ABSTRACT
The age of exploration is often seen as the story of Europeans moving out into the Atlantic World, with Columbus "discovering" the Americas and initiating contact with native Americans. However, the story is a bit more complex, and the age of exploration more properly includes Chinese, African, and European movements in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans along the coast of India and Africa, as well as into the Caribbean and the Americas. During its exploration of Africa, the Portuguese traded for everything from gold to cloth to spices. As time went on, however, trade in human capital— slaves—became more economically important. As Europeans supplied advanced weapons, coastal kingdoms began to make war against interior peoples specifically to in order to satisfy an ever-increasing demand. Pressure from these wars slowly changed the balance of power to favor those kingdoms willing to trade African slaves for guns and other finished European goods, giving birth to what is often called the Triangular Trade.
