Jeff Scudder
World History Honors
Explorer Essay

	Europeans were very eager to find new routes by sea and land to Asia in the 1400's. They wanted the spices and riches that were held withing Asia.
	At the time, Italy was the country with a monopoly. They were the closest country in Europe to Asia and they traded everything with them. Italy could easily get extremely valuable spices and sell them to the other European countries at higher prices. The other Europeans didn't want to get ripped off. So they tried to cut out the middle man (Italy) by attempting to find a trade route to Asia. They sent out many explorers going many different ways in an attempt to find Asia. Christohper Columbus, one of these explorers tried sailing west from Spain in an attempt to circle the earth and end up in Asia. He instead miscalculated the earth and discovered America. Other explorers eventually found pathways around the botttom of Africa so they could get to Asia and India.
	Because Italy had a monopoly, the other countries wanted what they had. It was almost like a race to see which other European country could get to Asia first in order to make deals and trade for spices with the people from India and Asia. Spices were just about as valuable as gold was back then. If you had a bag of pepper you were a very rich man. So as you can see, these countried really wanted to get there first.
	In the 1400's all the western european countries tried looking for trade routes in attempts to stop the Monopoly that Italy had on spices. In a way they succeeded.