Gold is what truly drove me to explore in the first place. I was familiar with the idea of Mercantilism, which is the idea that there is only so much wealth in the world, and that to make your kingdom strong you must have more gold and wealth than the other kingdoms. However, I also desired to seek riches for my personal wealth. In my time, government rulers would send explorers to find riches like land, spices, gold and other resources that would make their country rich and important. An example of that would be how Christopher Columbus explored for gold and wealth to bring back to Spain. He traded with the indigenous people for gold at a great profit for Spain.
God and religion were also a popular motive for exploration during my time. With Europe Christianized, people wanted to spread the Gospel to the rest of the world, because Europeans had always seen spreading Christianity as a good thing. Colonization would later become a race to convert indigenous people to a particular brand of Christianity. Religion was also an excuse for enslaving or exploiting non-Christians which allowed kingdoms to participate in the slave trade.
