Willem Barents Searches for the Northeast Passage and Finds Svalbard Instead
Overview
The sixteenth century saw the rise of two new Western European powers, England and Holland, each of which had hopes of building international trading empires. Both, however, recognized that Spanish and Portuguese dominance prevented them from plying the routes to the Americas, Africa, and Asia already claimed by the Iberian powers; thus was born the idea of finding a northern passage to Cathay or China. England was the first to send expeditions, both along the northeastern and later the northwestern routes. Each of these efforts was doomed to failure, and finally England gave up the quest. It was at that point that Holland stepped in, sending a captain named Willem Barents (1550-1597) on a voyage to find the Northeast Passage.
Background
Spain and Portugal inaugurated the great era of European exploration, and the first century of that age belonged almost exclusively to them. Portugal's Bartolomeu Dias (c. 1450-1500) rounded the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa in 1487-88, opening the way for Vasco da Gama's (c. 1460-1524) historic voyage to India a decade later. Meanwhile Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) had planted the Spanish flag in the New World, and after him came hordes of Spanish explorers and adventures.
This page contains 201 words.
Willem Barents Searches for the Northeast Passage and Finds Svalbard Instead article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 2,057 words
(approx. 7 pages at 300 words per page).
Order our Willem Barents Article
