During the Middle Ages, a new interest in exploration arose in Europe. Although there were many causes for the European age of exploration, fate, faith, and fortune were the most important. While each of those three factors played major roles in the need for exploration, the thirst for fortune lead to a search for riches, which heavily impacted European exploration.
Through exploration, the monarchs in Europe hoped to increase their fortune by trade and in building profitable empires. The people who undertook these explorations from Spain were called conquestidors. The conquestidors searched for riches and even journeyed across the seas to seek land. As a result of their overseas explorations, they found new trading products, such as barely, rye, sugar and coffee from Africa. The discovery of these new products led to the creation of early trading networks. Soon Europe began to successfully trade foods, spices, gold, slaves and more with North and South America, Africa, India, Asia and China. There were other resources that Europe required which they could not provide for themselves. Europe used gold and silver coins (mints) as their currency, but had a limited supply of these resources. This forced them to explore for more gold and silver. The voyage of Christopher Columbus was intended as a search for a new trade route to India. Although Columbus was not successful, he did discover the Americas, which supplied Europe with the gold and silver they needed.
These explorations for fortunes resulted in relationships between the west (Europe), and the world. The voyages for the discovery of such fortunes as land, money and trade changed economic relations in Europe, and as such, fortune was the major motive for the European age of exploration.