Most European explorers of the 1400s, like Columbus or Ferdinand Magellan, were sailors working either for private merchant companies, or for nation states seeking new trade opportunities.
For example, Columbus sailed west looking for a new sea route from Europe to Asia, since communications between the two continents had been made difficult by Ottoman dominance over the Eastern Mediterranean, and Persian dominance over Central Asia. Columbus, in fact, died without having realized that he had landed in the Americas.
