ABSTRACT
Binary views of the age of discovery result in part from an evidentiary problem that favours European worldviews. Most assessments of the age of discovery are coloured by the fact that, in superficial terms, Europeans tend to think of themselves as explorers and the people of the places to which they sailed as the discovered, a binary that gives Europeans agency while denying it to others. The initial responses to European voyages on the part of the people of coastal Eurasia and Africa seem to have been based on the reasonable assumption that Europeans were motivated chiefly, if not exclusively, by the search for profitable trade. European merchant-adventurers were eager to promote the potential of newly encountered pockets of wealth and raw materials to satisfy existing demand and develop new markets. Despite some ideological continuities, Europeans’ motivations for expansion varied according to when and where they lived.
