How it could have been the exploration of the Americas with a single European power (HRE-like)?

In the eventual scenario where Western Europe (Catholic, no Reformation etc.) would have managed to be somehow centralized in a sort of greater HRE (including France, Iberia and the British Isles), how it could have been the exploration and conquest of the Americas?

IOTL the different European powers competed between them for finding new commercial routes, something which would finally lead to the exploration of the Americas.

Without competence, would be that sort of Greater HRE already compelled to spend efforts and resources in such travels? Wouldn't be more 'conservative' and reluctant to launch such explorations (considering that i.e. Portugal would be peripheral and without power of imposing decisions on such projects).

What do you think?
 
In the eventual scenario where Western Europe (Catholic, no Reformation etc.) would have managed to be somehow centralized in a sort of greater HRE (including France, Iberia and the British Isles), how it could have been the exploration and conquest of the Americas?

IOTL the different European powers competed between them for finding new commercial routes, something which would finally lead to the exploration of the Americas.

Without competence, would be that sort of Greater HRE already compelled to spend efforts and resources in such travels? Wouldn't be more 'conservative' and reluctant to launch such explorations (considering that i.e. Portugal would be peripheral and without power of imposing decisions on such projects).

What do you think?
IIRC part of why Europeans took to the deep ocean was because they wanted to get around the Ottomans' cutting them off from the Indian spice trade. So European traders went around Africa, which took forever, and encouraged people to try finding a faster way around, which led to Columbus' terrible math.

So it depends on what the European superstate's eastern neighbors are doing. Are the Ottomans a thing? Are they powerful enough that Europe can't militarily force the trade routes open? Or does Europe own or dominate a port on the Gulf?
 
Corte-real and didrik pining really do discover the americas at newfoundland, and portugal or some weird hanseatic partnership colonise?
 
IIRC part of why Europeans took to the deep ocean was because they wanted to get around the Ottomans' cutting them off from the Indian spice trade. So European traders went around Africa, which took forever, and encouraged people to try finding a faster way around, which led to Columbus' terrible math.

Now, the European superpower might be able to take on the Ottomans, but honestly it's probably cheaper to go around Africa than fight a war if the Ottomans are like their OTL counterparts up to 1700. it would be a pyric victory for united Western and Central Europe to beat them, unless they Napoleoned it. Just because Europe CAN do its math (which is not a guarantee since Colombus and his Castile backer botched it), so what if there is a giant super-pacific ocean? There are plenty of islands in oceans that could make for good fishing opportunities (is whale in demand yet? If not, smoked and salted preserved fish might be in demand for the middle class for food). So Europeans probably would poke out a bit by bit. Anything within 2500 km of a known port is fair game. None of that is super-risky and this is sufficient to island jump from the Canaries westward.
 
Now, the European superpower might be able to take on the Ottomans, but honestly it's probably cheaper to go around Africa than fight a war if the Ottomans are like their OTL counterparts up to 1700. it would be a pyric victory for united Western and Central Europe to beat them, unless they Napoleoned it. Just because Europe CAN do its math (which is not a guarantee since Colombus and his Castile backer botched it), so what if there is a giant super-pacific ocean? There are plenty of islands in oceans that could make for good fishing opportunities (is whale in demand yet? If not, smoked and salted preserved fish might be in demand for the middle class for food). So Europeans probably would poke out a bit by bit. Anything within 2500 km of a known port is fair game. None of that is super-risky and this is sufficient to island jump from the Canaries westward.
If Europe theoretically could prosecute that war, then they could reasonably threaten to try. That war would destroy both the European superstate and the Ottoman Empire; no Sultan would be stupid enough to actually risk it happening. They'd keep the spice trade routes open to Europe.

Of course someone from the Eurasia would eventually reach the Americas. But it might not be the Europeans and it definitely would have taken longer to happen. Without knowing where the islands are, you can't justify island-hopping. They'd need to bring enough food and water to, theoretically, circumnavigate the globe without stopping - because they couldn't be sure they'd find islands to stop on.
 
Without knowing where the islands are, you can't justify island-hopping. They'd need to bring enough food and water to, theoretically, circumnavigate the globe without stopping - because they couldn't be sure they'd find islands to stop on.

Let me rephrase what I meant by hopping. I didn't mean one voyage, since as you point out, a captain isn't sure of finding the next island.

But Europeans since Greeks to the Portuguese to the English kept poking out as long as there were boats and money to waste. They stayed within a safe distance of a home port, but there cartographers go information to work with.

So I can imagine from the Canary Islands, adventurers, leisure cruisers (there actually is a stone giving a Latin ad for a 100 day "health trip to the seas" that went around the Mediterranean and the air was supposed to do something about health... earlier than you think. William the conqueror went to an equivalent of a weight-loss clinic once http://www.uselessinformation.org/william_the_conqueror/index.html and was probably there before), or even fishing boats might operate within 2500 km of the Canaries. Which they will bump into another island and that spot in 3 decades or less becomes a developed enough to have port facilities. And then so on. Granted, this hopping means that the Atlantic isn't going to be traversed very fast.
 
But Europeans since Greeks to the Portuguese to the English kept poking out as long as there were boats and money to waste. They stayed within a safe distance of a home port, but there cartographers go information to work with.
There isn't really anything between Ponta Delgada / Cape Verde and Bermuda. The Atlantic isn't like the Mediterranean. It's a big, rough, empty ocean.
I think you're severely underestimating exactly what's needed to get across the sea during the Age of Sail
 
There isn't really anything between Ponta Delgada / Cape Verde and Bermuda. The Atlantic isn't like the Mediterranean. It's a big, rough, empty ocean.
I think you're severely underestimating exactly what's needed to get across the sea during the Age of Sail

Is there no habitable (as in not just a lifeless rock... or at least plantless since bacteira is evberywhere) island within 2500 km of the Cape Verde that is also West?
 
Is there no habitable (as in not just a lifeless rock... or at least plantless since bacteira is evberywhere) island within 2500 km of the Cape Verde that is also West?
Not as far as I can tell, no. Check it out on Google Maps. You can right-click to use a distance measuring tool.
 

ar-pharazon

Banned
Wouldn't a European superstate be able to wage war with the ottomans and sail around Africa to get access to spice and the like?

Because such a mega empire would have the resources and power of all or nearly all of Catholic Europe behind it.
 
Wouldn't a European superstate be able to wage war with the ottomans and sail around Africa to get access to spice and the like?

It could well win, but the casualties would well exceed that of OTL Thirty Years War unless they were superior in tactics and had an early Napoleon. However, they could just demand access and most Sultans would probably think that letting the trade through is better than being destroyed by the Catholic Europe (which would come out on top eventually). Only a few rulers of any empire in history showed no sense of self preservation. And so the odds are high when the Europeans make their demands, it's a Sultan who has a sense self preservation. The Europeans would go around Africa too.
 

ar-pharazon

Banned
A Hapsburg mega Catholic Europe which controls Poland, Scandinavia, Britain, France, Spain, Italy, and other places would likely he an extremely complex entity-with countless lords, barons, high ranking families, etc...

With countless duchies, fiefdoms, and baronies like the HRE just bigger.

Such a power would have a lot of internal tensions but would if fully mobilized or devoted would be near unstoppable.
 
When did Poland come under the Hapsburgs? When he said centralized super HRE, I was imagining OTL Hapsburg lands (which includes Croatia which isn't technically HRE), the actual HRE land, and Denmark, France, Iberia and the British Isles.
 

Deleted member 97083

@Viriato's Portuguese America and Southern Africa has the American part of this.
World in 1734

The World in 1734

I may have left off some place names.

1700_ce_world_map-png.262917
 
Wouldn't a European superstate be able to wage war with the ottomans and sail around Africa to get access to spice and the like?

Because such a mega empire would have the resources and power of all or nearly all of Catholic Europe behind it.

They would still eventually discover the Americas that way, since the winds would occasionally blow ships off course and lead them to eastern Brazil. That's how Portugal came across the area, supposedly.
 
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