In the late 1400's and early 1500's, the primary motivation for the European voyages of exploration was
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The European factors worked along the coast of Africa acting as middlemen who arranged to buy slaves and traded them for other goods.
The reasons were, the search for food led human beings to explore. As societies became more sophisticated, expeditions were still launched in search of food, but also trade markets and routes, territories to colonize and sources of income.
Trade, Christianity, Navigation Techniques, and Shipbuilding techniques.
A shift of military power away from European countries was not responsible for European dominance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.