagnated. The Atlantic trade largely supplanted pre-existing Italian and German trading powers which had relied on their Baltic, Russian and Islamic trade links. The new commodities also caused social change, as sugar, spices, silks and chinawares entered the luxury markets of Europe.

The city of Antwerp, part of the Duchy of Brabant, became "the center of the entire international economy, and the richest city in Europe at this time. Its "Golden Age" is tightly linked to the Age of Discovery. Francesco Guicciardini, a Venetian envoy, stated that hundreds of ships would pass in a day, and 2,000 carts entered the city each week. Portuguese ships laden with pepper and cinnamon would unload their cargo. With many foreign merchants resident in the city and governed by an oligarchy of banker-aristocrats forbidden to engage in trade, the economy of Antwerp was foreigner-controlled, which made the city very international, with merchants and traders from Venice, Ragusa, Spain and Portugal and a policy of toleration, which attracted a large orthodox Jewish community. The city experienced three booms during its golden age, the first based on the pepper market, a second launched by American silver coming from Seville (ending with the bankruptcy of Spain in 1557), and a third boom, after the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, in 1559, based on the textiles industry.

Despite initial hostilities, by 1549 the Portuguese were sending annual trade missions to Shangchuan Island in China.Brook (1998), 124. In 1557 they managed to convince the Ming court to agree on a legal port treaty that would establish Macau as an official Portuguese trade colony. The Portuguese friar Gaspar da Cruz (c. 1520 - February 5, 1570) wrote the first complete book on China and the Ming Dynasty that was published in Europe; it included information on its geography, provinces, royalty, official class, bureaucracy, shipping, architecture, farming, craftsmanship, merchant affairs, clothing, religious and social customs, music and instruments, writing, education, and justice.The Ming Biographical History Project of the Association for Asian Studies (1976), 410-411.
From China the major exports were silk and porcelain, adapted to meet European tastes. The Dutch East India Company alone handled the trade of 6 million porcelain items from China to Europe between the years 1602 to 1682.Brook (1998), 206. Antonio de Morga (1559-1636), a Spanish official in Manila, listed an extensive inventory of goods that were traded by Ming China at the turn of the 17th century, noting there were "rarities which, did I refer to them all, I would never finish, nor have sufficient paper for it". After noting the variety of silk goods traded to Europeans, Ebrey writes of the considerable size of commercial transactions:

Map of East Asia by the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci in 1602; Ricci (1552-1610),the first European allowed into the Forbidden City, taught the Chinese how to construct and play the spinet, translated Chinese texts into Latin and vice versa, and worked closely with his Chinese associate Xu Guangqi (1562-1633) on mathematical work.

In one case a galleon to the Spanish territories in the New World carried over 50,000 pairs of silk stockings. In return China imported mostly silver from Peruvian and Mexican mines, transported via Manila. Chinese merchants were active in these trading ventures, and many emigrated to such places as the Philippines and Borneo to take advantage of the new commercial opportunities.Ebrey (1999), 211.Additionally, the increase in wealth experienced by Spain coincided with a major inflationary cycle, both within Spain and within Europe generally. Within a few decades American mines were outproducing European mines. Increasingly the Spain became dependent on the revenues flowing in from the mercantile empire in the Americas, leading to Spain's first bankruptcy in 1557 due to rising military costs. The increase in prices as a result of currency circulation fueled the growth of the commercial middle class in Europe, which would come to influence the politics and culture of many countries.