Oceans became highways, gunpowder empires rose, and the scientific revolution began. These articles cover the three centuries in which the world's regions first became one system.
Suleiman camped at Vienna in September 1529 and quit after three weeks as winter came early. He then took Baghdad, wrote law and built the Süleymaniye.
· 1529Pizarro seized Atahualpa at Cajamarca on November 16, 1532, after plague and civil war had split the Inca; the conquest itself took until 1572.
· 1532Potosí silver, found in 1545 and refined with mercury by forced mita labor, sailed to Seville and, on Manila galleons, to China, the era's silver sink.
· 1572Akbar ruled Mughal India from 1556 to 1605 by ranking Hindu and Muslim officers in one service, ending the jizya tax in 1564 and outranking his clerics.
· 1575Tokugawa Ieyasu broke Ishida Mitsunari's western army in a few foggy hours on October 21, 1600, redistributed a third of Japan and became shogun in 1603.
· 1600British troops took thousands of brass plaques and heads from the Oba's palace in Benin City in 1897; since 2021 museums have begun to return them.
· 1600Lancashire machines from 1764, the Cromford mill of 1771, high wages and cheap coal explain why cotton factories appeared first in the English Midlands and North.
· 1771
