End of the Age of Exploration

The Age of Exploration ended in the early seventeenth century. By this time European vessels were sufficiently well built and their navigators competent enough to travel to virtually anywhere on the planet by sea. European naval exploration continued. The east coast of Australia was first explored in 1770. Arctic and Antarctic seas were not explored until the 19th century. It took much longer for Europeans to explore the interiors of continents. Africa's deep interior was not explored by Europeans until the mid to late 19th and early 20th centuries, due to a lack of trade potential in this region, and to serious problems with contagious tropical diseases in sub-Saharan Africa.

Global impact of the Age of Discovery

The new trans-oceanic links and their domination by the European powers led directly 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 wealthy oppressive empires in America, only to substitute their own brutal rule. New religions were forced onto people, as were new languages, sexual and political cultures. In areas of the Americas where states did not exist, but the land was perceived by Europeans to be desirable; Europeans ethnically cleansed the local inhabitants, traded with their new neighbours, and set off economic changes which impacted deep within the continent.

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.

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.

Economic and cultural impacts of the Age of Exploration on European powers

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. 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. 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.