Final answer:
Bartolomeu Dias was the first European to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, opening new sea routes for European maritime exploration and trade with Asia.
Step-by-step explanation:
Contributions of Bartholomeu Dias
In 1487, the Portuguese mariner Bartolomeu Dias embarked on a significant voyage with the goal of exploring new routes to Asia. His successful journey around the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 marked a pivotal moment in the European Age of Discovery. Dias's accomplishments include being the first European to sail around the southernmost tip of Africa, thereby opening up new potential trade routes to Asian markets. This major achievement enabled subsequent explorers like Vasco da Gama to further establish trade connections, which were instrumental in creating new economic opportunities for Europe.
Dias's expedition was propelled by the developments in navigation technology of the time, including the compass, astrolabe, and caravel. Under the sponsorship of Prince Henry the Navigator, Dias and other Portuguese explorers expanded their nation's reach along the coast of Africa and eventually into the Indian Ocean, leading to the establishment of trading posts that facilitated Portugal's entry into the lucrative spice trade and the establishment of a powerful sea empire.
Ultimately, Bartolomeu Dias's contributions set the stage for Portugal's dominance in global trade during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and played a key role in altering the trade dynamics of the period by breaking the Arab monopoly on the spice trade, following their conquest of Malacca.