What Stopped the Medieval Europeans

From exploring the West African coast? I mean, they knew it was there, and it's a relatively short distance. Surely at some point someone would've thought to themselves, hey, I've got all these ships, let's see what lies past the Sahara. Not to mention the rumours of gold that would've arisen after Musa Mansa made his pilgrimage.
 
Disease probably. Also the fact that there is more profit elsewhere. Not to mention that most medieval people rarely left the regions they were born in. It is also wildly expensive to mount any kind of expidition to far-off lands. Even travelling the length and breadth of Europe during the Crusades bankrupted many knights.

It also depends when in the Middle Ages you're talking about. It's a very large period.
 
From exploring the West African coast? I mean, they knew it was there, and it's a relatively short distance. Surely at some point someone would've thought to themselves, hey, I've got all these ships, let's see what lies past the Sahara. Not to mention the rumours of gold that would've arisen after Musa Mansa made his pilgrimage.

They thought as you went further south it would get so hot that the sea would boil.
 
Disease probably. Also the fact that there is more profit elsewhere. Not to mention that most medieval people rarely left the regions they were born in. It is also wildly expensive to mount any kind of expidition to far-off lands. Even travelling the length and breadth of Europe during the Crusades bankrupted many knights.

It also depends when in the Middle Ages you're talking about. It's a very large period.

I was talking late 1300's. Also, they didn't know about the disease before they arrived in Africa.
 
I guess the Portuguese doesn't count then.

They went in the mid 1400's, and they were the only ones. I'm talking about before the Portuguese, the Europeans knew that Africa was there, and if the Spaniards were willing to fund an expedition to sail around the world to reach East Asia why were they not also willing to fund an expedition to explore the African coastline? As far as they knew, the African coastline could only been like, 1000 miles long before you can sail round and hit the middle east.

Basically, I suppose I'm asking why the Europeans didn't attempt to conquer West Africa sooner than they did.
 
Several Europeans went to the Canaries lots of times in the Middle Ages: it was known and it was profitable.

Going farther than that... It's not that it was especially difficult to cross the Bojador, it's just that nobody really bothered to send an expedition to explore down the Atlantic Moorish coast (which wasn't exactly friendly) with uncertain results.
It took a guy with the vision, means and reason to do it. Henry the Navigator besides aiming to profit had a fierce crusading agenda and a grand plan to open new fronts agains the Muslims.
if the Spaniards were willing to fund an expedition to sail around the world to reach East Asia why were they not also willing to fund an expedition to explore the African coastline?
The Spaniards/Castilians did send expeditions to Africa but they were always captured by the Portuguese who were trying to enforce a monopoly there. By the time of Columbus the Spaniards had already given up exploring Africa by the Treaty of Alcáçovas.
 

yourworstnightmare

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They went in the mid 1400's, and they were the only ones. I'm talking about before the Portuguese, the Europeans knew that Africa was there, and if the Spaniards were willing to fund an expedition to sail around the world to reach East Asia why were they not also willing to fund an expedition to explore the African coastline? As far as they knew, the African coastline could only been like, 1000 miles long before you can sail round and hit the middle east.

Basically, I suppose I'm asking why the Europeans didn't attempt to conquer West Africa sooner than they did.
For Spaniards: they had the reconquista to complete first, and after that they just wanted a way to get to Asia before Portugal and took a chance with Columbus.
 
For Spaniards: they had the reconquista to complete first, and after that they just wanted a way to get to Asia before Portugal and took a chance with Columbus.
Also, Castilian navy-ing was in a pretty limited context earlier on. They had a halfway decent fleet by the fourteenth century but it kept getting involved in proxy fighting in the Hundred Years War. If you're shuttling cash, guys, and other stuff between Normandy, Aquitaine, and England it doesn't leave a whole lot of room for exploring.
 
Maybe you could get an earlier European exploration of West Africa with a more quickly-resolved reconquista then? Though I don't know how that could be accomplished without severely overtaxing the administrative abilities of the Iberian kingdoms in dealing with large muslim populations within a war-scarred territory.

Alternative: Have Portugal, Galicia, and Leon (re)unite, giving the union more manpower and economic heft than Portugal alone. Then a Henry the Navigator analogue might push further and faster, or emerge a little earlier.
 
Another factor for not exploring the west african coast might have been that the further south you get along what today is Morocco and West Sahara the less inviting the coast becomes. Why would anyone waste a lot of money to explore a worthless uninhabited barren wasteland? It was not until the fall of Constantinople disrupted the trade with India and China that the possibility of a circumnavigation of Africa as an alternative trading route to both India and China was seriously explored. The most likely way to have this route explored earlier by european powers is an earlier fall of Constantinople.
 
They did. That was what the whole Portuguese project was about. Before that - well, West Africa is not exactly hospitable, and the Arabs, who held the Straits for a long time, had an easily accessible land route.
 

yourworstnightmare

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They did. That was what the whole Portuguese project was about. Before that - well, West Africa is not exactly hospitable, and the Arabs, who held the Straits for a long time, had an easily accessible land route.
And if you wanted African goods you could buy them from the Arabs, for a higher price for sure, but was less bothersome.
 
It was really expensive, they had other things to do, and Asian goods were still affordable - its not till 1400 that the silk road sees serious troubles and silks and spices get so rare that nearly whole supply is consumed by west asian before reaching Europe.
 
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