THE QUEST FOR THE NORTHEAST PASSAGE For hundreds of years, sailors and explorers from all over Europe have been looking for the Northwest and Northeast passages, in order to find an alternative route to the Orient. The main drivers of these explorations were the fragmentation of the Mongol Empire, which broke the Pax Mongolica and made it necessary to cross several borders to reach China, and the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, a sworn enemy of most Western European nations. And even when this...