Spices Set the Course. Trade Routes Behind Ocean Exploration

Ocean voyages were often presented as journeys into the unknown, yet merchants, rulers, and sailors pursued routes already imagined through the value of spices, textiles, metals, and ports. This history places trade at the center of early modern exploration. It traces how commercial competition shaped maps, ships, alliances, and encounters across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, while showing the human costs and unequal power created by expanding exchange.