1.European explorations were undertaken by expeditions made up of a handful of small ships 2.European motivations for exploration included the desire for wealth from trade, the search for converts to Christianity, and the recruitment of possible Christian allies against the Muslim powers. 3.The Europeans sought to monopolize by force the commerce of the Indian Ocean and violently carved out empires in the Americas 4.The fragmentation of political authority in Europe, ensured that once begun, rivalry alone would drive Europeans to the end of the earth. 5.The Europeans were seeking out the greater riches of the East, and they were highly conscious that Muslim power blocked easy access to these treasures and posed a military and religious threat to Europe itself.
Europeans were much closer to the Americas than were their potential Asian competitors. 2.Europeans were powerfully motivated after 1200 to gain access to the world of Eurasian commerce. 3.Groups within European society, including competing monarchs, merchants, impoverished nobles and commoners, Christian missionaries, and persecuted minorities all had strong, if different, motivations for participating in empire building. 4. European states and trading companies enabled the effective mobilization of both human and material resources. 5. Disease in the Americas
European empires generate?

1.European empire building caused the demographic collapse of Native American societies. 2.Combinations of indigenous, European, and African peoples created entirely new societies in the Americas. 3.Large-scale exchanges of plants and animals transformed the crops and animals raised both in the Americas and in the Eastern Hemisphere. 4.The silver mines of Mexico and Peru fueled both transatlantic and transpacific commerce. 5.The need for plantation workers and the