Broadly speaking, Mercantilism was very good for European countries for a while but terrible for their colonies.
Mercantilism made people in the Old World VERY rich.
But, as a result of the imbalance, the relationship between the European countries and their colonies deteriorated making mercantilism good in the short term but bad in the long term.
Answer:
The biggest changes were in rigging. At first they concentrated on lateen sails, then added a mix of square sails and lateen for deeper penetration into the South Atlantic, with further changes for the much longer route round the Cape. Knowledge of these techniques was protected by forbidding sales of ships to other countries. A third commercial advantage was Portugal's ability to absorb “new Christians” — Jewish merchants and scholars had played a significant role during Muslim rule
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They lacked knowledge about the land and how to use their environment to survive.