394 A BRIEF SURVEY OF HUMAN HISTORY

restlessness, and the needs of commerce with ever-expand-
ing markets.

The earliest example of European expansion abroad is
found in the piratical adventures of the Norsemen who seem
to have reached the northern parts of North America long
before Columbus re-discovered that continent for the modern
world. During the Middle Ages, Europe was already enough
accustomed to the spices and luxuries of the East to fed
the urge to explore new routes thereto. That impulse was
further reinforced by the Turkish blockade of the 'Near
East' culminating in the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
The discoveries of da Gama and Columbus shifted the high-
roads of commerce from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic,
while at the same time the primacy in world trade passed
from the Venetians and the Arabs to the Portuguese and
the Spaniards. And lastly, the division of the globe between
these two nations by authority of Pope Alexander VI, no
less than the religious zeal of the Portuguese and Spaniards
themselves, gave to European expansion in the Old and
New worlds the dual impetus of commerce and Christianity.

When the Reformation movement divided Europe into
Catholic and Protestant, the latter group of nations—parti-
cularly the Dutch and the English—challenged the monopoly
of the Iberian pioneers and soon undermined their positions
in East and West alike. The Dutch broke through the
Portuguese monopoly in Asia, and the English overthrew
the Spanish in, America. The defeat of the Armada in 1588
was indeed' a great turning point: it destroyed the political
prestige of Spain and marked the naval ascendancy of
England.

With the accession of the Stuarts to the English throne
(1603) an era of peace with Spain ensued, but a new rivalry
with the Dutch in the East Indies started. Within twenty