page_title: Exploration of the Pacific
section_title: The coast of Asia
hierarchical_section_title: Exploration of the Pacific / European exploration / Iberian pioneers / The coast of Asia
caption_attribution_description: Map showing main Portuguese (blue) and Spanish (white) oceanic trade routes in the 16th century, as a result of the exploration during the Age of Discovery. Showing the Spanish colonial Manila-Acapulco Galleons route (1565-1815) between the Viceroyalty of New Spain (México) and the Spanish East Indies (Philippines), using the ports of Acapulco and Cavite. PIA03395: World in Mercator Projection, Shaded Relief and Colored Height
context_page_description: Polynesians reached nearly all the Pacific islands by about 1200 AD, followed by Asian navigation in Southeast Asia and West Pacific. Around the Middle Ages Muslim traders linked the Middle East and East Africa to the Asian Pacific coasts. The direct contact of European fleets with the Pacific began in 1512, with the Portuguese, on its western edges, followed by the Spanish discovery of the Pacific from the American coast.
  In 1513, six years before Magellan, Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and saw the Pacific Ocean.
  In 1521 a Spanish expedition led by the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan was the first known crossing of the Pacific Ocean, who then named it the "peaceful sea". Starting in 1565 with the voyage of Andres de Urdaneta and for the next 250 years, the Spanish controlled the transpacific trade with the Manila galleons that crossed from Mexico to the Philippines and vice versa, until 1815. Other expeditions from Mexico and Peru discovered various archipelagos in the North and South Pacific. In the 17th and 18th centuries, other European powers sent expeditions to the Pacific, namely the Dutch Republic, England, France, and Russia.
context_section_description: The Portuguese reached India in 1498, conquered Malacca in 1511 and in 1512 António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão reached the Spice Islands. In May 1513 Jorge Álvares reached southern China and in the same year Balboa crossed Panama. In 1525 Diogo da Rocha and Gomes de Sequeira reached the Caroline Islands, and Jorge de Menezes in 1526-27 landed on the Islands of Don Jorge de Menezes, in the northwest coast of New Guinea (now part of Indonesia), and named the region Ilhas dos Papuas and is thus credited with the European discovery of Papua. In 1542 Fernão Mendes Pinto reached Japan. From about 1543 until 1614, the Portuguese monopolize the trade between China and Japan, through the nanban trade. In 1589, João da Gama reached Hokkaido and possibly sighted the Kuril islands, crossing the Pacific further north of the routes usually taken until then. The land that he eventually discovered northeast of Japan, has since become a matter of legend and controversy.  
  One hundred years after the Spanish and Portuguese the Dutch Republic began its remarkable expansion. The Dutch reached the East Indies in 1596, the Spice Islands in 1602 and in 1619 founded Batavia. In 1600 a Dutch fleet reached Japan from the Strait of Magellan. The Dutch had little success in China but established themselves at Hirado, Nagasaki in 1609 and monopolized the Japan trade from 1639. In 1639 Matthijs Quast and Abel Tasman searched the empty ocean east of Japan looking for two islands called 'Rica de Oro' and 'Rica de Plata'. In 1643 Maarten Gerritsz Vries reached and charted Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. In 1653 Hendrick Hamel was shipwrecked in Korea. At about this time the Russians reached the Pacific overland via Siberia (see below). It is significant that the Russian and Dutch trades were never linked since Siberian furs might easily have been exported to China at great profit.
caption: Portuguese trade routes (blue) and Spanish trade routes (white) in the 16th century.
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