Early modern Europe emerged from its isolation during the Middle Ages by conquering the world's oceansÐopening direct contact and commerce with Africa and Asia and rediscovering America. Before the end of the fourteenth century, western Europeans had relied on the mariners and merchants of the Muslim world for their access to the trade and technology of Africa and Asia. During the fifteenth century, though, western Europeans threw off their dependence on Muslim middlemen for access to the learning and resources of distant continents. European mariners carved out new sea routes to Africa and Asia and laid claim to continents in the Americas. The results of those efforts at exploration and discovery transformed Western Europe from a backward society into a major world power.