Lesson 1.9 · Unit 1 · CED topic 1.11
Causation: why the Renaissance and exploration happened
The last topic of each unit practices a skill instead of adding new content. Here the skill is causation: explaining how and why events, developments, or processes happened and what their effects were. Learning Objective O asks you to explain the causes and consequences of the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. This lesson shows you how to build a causal argument from the evidence of Unit 1.
Learning objective.
- 1O. Explain the causes and consequences of the Renaissance and Age of Discovery.
Reasoning process. Causation. The exam asks you to apply it to the developments of the whole unit, so this lesson practices it on the unit's central evidence.
What causation means
A historian does not stop at "X led to Y." Strong causal reasoning asks four questions.
- Which causes, and of what kind? Long-term causes build slowly (a growing economy, new ideas). Short-term causes trigger events (a conquest, a fall of a city). Causes can be economic, political, intellectual, religious, or technological.
- How strong was each cause? Some are necessary conditions, without which the event could not happen. Others are only contributing factors.
- What links cause to effect? The explanation needs a mechanism: what actually carried the effect from one thing to the next?
- What are the effects, and how do they differ by time and group? Immediate effects differ from long-term ones, and winners differ from losers.
Applying it to Unit 1
The Renaissance. Long-term causes included the wealth of Italian city-states, the competition among rulers and families for prestige, the recovery of classical texts, and the crisis of the fourteenth century that weakened old certainties. The short-term trigger of the 1450s and after was printing, which was a technological cause that spread the movement. The consequences include a new emphasis on secular and individual values, changes in education, new forms of art, and, through Christian humanism and critical scholarship, pressure for church reform.
The Age of Discovery. The causes were economic (the search for gold, spices, and luxury goods and for direct access to Asian trade), political (rivalry among states and the new role of the state in promoting commerce), religious (the wish to spread Christianity), and technological (the caravel, the compass, astrolabe, and guns). The consequences include the creation of colonial empires, the Columbian Exchange, the destruction of indigenous societies, the rise of the Atlantic slave trade, and a shift of economic power from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.
Connections between the two
The Renaissance and the Age of Discovery were related. Printing spread maps, travel accounts, and navigation manuals; humanist curiosity about the natural world supported science; and the same wealthy, competitive states financed both art and voyages. Overseas wealth, in turn, funded courts and patrons. Good causal arguments show such interactions, and not just two separate lists.
Description of: A modern historian's argument, as it might appear on an exam. The author contends that the voyages of discovery were driven less by curiosity than by the pressure of competition among European states and the search for profit, and that once Spain and Portugal showed that overseas empire could bring great wealth, other states felt forced to follow.
Sourcing (HIPP). The author is a modern historian writing with hindsight, so the point of view is analytical and later than the events. The purpose is to explain a cause, and the audience is students and scholars. A secondary source like this offers an argument rather than evidence from the time, so a strong response identifies the claim and then tests it against facts such as the Portuguese and Spanish voyages, the Dutch and English companies, and the role of mercantilism.
Claim. The historian claims competition among states and the search for profit drove exploration.
Evidence. The argument points to the pressure on other states to follow Spain and Portugal after they showed the profits of overseas empire. Facts that support it include the entry of the Dutch, English, and French with trading companies in the seventeenth century.
Reasoning. This supports the causal claim because rivals copied a successful model, which fits the CED's emphasis on state power and mercantilism. A limit is that it leaves out religion and technology, which also mattered, so the argument is best seen as one important cause among several.
Question. Explain one cause and one consequence of the Age of Discovery.
Model. One cause was the search for direct access to gold and spices: Ottoman control of eastern routes and Italian middlemen made Asian goods expensive, so Portugal and Spain sponsored voyages that bypassed them. One consequence was the Columbian Exchange, in which crops, animals, and diseases crossed the Atlantic, enriching Europeans with new foods and profitable crops while epidemics devastated indigenous peoples.
On the exam, causation questions ask you to explain how or why, often for causes and for effects. Name a specific cause, state the link, and give evidence: "The wealth of Italian city-states led to patronage because rulers competed for prestige, as when the Medici commissioned art." Use the words because, led to, and as a result. Keep causes in categories (economic, political, religious, technological) so that you can show that several factors worked together, and rank them if asked which was most important.
- Distinguish a long-term cause from a short-term cause with an example from Unit 1.
Show answer
A long-term cause develops over time, such as the growing wealth of Italian cities; a short-term cause triggers an event, such as the arrival of printing, which sped the spread of Renaissance ideas.
- Give two causes of the Renaissance.
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The wealth and competition of Italian city-states and the revival of classical texts (also patronage, crisis in the fourteenth century, and printing).
- Give two causes of the Age of Discovery and name their type.
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Economic: the search for gold, spices, and luxury goods. Technological: the caravel, compass, and astrolabe. (Also political rivalry and religion.)
- Name one consequence of the Age of Discovery for Europe and one for indigenous Americans.
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For Europe, new wealth and a shift of economic power to Atlantic states; for indigenous Americans, epidemic disease, conquest, and forced labor.
- How did printing connect the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery?
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It spread humanist ideas, maps, and travel and navigation knowledge, which supported both cultural change and exploration.
- Why might a historian rank economic causes above religious ones in explaining exploration?
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State and merchant profits, mercantile competition, and the demand for gold and spices appear in nearly every voyage, while religion often accompanied or justified expansion but did not by itself finance it.