KPDS 2009-2 Soru=77

As suggested in the passage, in medieval Europe before 1270, ----.

Until the late thirteenth century, European maritime
commerce had been divided between a
Mediterranean and a North Atlantic world. Starting
around 1270, however, Italian merchants began to
sail through the Strait of Gibraltar and on to the woolproducing
regions of England and the Netherlands.
This was the essential first step in the extension of
Mediterranean commerce and colonization into the
Atlantic Ocean. The second step was the discovery
by Genoese sailors, during the fourteenth century, of
the Atlantic island chains known as the Canaries and
the Azores. Efforts to colonize the Canary Islands
and to convert and enslave their inhabitants began
almost immediately. But an effective conquest of the
Canary Islands did not begin until the fifteenth
century, when it was undertaken by Portugal and
completed by Spain. The Canaries, in turn, became
the base from which further Portuguese voyages
down the west coast of Africa proceeded. They were
also the “jumping-off point” from which Christopher
Columbus would sail westward across the Atlantic
Ocean in hopes of reaching Asia.