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People in Europe read of Marco Polo's travels to China and other exciting Asian lands.
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People in Euirope began to look to the seas and beyond. Others wanted to spread Christainity far and wide.
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Europeans had developed a taste for spices in their diets. Most spices came from islands in Asia. Because they had to be shipped halfway around the world on risky voyages, spices were costly. The Italian port City of Venice controlled this trade.
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Columbus led his first expedition westward. He landed in the Bahamas, islands that believed to be near Asia.
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A porteguese explorer named Vasco De 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. 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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A mapmaker labeled the new contient "America" for another explorer Amerigo Vespucci.
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Powerful Spain claimed many of the New World lands. Spain was taking control of much of South and Central America.
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He was a spanish official in the New He explored and settled the island Puerto Rico.
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His expedition landed on the East Coast of Florida, a name Ponce De Leon derived from the Spanish word for flowers.
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King Francis I of France sent Italian navigator Giovanni da Verranzo westward. Verrazano first reached land at North Carolina's Outer Banks.
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Ayllon led a group of over 500 men =, women, and children to a river called Jordan.
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Hernando de Soto sailed with a military expedition from Havana, Cuba to the West Coast of Florida.
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Ribaualt's Hugenots attempted to settle near present-day Port Royal, South Carolina, in April 1562.
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France sent a a colony under the command of Jean Ribault.