text: Think about things in the big picture.\n\nAt first, trade and investigation were done on foot (which could include by horse, camel, etc and/or cart). This meant that exploration and trade only occurred with those areas that you could walk to ... which also meant that by the time the Europeans were a working civilization that the continents of North and South America were inaccessible.\n\nHowever, Asia and Africa were not! And thus trade and exploration started from Europe and proceeded EASTWARD, until eventually a connection was made with China and the Far East.\n\nAt about the same time as the trade routes got really established, advances in seafaring were beginning to make a difference in how things were done. Notably, one could now sail somewhere in a few weeks that once took many months of travel on foot. Case in point - again, the transit time to the Far East.\n\nBy now, Europeans had also come to the conclusion that the world was a ball, not a plate. This meant (in theory) that someone could go the other way (WESTWARD), and possibly develop a shorter trip to reach the trade markets of the Orient. Several nations jumped into the act; notable among them were the French, English, Dutch, and Spanish.\n\nEveryone took a slightly different tack, for a couple of reasons. Either they already knew that a route wasn't going to happen (the French didn't have the fleet capacity or the seamanship for extended out-of-land voyages yet), or they wanted to stay away and not let the rest in on the secret (Spain had an advantage; being in the south already, they could cut more-or-less across at the same latitude to find the Orient, whereas the Dutch and English kind of had to try a more northerly route).\n\nThe final outcome was the discovery of "america" (in actuality, today's West Indies) by Spain, followed quickly by devlopment of what is now North America by the English and French. The Dutch followed in the Spaniards' footsteps, and found a promising region somewhat south of the Indies (Tortuga, Trinidad/Tobago, etc).\n\nEveryone got into the act of grabbing what they could from the New World ... and eventually someone figured out they hadn't reached the Orient after all. Then came the race for the Northwest Passage, and the southern journeys of Magellan and so on ...