--- title: Castile, Portugal and the first sea empires — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Castile, Portugal and the first sea empires», a lesson of the geography course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Portugal and Castile sat on the edge of Europe, facing the open Atlantic, so while Venice owned the old Mediterranean routes --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/) / Castile, Portugal and the first sea em… # Castile, Portugal and the first sea empires Lesson 33 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/0/) — Portugal and Castile sat on the edge of Europe, facing the open Atlantic, so while Venice owned the old Mediterranean routes, they looked for new ones across the ocean. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/1/) — Step by step Portuguese ships crept down the coast of Africa, like a child exploring a dark corridor one door at a time, until in 1498 Vasco da Gama reached India by sea. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/2/) — Columbus sailed west for Castile in 1492 hoping to reach Asia; people already knew the Earth was round, but he thought it was much smaller than it is, and he bumped into the Caribbean instead. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/3/) — In Europa Universalis 5 this is a fun race of explorers, colonists and gold, but for the Taíno, the Aztecs and the Inca it meant conquest, forced labour and deadly new diseases. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/5/) — Christian kingdoms in Iberia, the peninsula of Spain and Portugal, including Castile, Aragon and Portugal, slowly took the peninsula from Muslim rulers over centuries, ending with the fall of Granada in 1492. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/6/) — In 1492 Castile and Aragon ordered Jews to convert or leave, and later Muslims were forced to convert and finally expelled in 1609 to 1614. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/7/) — Portugal's Prince Henry, called "the Navigator", sponsored voyages down the west coast of Africa from the 1410s, though he did not sail on the long voyages himself. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/8/) — The Portuguese and Spanish used caravels, small fast ships with triangular lateen sails that could sail closer to the wind. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/9/) — Bartolomeu Dias sailed round the southern tip of Africa in 1488, and Vasco da Gama reached India by sea in 1498. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/10/) — Columbus, an Italian sailing for Castile, reached the Caribbean in 1492 while trying to reach Asia by sailing west. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/11/) — Educated people in Columbus's time already knew the Earth was round, so the story that he proved it is a myth. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/12/) — The Taíno, the people Columbus met in the Caribbean, were nearly wiped out within a few decades by forced labour, violence and new diseases, though many Caribbean people today have Taíno ancestors. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/13/) — Words such as hammock, canoe and hurricane came into English from the Taíno language. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/14/) — Hernán Cortés and a small Spanish force, with tens of thousands of Indigenous allies, conquered the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan in 1521, helped by a smallpox outbreak, and Mexico City was built on its ruins. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/15/) — Francisco Pizarro captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa in 1532 and had him killed in 1533, even after a huge ransom of gold and silver was paid. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/16/) — Portugal colonised Brazil from the 1530s, at first for brazilwood, a red dye wood that gave the land its name, and then for sugar plantations worked by enslaved Indigenous people and Africans. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/33-castile-portugal-and-the-first-sea-empires/17/) — Spain took the Philippines from 1565, and Manila galleons crossed the Pacific between Acapulco and Manila until 1815, carrying American silver one way and Chinese silk and porcelain the other. - ← previous: [Venice, the Ottomans and the Mediterranean](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/32-venice-the-ottomans-and-the-mediterranean/) - next →: [Muscovy, England and France: how the big powers grew](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/34-muscovy-england-and-france-how-the-big-powers-grew/) - ↑ back to [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/)