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.so sixteenth-century English and French navigators and princes Marc Lescarbot,searched for a passage to the East Indies north of the Spanish Newoff the coast of FrenchWorld possessions.Canada, 1606When their initial reconnaissances ended in failure and furtherprobes were interrupted by unforeseen crises at home, the northernEuropean powers rethought their enterprise.They decided to estab-lish fortified trading posts along the coast from Newfoundland to theCarolinas.From these, they could deny the North to the Spanish con-quistadors and friars and make a profit in the process.In the courseof a century of lost ships and inept explorations, the French and En-glish uncovered a marketable commodity in the North fur andthe Indians happily traded it for European goods.The northern landsbecame the fur frontier.The Indians and the Europeans had radically different conceptionsof the meaning and use of trade, but for a time, perceived mutual ad-vantage convinced them to put those differences aside.The pelts theIndians trapped and traded employed European craftspeople and 96 WORLDS I N MOTI ONgave a much needed lift to European commerce.The finished goods the Europeansbrought to America elevated the Indians standard of living.england and france eye the northlandBecause the Europeans did not populate the land or seek to conquer its native peo-ples, these first northern ventures of the French and English lacked some of the op-pressive features of the Spanish and Portuguese empires.In addition, the French andEnglish did not buy or bring to their trading posts African slaves.Thus the comingtogether of peoples in the North might have provided historical examples of thatrarest of situations in history an encounter among different peoples that benefitedall of them.But the Europeans did not regard one another s advantage with equanimity.Theyraided one another s camps, hijacked one another s ships, and set their Indian alliesagainst one another.By competing in such a manner, they turned Indians intertribalsuspicion and rivalry into all-out wars for access to European weapons, alcohol, andcontrol of the supply of game.Europe s first northern American explorations becamea cold war. RI VALS FOR THE NORTHLAND 97Initial English and French ExplorationsIn the wake of the Spanish explorers reports, European geographers busiedthemselves redefining the Atlantic world, and mapmakers could not assimilate newinformation fast enough.When Fernando Magellan skirted the southern tip of SouthAmerica (Cape Horn) on his way to Asia in the winter of 1519 1520, he proved thatthe East Indies could be reached by sailing west and south from Europe.Accordingto ancient Greek theory, the world must be symmetrical, and the classical ideal of theglobe still gripped the Europeans imagination.Hence geographers theorized thatjust as the Western Hemisphere had a southern terminus, it also must have a north-ern terminus.Whoever could find that Northwest Passage to the Pacific would reapthe wealth of Asia.Geography placed England nearest the hoped-for Northwest Passage and madeit Spain s natural rival in the North Atlantic.Henry VII of England immediately sawthe dangers of Spanish domination of the Atlantic Ocean after Columbus s voyage.Like Ferdinand and Isabel, Henry had well-schooled Italian pilots among his sub-jects.Indeed, in 1496, just such a man petitioned the king to exceed Columbus s feat.In 1495, John Cabot, a Genoese pilot, had moved to England with his family.Thenext year he resettled in Bristol, a prosperous fishing port on the Severn River, andapproached Henry VII with a plan to find a Northwest Passage.Always parsimonious, Henry provided Cabot with only one ship, the fifty-ton car-avel Matthew, and a commission to explore the northern coast of the New World.Cabot sailed across the North Atlantic to what he called the new found land (New-foundland) and returned to England.His journey was swift and without incident.In-deed, his return took but fifteen days.The king was pleased and outfitted Cabot withfour ships the next year.If it did not match Columbus s fleet of seventeen ships,Henry s was nonetheless a commitment of some scope.Unfortunately for Cabot andfor England, Cabot and his four ships vanished in the North Atlantic.In 1501, Henry VII chartered a mixed company of English and Portuguese mer-chants to explore Newfoundland and find a Northwest Passage.They made two trips,but nothing substantial came of their efforts.Nor was John Cabot s son, Sebastian,any more successful, though his 1509 crossing duplicated his father s feat.HenryVII s son, Henry VIII, inaugurated a massive program of shipbuilding to protect En-gland s commerce and fishing, but his interests in European affairs dwarfed hiscommitment to western exploration, and his half-hearted efforts to explore theNorth Atlantic led nowhere.Henry VIII s son, Edward VI, died young, and Henry solder daughter, Mary I, married Philip of Spain.Neither Mary nor Philip saw any rea-son why England should compete with Spain in the New World.Problems at home and wars abroad delayed France s entry into the race for em-pire until the 1520s, though a few French explorers, on their own, made the Atlanticcrossing
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