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What are Portuguese and Spanish motivations for exploration?

User Rhughes
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14 votes

Answer:

Their goals were to expand Catholicism and to gain a commercial advantage over Portugal. To those ends, Ferdinand and Isabella sponsored extensive Atlantic exploration. Spain's most famous explorer, Christopher Columbus, was actually from Genoa, Italy.

Motivated by the desire for new markets and ongoing opposition to the Muslims, Portuguese sailors had begun to explore the West African coast in the first half of the fifteenth century.

User Elliott Beach
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