What would medieval Europeans do with the knowledge that the Americas exist?

What if knowledge of the lands were spread throughout Europe maybe akin to Marco Polo and his voyages into China? What would the kingdoms of Europe in the middle-ages 11th-14th century done with that knowledge? Would there have been much earlier attempts to colonize or at least explore those lands?

Well, the question is, knew what exactly about these lands?

Europe knew about Vinland through the middle ages, but thought Vinland to be some islands a bit like Ireland but with hostile natives and no resources you couldn't get much easier from Russia. Narwal horn excepted, but the Norse were producing quite a bit of that until the Ivory trade took over the market.

Europes interest in faraway lands and the notion that they equated to profit actually originated with Colombus.

Colombus had a unique combination of luck, drive and geographical ineptitude. And he promised the Monarchs who ran the literal Spanish Inquisition that he would find a lot of precious metals for them. So when he landed in the Caribbean, and found very little, he absolutely expected the Spanish Inquisition. Expected them excruciatingly.

So he lied. Brazenly, utterly and mightily. There were island that abounded in countless amounts of gold he said, vast gold mines, spices, most rivers contained gold, etc. Lied his head off. He probably wasn't expecting the letter to go viral, didn't even have a word for that. But it did. It really captured the medieval imagination, like a tulipomania or childrens crusade. A fantastic number of copies were made and sent off to every corner of Europe. Lots of copies are still in existence.

Only Colombus freakish run of luck continued, and the Spanish actually did find the vast amounts of precious metals he described. Enough to utterly ruin the Spanish Economy. And that combination, the viral description of all the riches, and the actual riches, spot-welded the notion; that faraway lands = easy money into the European culture.

Before Colombus... well there were plenty of faraway lands. Russia. Siberia. Vinland. Africa. Unless there was a known resource of great value there such as spices, silk or sugar, there wasn't actually any interest beyond the occasional missionary/martyr multiclass individual.

11th century... a massive ringing "meh" I think. Until the silver and gold was discovered, and even then the means to reliably get there was lacking.

However, as the centuries roll on, the Grand Banks would have become an issue the Hansa, whose power was built on the stockfish trade, absolutely had to deal with or co-opt. Power is a drive as strong as greed. What I could see is Hansa factories, then cities spreading from Newfoundland. A contact model more like the Phoenician than the OTL European. They would find the Mesoamerican gold.

It would not have gone what you'd call well for the natives, but it would have been better than OTL, which was basically God kicking them over and over shouting "YOU THINK YOU'VE HAD BAD LUCK!? IT GETS WORSE!!"
 
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The last decades of the High Middle Ages would like a word with you.
Oh, well sure that was being land hungry? Crusades (all of them and specially the eastern ones) were mostly a religious business as the wars against Muslims (who in any case were the invasors, recents or not)
 
Oh, well sure that was being land hungry?
Yes, I'd say hitting western Europe's pre-industrial carrying capacity would qualify. Only rather than moving into new land* "relief" came in the form of famine, plague, and climate change.

*although many Germans moved into eastern Europe which had a far lower population density
 
Oh, well sure that was being land hungry? Crusades (all of them and specially the eastern ones) were mostly a religious business as the wars against Muslims (who in any case were the invasors, recents or not)
I'm sure he was referring to the high population growth and the famines that preceded the Black death in the early 14th century.
 
It would not have gone what you'd call well for the natives, but it would have been better than OTL, which was basically God kicking them over and over shouting "YOU THINK YOU'VE HAD BAD LUCK!? IT GETS WORSE!!"

Well, yes, OTL was really, truly horrifically bad for all American Native peoples, Greenland to Tierra del Fuego and literally everywhere in between.
 
Even if the medieval Europeans knew that Vinland was not an isolated subarctic island at the uttermost fringes of their known world but rather the northeasternmost fringe of two continents bigger than Europe, it's not clear to me they would be able to do much. Did the maritime technology even exist to allow for regular transatlantic traffic? Were there any polities that would have been sufficiently populous and wealthy and advanced to support this traffic?
 
Did the maritime technology even exist to allow for regular transatlantic traffic?
that's a good question. While the ships at the time might be able to make the journey via the 'Viking route', it would take a lot of foresight and preparation... they would first have to take a big fleet with a lot of supplies to Iceland and dump them there to make a supply waypoint, then do it again in Greenland... hard to imagine just why anyone would do that...
 
that's a good question. While the ships at the time might be able to make the journey via the 'Viking route', it would take a lot of foresight and preparation... they would first have to take a big fleet with a lot of supplies to Iceland and dump them there to make a supply waypoint, then do it again in Greenland... hard to imagine just why anyone would do that...

It really is not clear to me what the incentives would be. It's difficult to imagine a material basis for the trade, given the lack of obvious high-value trade goods in Vinland. (Tusks, maybe? Sealskins? Codfish, but did the technology exist to preserve them?) We could imagine a non-material basis, some sort of missionary push, but it is difficult to see this being sustained for very long.
 
There was the trade in Narwhal horn and Walrus tusks from Greenland. A surviving Vinland would probably have an easier time of it than Greenland, due to the presence of timber for ships and iron. They were high-value, low-weight and volume trade goods that did not spoil. So until the Ivory took over the market, you could sail from Vinland with those and return with European luxury goods that would grant prestige.

It is kind of hard to determine exactly when they got started but during the 1500s fishermen and whalers of Breton, Basque and Bristol origins found it extremely profitable to sail to Newfoundland, fish or whale there and then sail back with the catch, without any real trade in Vinland.

Stockfish is extremely durable and had been an export article from Lofoten for centuries before Vinland. I expect if Vinland had been a gong concern, Vinlanders would have been shipping fish and trading for luxuries long before the demand had grown to the point that crossing the Atlantic and back were profitable.
 
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