The Age Of Expansion

This allowed powerful wealthy countries such as Spain and Portugal to begin spending money on other things than just surviving, they also had more money being a large unified nation. Men were also available to go exploring as they were not all out fighting and dyeing. The emergence of better navigational technologies and methods made long distance journeys possible where as before there had been no way to tell where an individual was or where he was going. There were also advances in shipbuilding that allowed people to make sea voyages that were longer than those attempted in the past. The opening of the overland trade routes led to the desire to see what was on the other side of the horizon and they showed that there were many riches to be discovered and exploited in other parts of the world. Just plain curiosity and desire for knowledge led to some of the expeditions. Most of the expeditions were financed by countries that had grown wealthy by their expanding size and power. So the explorers that set out and found great riches for their country were then treated as heroes and this may have been a motivation for many explores looking for a way to achieve fame and fortune. The renaissance led people to think about life in a new way and bred much of this curiosity as famous writers and artists such as Gallileo and Michelangelo brought about new ideas about what a single human being could do after the church lost some of stranglehold on peoples beliefs. Trade was one of the main reasons for the beginning of the times of exploration, as with anything else financial motivations are at the forefront of new ventures as has always been the case since the beginning of time. .
             The nature of the colonial system set up by the western European nations was based on overpowering the natives of the country or territory that the colonizing nation wanted to colonize. The citizens of the colonizing nation were the ruling power and rulers were picked from the colonizing country to go over to the newly conquered colony and establish the rules of the colonizing nation.