Age of Discovery

===Rise of European trade===
After the [[fall of the Western Roman Empire]] largely severed the connection between Europe and lands further east, Christian Europe was largely a backwater compared to the Arab world, which quickly conquered and incorporated large territories in the Middle East and North Africa. The Christian [[Crusades]] to retake the [[Holy Land]] from the Muslims were not a military success, but it did bring Europe into contact with the Middle East and the valuable goods manufactured or traded there. From the 12th century, the European economy was transformed by the interconnecting of river and sea trade routes, leading Europe to create trading networks.{{Failed verification|date=November 2023|reason=No mention of trade networks being created at this time, nor any inference that these were the first trade networks in Europe.}}<ref name="Paine_2013">{{cite book
|title=The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World |last=Paine |first= Lincoln |year= 2013 |publisher =Random House, LLC |location= New York }}</ref>{{rp|345}}

Before the 12th century, a major obstacle to trade east of the [[Strait of Gibraltar]], which divided the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean, was Muslim control of great swaths of territory, including the Iberian Peninsula and the trade monopolies of Christian city-states on the Italian Peninsula, especially [[Venice]] and [[Genoa]]. Economic growth of Iberia followed the [[Reconquista|Christian reconquest]] of [[Al-Andalus]] in what is now southern Spain and the [[siege of Lisbon]] (1147 AD), in Portugal. The decline of [[Fatimid Caliphate]] naval strength that started before the [[First Crusade]] helped the maritime Italian states, mainly Venice, Genoa and Pisa, dominate trade in the eastern Mediterranean, with merchants there becoming wealthy and politically influential. Further changing the mercantile situation in the [[Eastern Mediterranean]] was the waning of Christian Byzantine naval power following the death of Emperor [[Manuel I Komnenos]] in 1180, whose dynasty had made several notable treaties and concessions with Italian traders, permitting the use of Byzantine Christian ports. The [[Norman Conquest]] of England in the late 11th century allowed for peaceful trade on the North Sea. The [[Hanseatic League]], a confederation of merchant guilds and their towns in northern Germany along the North Sea and Baltic Sea, was instrumental in commercial development of the region. In the 12th century, the regions of [[County of Flanders|Flanders]], [[County of Hainaut|Hainault]], and [[Duchy of Brabant|Brabant]] produced the finest quality textiles in Northwestern Europe, which encouraged merchants from Genoa and Venice to sail there directly from the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar and up the Atlantic coast.<ref name="Paine_2013"/>{{rp|316–38}} Nicolòzzo Spinola made the first recorded direct voyage from [[Genoa]] to Flanders in 1277.<ref name="Paine_2013"/>{{rp|328}}