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People in Europe began to look to the seas and beyond. Some seeked adventure while others wanted to spread Christianity but most of all people wanted riches.
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Prince Henry the Navigator began to urge sea captains to explore southward along the coast of Africa.
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Thought Asia could be reached by sailing west from Europe. Columbus persuaded the King and Queen of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, to support an expedition or trip of exploration. Columbus led his first expedition westward, he landed in the Bahamas, islands that he believed to be near Asia. Another voyage in 1498, Columbus reached South America
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Later, After Christopher Columbus, a mapmaker labeled this new continent "America" for another explorer, Amerigo Vespucci and the name stuck.
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Portugese Vasco Da Gama found such a route and sailed all the way to India
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King Henry VII sent Cabot on a voyage to the West because the English thought that there might be a water route through the Americas that would lead North and West to Asia.
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Juan Poncede Leon was a spanish official in the New World. In 1508-1509, he explored and settled on the island of Puerto Rico.
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In the years following Columbus, a great interaction between the "New World" and the "Old World" began. Plants, animal, and even diseases were exchanged between the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. Also a huge slave trade began as Europeans transported millions of enslaved Africans to the New World to work on plantations.
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Ponce de Leon set out with ship and a crew, his exploration landed on the east coast of Florida.
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In the 1520's, Spain was the most powerful nation in the World. Spanish explorers had claimed huge tracts of land in the New World. They had begun sending gold and silver back to Spain, from their base on Hispaniolain the Caribbean Sea, Spanish officials eyed the North American coast eagerly. Already, Ponce de Leon had explored and claimed Florida.
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In 1542, King Francis I of France sent italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazano westward
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in 1539, Hernando de Soto sailed with a military expedition from Havana, Cuba to the West Coast of Florida.
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In 1565, Spain sent troops under Pedro Menendez de Aviles to Florida. Just south of Fort Caroline, Menendez built a fort at St. Augustine.
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In late 1566, Juan Pardo and Hernando Boyano led a small group of men to the South Carolina Coast. From there they pushed North and West on nearly the same route that de Soto had taken 25 years earlier.