Source set · 10 sources ✓ Lesson ready

Why did people explore, and what did their voyages bring?

A Ming admiral's inscription, Portuguese and Spanish voyagers, a French captain in Canada, the first map to name America, and the Spanish debate between Sepúlveda and Las Casas let students weigh motives for exploring against what the voyages brought to the peoples they reached.

Timeline of key events →Unit: The Age of Exploration →

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✓ Lesson ready

A ready-to-run lesson for this set: Voyage Stations: Motives and Meetings. Slides include a hook, one slide per source, directions, a take-a-stand vote, an exit ticket, and a teacher script in the speaker notes.

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1. Hook: a striking quote 3-5 min

May the Devil take thee! What brought you hither?
Two merchants from Tunis greeting a Portuguese sailor at Calicut, India, from the journal of Vasco da Gama’s first voyage (1498)

Ask: Imagine you had sailed for ten months to reach India. How would you answer that question? How do you think the merchants of Calicut saw the Portuguese?

2. Main activity: Voyage Stations: Motives and Meetings

Grouping: Four stations, groups of 4 to 6, rotating every 7 minutes

Materials (printables are in the Lesson Plan Doc)

Four station cards (printable pages in the Lesson Plan Doc), one per table
Station recording sheet (in the Lesson Plan Doc)
A world map or the 1507 Waldseemüller map projected for Station 3
A chart on the board: God, Gold, Glory, Knowledge, Order

Launch 3 min
Explain the stations: at each one students record motives, meetings, and missing voices. Post the chart God, Gold, Glory, Knowledge, Order.
Rotate 28 min
Four stations, 7 minutes each. Give a one-minute warning before each move. At Station 3, have students find the word AMERICA on the map before reading.
Sort the motives 7 min
Groups place sticky notes for each source under God, Gold, Glory, Knowledge, or Order. Ask: which motives appear in both Chinese and European sources? Which appear only in one?
Take a stand 7 min
Use the vote slide.
Exit ticket 5 min
Students answer on a slip before leaving.

Take a stand: What drove the voyages of exploration most?

Trade and wealth: Zurara’s second reason is merchandise, da Gama’s men came for spices, and Columbus stressed gold and harbors.
Faith, power, and prestige: Zurara’s fifth reason is spreading the faith, Zheng He stressed order and tribute, and Cartier raised a cross for the King of France.

3. Pacing options

15-minute bell-ringer

3 min Hook: “What brought you hither?”
8 min Run Station 4 only as a whole class: Sepúlveda and Las Casas side by side
4 min Exit ticket question 2

Full 50-minute lesson

4 min Hook: Calicut, 1498
3 min Launch the stations
28 min Four stations, 7 minutes each
7 min Sort the motives
5 min Vote and exit ticket
3 min Buffer

4. Exit ticket

Name one motive for exploring that appears in a Chinese source and in a European source. Quote or cite both.
Sepúlveda and Las Casas both wrote to the Spanish Crown. Explain one way their arguments differ and why each might have persuaded readers in 1550.

5. Differentiation

Support

This set has no Adapted Docs yet; read key passages aloud or chunk them for struggling readers.
Start struggling readers at Station 3, which has a map and short passages.
Give the recording sheet with the author, date, and place already filled in for each station.
Word bank: tribute, navigator, chronicle, claim, conquest, natural law, conversion, spices, leagues.

Extension

Use the 1507 map and a modern map to list three things Waldseemüller got right and three he got wrong. What sources of information might explain each?
Research what happened to the two sons Cartier took to France. What does their story add to his account?

Suggested sequence

Leveled readings: 6 key passages in this set are adapted to about grade 4, 7, and 10 reading levels, shown next to the original wording.

Leveled readings (make a copy)

Zheng He: Liujiagang Inscription on the Treasure Fleet Voyages (1431)
Inscription · Civilizations in Contact (trans. J. J. L. Duyvendak) · World: Medieval (500-1500) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 10 min
Before his seventh voyage, the Ming admiral Zheng He and his fellow envoys set up a stone inscription at Liujiagang, near Shanghai, listing the treasure fleet’s voyages since 1405: more than a hundred ships, tens of thousands of soldiers, tribute from kingdoms as far as East Africa, and thanks to the sea goddess Tianfei for protection.
Ask: What does the inscription say the treasure fleet did, and why do the envoys say the voyages succeeded?
Open with this source to frame the question.
Original ↗Sourcing, Contextualization, Corroboration
Gomes Eanes de Zurara: Why Prince Henry Sent Ships to Guinea (c. 1453)
Chronicle · Project Gutenberg (trans. C. R. Beazley and E. Prestage, 1896) · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 10 min
The royal chronicler Zurara lists five reasons why Prince Henry of Portugal sent ships down the coast of Africa: to learn what lay beyond Cape Bojador, to open new trade, to measure the strength of the Muslim powers, to find Christian allies, and to spread the Christian faith. Chapter 7 of his Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea.
Ask: What five reasons does Zurara give for Prince Henry’s voyages, and which do you think mattered most?
Leveled reading Original ↗Copy Doc Sourcing, Contextualization, Corroboration
Christopher Columbus: Letter to Luis de Santangel on the First Voyage (1493)
Letter · Project Gutenberg (Select Letters of Christopher Columbus, trans. R. H. Major, Hakluyt Society) · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 12 min
Written on the voyage home in 1493 and soon printed across Europe, this letter announced Columbus’s landfall in the Caribbean. He describes islands he claimed for Spain, praises their harbors, rivers, and gold, and describes the Taino people as generous and willing, while noting that he seized some of them to serve as interpreters.
Ask: What did Columbus want his readers to think about the lands and people he found, and what does the letter reveal about his goals?
Leveled reading Original ↗Copy Doc SOAPSTone HIPP / HAPP
Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)
Document · Yale Avalon Project · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 30 min
The 1494 treaty in which Spain and Portugal agreed to divide newly found lands outside Europe along a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands (English translation).
Ask: How did Spain and Portugal divide the world in 1494, and who was left out of the agreement?
Original ↗Copy Doc SOAPSTone HIPP / HAPP
Vasco da Gama: Round Africa to India (1497-1498)
Document · Fordham University · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 30 min
Translated primary source from Fordham University's Internet History Sourcebooks: Vasco da Gama: Round Africa to India (1497-1498).
Ask: What did Vasco da Gama's crew record about the East African coast and India?
Leveled reading Original ↗Copy Doc SOAPSTone HIPP / HAPP
Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii alioru[m]que lustrationes (1507)
Map · Library of Congress · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades K-5, 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 10 min
Library of Congress map: Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii alioru[m]que lustrationes (1507). "Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 world map was the first map to depict a separate Western hemisphere with the Pacific as a separate ocean. The map grew out of an ambitious project in Saint-Dié, Lorraine (in present-day Franc…
Ask: Why is this the first map to use the name 'America'?
Original ↗Copy Slides OPTIC See-Think-Wonder
Ferdinand Magellan's Voyage Round the World, 1519-1522 CE
Document · Fordham University · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 30 min
An account of Ferdinand Magellan's 1519-1522 expedition, the first to sail around the world.
Ask: What dangers and discoveries mark Magellan's voyage, and what does it reveal about the size of the world?
Original ↗SOAPSTone HIPP / HAPP
Jacques Cartier: Raising the Cross at Gaspé, First Voyage (1534)
Journal · Internet Archive (J. P. Baxter, A Memoir of Jacques Cartier, 1906) · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 8 min
The account of Cartier’s first voyage describes how the French raised a thirty-foot cross bearing the words “Vive le Roy de France” at Gaspé Bay in July 1534, how the local leader Donnacona objected that the land was his, and how Cartier took two of his sons back to France.
Ask: What did the French say the cross was for, and what did the local leader seem to think about it?
Leveled reading Original ↗Copy Doc HIPP / HAPP Sourcing, Contextualization, Corroboration
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda: Democrates Alter, on the Just Causes of War Against the Indians (c. 1544)
Treatise · Columbia University (Contemporary Civilization reader) · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades 9-12 · ⏱ 12 min
The royal historian Sepúlveda wrote this dialogue to argue that Spain’s wars against the Indigenous peoples of the Americas were just. Drawing on Aristotle’s idea of “natural slavery,” he claims that some peoples are by nature fit to be ruled and may be compelled by force. He defended these views against Las Casas at Valladolid in 1550 to 1551.
Ask: What reasons does Sepúlveda give for saying Spain’s wars in the Americas were just, and what authorities does he rely on?
Leveled reading Original ↗Sourcing, Contextualization, Corroboration
Bartolomé de las Casas: A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552)
Book · Project Gutenberg (1689 English translation) · World: Early Modern (1450-1750) · Grades 6-8, 9-12 · ⏱ 15 min
Las Casas, a former colonist who became a Dominican friar, wrote this account for Prince Philip of Spain to expose the violence of the conquest. He describes the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean as gentle and peaceful and accuses Spanish colonists of killing millions. Printed in 1552, it was widely translated and later used by Spain’s rivals.
Ask: What did Las Casas want the Spanish Crown to do, and how did he try to persuade it?
Close with this source before writing.
Leveled reading Original ↗Copy Doc Sourcing, Contextualization, Corroboration

Quick check

Five questions built only from this set’s sources: four multiple choice and one short answer. Print it or assign it in Google Classroom. The answer key gives the source line for every answer.

Quick check (make a copy)Answer key (make a copy)

Preview the questions

Which source in this set contains this passage? “On arriving in the outlying countries, those among the barbarian kings who were obstructing the “transforming influence” (of Chinese culture) and were disrespectful we captured alive, and brigands who gave themselves over to violence and plunder we…”
According to Gomes Eanes de Zurara, what was one reason Prince Henry sent ships down the African coast?
Which source in this set contains this passage? “…then showed us the country all about us, as if he had wished to say that all the country was his, and that we should not plant the said cross without his leave.”
Where did the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) draw its dividing line between Spain and Portugal?
Short answer: Choose two sources from this set. Using a specific detail from each, explain how they help answer the set’s question: “Why did people explore, and what did their voyages bring?” Write 3 to 5 sentences.

Culminating writing prompt

Using evidence from at least three sources in this set, write an argument that answers the question: “Why did people explore, and what did their voyages bring?” Cite each source by title, explain how its author, audience, and purpose affect its reliability, and respond to at least one counterargument.

Printable writing sheet (make a copy)

Build a DBQ

Students can plan with the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning organizer.