Routes to the East

The Turkish conquests and the fall of Constantinople provided stimulus to the European maritime nations to find a sea route to the East so that they did not have to depend on the old land routes controlled by the Ottomans. These efforts eventually resulted in the great geographical discoveries which revealed to Europeans the existence of a New World on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Multiple factors lead to exploration of sea (a) During the Crusades, the knights (warriors) returned with many types of goods from the East. The Europeans liked the eastern products, mainly the spices, which were used as food preservatives in the West.

Till that time Arabs controlled the land-bound and maritime trade with the Asian countries including India and further east. They exchanged the goods from various Galileo Galilei