The arrival of Columbus's small flotilla in the Caribbean in 1492 marked the end of the so-called Dark Ages in Europe, a period which had extended from the fall of the Roman Empire in 500 AD to the beginning of the Age of Discovery (ca 1500 AD). What had been "dark" ages in Europe were an age of enlightenment and progress in the Arab/Islamic World. Islam had spread rapidly out of the Arabian peninsula and engulfed North Africa. Arab/Islamic conquerors, the Moors, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and occupied the Iberian Peninsula for hundreds of years, bringing to the universities of Spain and Portugal the fruits of their civilization: not only the arts but also algebra, astronomy and cartography.

World trade was controlled by the Arab civilization. All routes--by land and by sea--led to the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. The Arabs were excellent navigators and visited the Spice of Islands of today's Indonesia and the Malabar Coast of India, both sources of spices highly valued in the Mediterranean World. Arab dhows sailed from the Indian Ocean into the Red Sea; only a short transport across Suez was then necessary to bring spices to the market places of the eastern Mediterranean. Gold came by caravan across the Sahara from West Africa; salt could be picked up at Timbuktu. Caravans paralleled the Nile and carried ivory, tropical woods, and slaves from equatorial Africa north to Egypt. Other caravans carried frankincense and myrrh from southern Arabia northward. Fine silks from China were brought by a relay system of caravans across the great deserts and mountain ranges of Asia, where they could be exchanged for African gold or Indian spices. The eastern Mediterranean itself had perfected the technology of glass-making, and ingots of glass plied the trade routes out to the rest of the known world. Iberia was at the periphery of the world trade network, but with the knowledge gained from the Arabs, first Portugal and then Spain determined to become the center.

Portugal, essentially an Atlantic nation, was the first of the Iberian neighbors to be freed of Arab control. Under the auspices of Prince Henry the Navigator, Portuguese ships explored the coasts of Africa seeking a route around that continent to the East. There they would enter into direct trade with the Malabar Coast, the Spice Islands or Indies, and China, circumventing the long established trade routes whose European ends were controlled by the Arabs. Their first success, however, was to establish direct contact with West Africans and reverse the flow of gold away from the Saharan trade routes and to the West Africa ports. West African gold helped the Portuguese finance further exploration and eventually circumnavigation of the African continent. Their success is attested to by a string of Portuguese colonies that arose along the route to Asia: the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, Angola and Mozambique, the Goas of the Indian subcontinent, and Macao across from Hong Kong at the gateway to China.

The main significance of Portuguese exploration for Virginia derives from the apparently accidental arrival of Cabral on the coast of Brazil in 1500 while he was trying to sail around Africa. After somewhat abortive attempts to extract wealth from Brazil, the Portuguese were to bring plantation agriculture based on black African slave labor to the New World in a highly profitable enterprise that produced cane sugar. Slavery and plantation agriculture spread from there to the Caribbean islands colonized by Spanish, Dutch, French, and English and eventually to Virginia and England's other southern American colonies. We will return to this topic later.

Spain, a more Mediterranean-oriented country, followed Portugal in expelling the Arabs and setting out on voyages of discovery of their own. The last of the Moors left Granada, Spain, the same year that Christopher Columbus sailed west from Spain in search of a new route to the Indies. A skilled and experienced navigator, he took his ships south to the Canary Islands, for final provisions of fresh water and meat. Then he continued south until he picked up the Trade Winds which carried his ships in 33 days across the Atlantic to the Bahamas. This voyage, of course, marked the entry of the Spanish into the Americas. Although no spices were to be found, gold and silver from colonies on the mainland were to fill the treasury of the Spanish Crown.

The rivalry between the Catholic nations of Spain and Portgual for new territory was mitigated by the Pope in the Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494. The world was divided between the two approximately along the 50° W meridian. This put all of the Americas except the northeastern bulge of Brazil under the auspices of the Spanish and set the groundwork for Brazil--still undiscovered at that time--to become Portuguese.

It was Ponce de Leon who in1513 found the best route back to Spain from the Americas. Although best known for his search for the Fountain of Youth in Florida, it was his following the Gulf Stream northward that became his important contribution. At about the latitude of the Chesapeake Bay the Gulf Streams turns eastward and carries sailing ships into the prevailing westerlies that blow them home to Europe. This geographic fact would give significance to Virginia for the Spanish occupying territory to the south.

Spain's wealth came from Mexico and Peru. The Spanish galleons laden with silver and gold and sailing up along the Atlantic Coast of North America before heading out to the open sea were tempting targets for pirates, both state-sponsored (many from France and England and called privateers) and independently operating.