Empire State of Mind
This rising Islamic power reached the height of its expansion in the fifteenth century, ultimately seizing Constantinople and positioning itself as successor to the Roman Empire.
The Ottoman Empire
This seafaring Genoese navigator is often credited with "discovering" the Americas.
Christopher Columbus
Innovations in this field, also known as map-making, facilitated long-distance travel and supported monarchs' claims to conquered lands.
Cartography
In this year, Columbus sailed the ocean blue
1492
This is the name given to the period of European history marked by a renewed flourishing, or "rebirth," of classical humanist culture
The Renaissance
This Chinese dynasty made a deliberate and concerted effort to eliminate all signs of Mongol rule, including the use of Mongol names, dress, and culture.
The Ming Dynasty
This Muslim eunuch captained the largest and most impressive maritime expedition the world had ever seen. By enrolling South Asian peoples and states into the Chinese tributary system, he established Chinese power in the Indian Ocean and exerted Chinese control over foreign trade in the region
This innovation, originally invented in China, used magnets to allow explorers to navigate longer distances with greater precision than ever before
The magnetic compass
1453
This is the name given to the process by which peoples, technologies, diseases, ideas, and crops traversed the Atlantic Ocean world
The Columbian Exchange
This Islamic empire famously made the decision to impose a Shia version of Islam as the official religion of the state, in contrast to the Sunni form of the faith that characterized its neighbors.
The Safavid Empire
These Spanish monarchs, intent on reconquering the Iberian peninsula under Christian rule, empowered Columbus to seek a westward route to India.
King Ferdinand & Queen Isabela
The printing press
It was in this decade that Johannes Gutenberg perfected a new type of printing press with moveable type, setting off the "Print Revolution" that transformed the history of our world forever
1450s
This city was a major religious center of the Incan Empire in what is now Peru.
Machu Picchu
Established in the early sixteenth century, this Islamic empire established unified control over the Indian peninsula through a combination of commercial success and inclusive policies toward Hindus and Christians.
The Mughal Empire
This Ming Emperor sponsored the making of an 11,000 volume Encyclopedia, which compiled all previous writing on such topics as history, geography, ethics, and government.
Emperor Yongle
This technological innovation, which first emerged in medieval China, made warfare significantly more lethal but enabled it to be carried out across a greater distance.
Gunpowder
This year signaled the end of Zheng He's voyages - and with it, the last oceanic expeditions of the Ming Dynasty in China
1433
This is the name given to the American continents by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European contemporaries
The New World
This West African empire rose to power in the second half of the fifteenth century, growing rich off the trans-Saharan trade routes and blossoming into one of the world's foremost centers of Islamic learning and commerce.
The Songhay Empire
In "City of Ladies," this Renaissance author, the daughter of a Venetian official, used the power of print to push back against the misogynistic ideas espoused by her contemporaries.
Christine de Pizan
This is the name for a small, fast Spanish or Portuguese sailing ship of the 15th–17th centuries.
Caravel
In this year, Portuguese mariner Vasco de Gama launched a voyage that took him around the tip of South Africa - the first European ever to navigate around the Cape of Good Hope
1497
This Renaissance treatise in political philosophy was written by Niccolo Machiavelli and famously argued that it is better for rulers to be feared by their subjects than loved
The Prince