perfidy

There are many space exploration advocates who bemoan the fact that the American space program was a political entity, born of the cold war and dying with it. But this view is incorrect in that, historically, exploration has rarely if ever been anything but political. When John F. Kennedy launched the American half of the cold war space race, he followed a tradition of politically motivated exploration that stretches back half a millennium.

When Henry the Navigator organized the Portuguese exploration efforts in the late fifteenth century, he did it for an expressly political purpose - to find an alternate route to valuable commodities. The existing, and expensive trade route to the spices that Europe wanted went straight through the Islamic Ottoman Empire, which for reasons of religion, politics and greed restricted the flow of commerce to the Christian west.

When the Italian navigator Christopher Columbus convinced the Spanish to finance his expedition, the Spanish wanted an alternate route to the east as well - because the Ottomans and the Portuguese controlled the other two. French and British, Dutch and Swedish voyages of exploration over the next two centuries were the result of the desire of those governments to establish colonies in the new world, so as not to be totally left out of the game that was dominated by the first two exploring nations, Portugal and Spain. (And to discover new routes to the east, of course.)

While these explorations seemed to lead quite naturally to trade, colonies, empire and the like, it did not spring magically into existence, simply because new lands had been discovered. Gold inspired the Spanish conquistadors, and soon Spain was in possession of vast territories it didn’t know quite what to do with. The vast difference in military capability between the Castilian soldiers of Cortez and Pizarro meant that the Aztec and Incan empires could be conquered by small groups of adventurers, without constant support from the mother country.

But elsewhere in the world, progress toward empire was slow. In the early seventeenth century, the French government could barely convince a couple thousand of her citizens to settle in New France, and even by the time of the American Revolution a hundred and fifty years later, the population of Canada only amounted to tens of thousands. Even in the rich farm lands of what became the Thirteen Colonies, population growth was negative for decades - the colonies only grew through immigration. The first British colony died out altogether, and the second, third and fourth nearly did as well. Setting up colonies was a difficult business, and rarely profitable until decades later. State support for these ventures was minimal, unless placing a colony directly inconvenienced a rival power, or a valuable resource lay directly under it.

In Africa and in the East, outright empire building was slow to develop. The Portuguese, and later the Spanish, British, Dutch and French set up small outposts and forts to guard their trade routes. And even these were only viable because of the vast amounts of wealth that was easily obtained by trading with the nations of the east.

Governments financed exploration for political reasons - but exploration was cheap. A couple ships, crew and an overly brave explorer were easy to come by. Settlements and Empire were much more costly, and usually avoided, unless there was a compelling political or strategic gain to be had. Those colonies usually fell into one of two categories - securing land to prevent a rival power from getting it (usually sparsely inhabited or primitive areas), or smaller forts, treaty ports, and outposts used to secure trade routes to valuable commodities.

As Europe grew richer and more technologically advanced these networks of colonies, outposts and treaty ports eventually evolved into true empires; usually as the result of some ambitious Leftenant conquering or duping local rulers because the local customs offended his sense of propriety. But in the early stages, this process was expensive and run by the government for its own purposes. Merchants, colonists, traders and mechanics followed later, often much later.

Another factor to consider is that most of the early British colonies in America were self financed, and by groups that wanted desperately to leave England; or they were prison colonies. This pattern was also true, though to a lesser extent, in other British dominions, and in the territories of other powers. It was only after the colonies had become established over a period of decades or centuries, and became prosperous that the central government showed any interest in them at all.

Governments can finance exploration easily. Settlement is a tougher and more expensive endeavor, and only undertaken (by governments) when there is clear and immediate gain to be had.