Economic Factors and Renaissance Inventions
How Commerce Affected Expansion, Navigation and the New World
Jul 11, 2009
The Renaissance has often been considered as the dawning of a new self-conscious modern era. The inventions of the compass, gun powder and the printing press have revolutionized life and paved the way for future scientific progress. Nonetheless, the main impetus for these changes has been economical in its nature, including the use of maps, navigation and geographical discoveries and trips to the New World.
Fall of Constantinople and New Routes to Gain Access to Asian Wealth
Since the Roman era, there had been a growing taste and appreciation for luxurious and precious commodities such as silks from China, spices from India and incense from Arabia. Since then merchants were controlling the flow of the wealth through Venice and Genoa via the Mediterranean Sea.
Yet after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, the line between East and West had been broken and the Muslim Turks began to take control of the eastern end of the Mediterranean. As a result, the flow of commodities could take place only with their approval; merchants were forced to search for a new route to import those products as Europe continued to have a strong demand for them.
Medieval Worldview and Ptolemy’s Map and Geography
Since the alternative route along the African coast was much more dangerous, having to cross the Atlantic, captains and sailors had to rely on more precise maps and more refined equipment in order to obtain those precious commodities.
The medieval worldview and the previous depiction of the Earth in the mappamundi had been strongly influenced by accounts of the Bible. The Earth had been represented as a flat disc with Jerusalem at its centre and paradise at the top in the east.
Yet the concept of the world during the 15th century had changed dramatically. Ptolemy’s work of the second century A.D. had been rediscovered . The Greek thinker had compiled information of merchants and soldiers of the Roman period and had drawn maps based on the information. These maps based on a spherical and not a flat Earth had been used previously by the Roman military to attack their enemies and to find safe and economical transportation of provisions.
Improved Navigational Tools and the Wealth of the New World
In addition, due to long perilous trips the compass had undergone various changes and had become a more precise device along with other additional navigational instruments such as the quadrant or the mariner’s astrolabe which were used to follow and predict the movements of the planets.
Finally with many trips to the New World, those who returned from those trips had become rich and had brought back gold, which served as a major incentive for other Europeans to undertake those dangerous trips themselves in hope of prosperity and economic benefits.
Although the Renaissance is seen as a groundbreaking epoch it owed most of its major breakthroughs to economic facts and circumstances and less to a willful conscious shift in thought and practice. The scientific and intellectual advances of the times were not simply “knowledge for knowledge’s sake”, but were often intricately tied to economic results and benefits.
Sources
Chamberlin, E. R. Everyday Life in Renaissance Times. Copp Clark: New York, 1967.
Readers may also enjoy Renaissance and a Humanist Approach to Fine Arts along with The Historical Influences of the Printing Press and Renaissance Humanism and the Human Perspective.
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