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It took Columbus a very long time to convince Isabella and Ferdinand that he ought to be able to find something because for the most part his ideas were ridiculed and this was of course during the Inquisition, so that people who had strange or antithetical ideas were not only ridiculed, they were sometimes burned at the stake. Mocked and abused even by children, it had taken Columbus 8 long years to persuade Ferdinand and Isabella to finance his voyage. They did so for trade.
Muslim conquest of the holy lands had reduced their valuable commerce with the Far East to a trickle. A new route to the riches of the Indies had to be found.
Up until the mid-fifteenth century, all of these precious goods got to Europe by way of overland caravans. But in 1453, when the Turks invaded, they cut off these trade routes, so if the nations of Europe wanted to get these goods, they had to find an alternate way and that would have to be a sea route.
Above all, maps were the key.
To a European king, a map was treasure beyond anything else in the world because it gave him access to the new world, to treasure, to the future, and everybody kept their maps under lock and key, and to, to steal a map from another country was a great coup.
Armed with the most recent maps of Europe’s best cartographers, Columbus had a better picture of the world than most of his contemporaries. His maps were much like our own, save for one all-important exception, the undiscovered continent of America was entirely absent. These maps also suffered from another dangerous defect: No one knew what lay in the Atlantic itself. The ocean was a…
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ridicule: v. 嘲笑，奚落
caravan: n. 商队，大棚车
coup: n. 政变，突然的行动
cartographer: n. 地图绘制员
save for: n. 除了...
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