Early modern period

The early modern period is the era following the European Middle Ages until 1789 or 1800. A common break with the medieval period is placed between 1450 and 1500 which includes a number of significant events: the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire, the spread of printing and European voyages of discovery to America and along the African coast. The nature of warfare evolved as the size and organization of military forces on land and sea increased, alongside the wider propagation of gunpowder. The early modern period is significant for the start of proto-globalization, increaslingly centralized bureaucratic states and early forms of capitalism. European powers also began colonizing large parts of the world through maritime empires: first the Portuguese and Spanish Empires, then the French, English, and Dutch Empires. Historians still debate the causes of Europe's rise, which is known as the Great Divergence.

Capitalist economies emerged, initially in the northern Italian republics and some Asian port cities. European states practiced mercantilism by implementing one-sided trade policies designed to benefit the mother country at the expense of its colonies. Starting at the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese established trading posts across Africa, Asia, and Brazil, for commodities like gold and spices while also practicing slavery. In the 17th century, private chartered companies were established, such as the English East India Company in 1600 – often described as the first multinational corporation – and the Dutch East India Company in 1602. Meanwhile, in much of the European sphere, serfdom declined and eventually disappeared while the power of the Catholic Church waned.

The Age of Discovery was the first period in which the Old World engaged in substantial cultural, material, and biological exchange with the New World. It began in the late 15th century, when Portugal and Castile sent the first exploratory voyages to the Americas, where Christopher Columbus first arrived in 1492. Global integration continued as European colonization of the Americas initiated the Columbian exchange: the exchange of plants, animals, foods, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases, and culture between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. It was one of history's most important global events, involving ecology and agriculture. New crops brought from the Americas by 16th-century European seafarers substantially contributed to world population growth.

Greater Middle East

The Ottoman Empire quickly came to dominate the Middle East after conquering Constantinople in 1453, which marked the end of the Byzantine Empire. Persia came under the rule of the Safavids in 1501, succeeded by the Afshars in 1736, the Zands in 1751, and the Qajars in 1794. The Safavids established Shia Islam as Persia's official religion, thus giving Persia a separate identity from its Sunni neighbors. Along with the Mughals in India, the Ottomans and Safavids are known as the gunpowder empires because of their early adoption of firearms. Throughout the 16th century the Ottomans conquered all of North Africa save for Morocco, which came under the rule of the Saadi dynasty at the same time, and then the Alawi dynasty in the 17th century. At the end of the 18th century, the Russian Empire began its conquest of the Caucasus. The Uzbeks replaced the Timurids as the preeminent power in Central Asia.

Europe

The early modern period in Europe was an era of intense intellectual ferment. The Renaissance – the "rebirth" of classical culture, beginning in Italy in the 14th century and extending into the 16th – comprised the rediscovery of the classical world's cultural, scientific, and technological achievements, and the economic and social rise of Europe. This period is also celebrated for its artistic and literary attainments. Petrarch's poetry, Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, and the paintings and sculptures of Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer, as part of the Northern Renaissance, are some of the great works of the age. After the Renaissance came the Reformation, an anti-clerical theological and social movement started in Germany by Martin Luther that resulted in the creation of Protestant Christianity.

The Renaissance also engendered a culture of inquisitiveness which ultimately led to humanism and the Scientific Revolution, an effort to understand the natural world through direct observation and experiment. The success of the new scientific techniques inspired attempts to apply them to political and social affairs, known as the Enlightenment, by thinkers such as John Locke and Immanuel Kant. This development was accompanied by secularization as a continued decline of the influence of religious beliefs and authorities in the public and private spheres. Johannes Gutenberg's invention of movable type printing in 1440 helped spread the ideas of the new intellectual movements.

In addition to changes wrought by incipient capitalism and colonialism, early modern Europeans experienced an increase in the power of the state. Absolute monarchs in France, Russia, the Habsburg lands, and Prussia produced powerful centralized states, with strong armies and efficient bureaucracies, all under the control of the king. In Russia, Ivan the Terrible was crowned in 1547 as the first tsar of Russia, and by annexing the Turkic khanates in the east, transformed Russia into a regional power, eventually replacing the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a major power in Eastern Europe. The countries of Western Europe, while expanding prodigiously through technological advances and colonial conquest, competed with each other economically and militarily in a state of almost constant war. Wars of particular note included the Thirty Years' War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years' War, and the French Revolutionary Wars. The French Revolution, starting in 1789, laid the groundwork of liberal democracy by overthrowing monarchy. It led to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and the subsequent Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century.

Sub-Saharan Africa

In the Horn of Africa, there was the Oromo expansion in the 16th century, which weakened Ethiopia and caused Adal's collapse. Ajuran was succeeded by the Geledi Sultanate. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Ethiopia rapidly expanded.

In West Africa, the Songhai Empire fell to Moroccan invasion in the late 16th century. They were succeeded by the Bamana Empire. The Fula jihads beginning in the 18th century led to the establishment of the Sokoto Caliphate, the Massina Empire, and the Tukulor Empire. In the forest regions, the Asante Empire was established in present-day Ghana. Between 1515 and 1800, 8 million Africans were exported in the Atlantic slave trade.

In the Congo Basin, Kongo fought three wars against the Portuguese who had begun colonizing Angola, ending in the conquest of Ndongo in the 17th century. Further east, the Lunda Empire rose to dominate the region. It fell to the Chokwe in the 19th century. In the northern Great Lakes, there were the kingdoms of Bunyoro-Kitara, Buganda, and Rwanda among others.

Kilwa was conquered by the Portuguese in the 16th century as they began colonizing Mozambique. They were defeated by the Omani Empire who took control of the Swahili coast. In Madagascar the 16th century onward saw the emergence of Imerina, the Betsileo kingdoms, and the Sakalava empire; Imerina conquered most of the island in the 19th century. In the Zambezi Basin Mutapa was followed by the Rozvi Empire, with Maravi around Lake Malawi to its north. Mthwakazi succeeded Rozvi. Further south, the Dutch began colonizing South Africa in the 16th century, who lost it to the British. In the 19th century Dutch settlers formed various Boer Republics, while the Mfecane ravaged the region and led to the establishment of various African kingdoms.

South Asia

In the Indian subcontinent, the Mughal Empire was established under Babur in 1526 and lasted for two centuries. Starting in the northwest, it brought the entire subcontinent under Muslim rule by the late 17th century, except for the southernmost Indian provinces, which remained independent. To resist the Muslim rulers, the Hindu Maratha Empire was founded by Shivaji on the western coast in 1674. The Marathas gradually gained territory from the Mughals over several decades, particularly in the Mughal–Maratha Wars (1680–1707).

Sikhism developed at the end of the 15th century from the spiritual teachings of ten gurus. In 1799, Ranjit Singh established the Sikh Empire in the Punjab.

Northeast Asia

In 1644, the Ming were supplanted by the Qing, the last Chinese imperial dynasty, which ruled until 1912. Japan experienced its Azuchi–Momoyama period (1568–1600), followed by the Edo period (1600–1868). The Korean Joseon dynasty (1392–1910) ruled throughout this period, repelling invasions from Japan and China in the 16th and 17th centuries. Expanded maritime trade with Europe significantly affected China and Japan during this period, particularly through the Portuguese in Macau and the Dutch in Nagasaki. However, China and Japan later pursued isolationist policies designed to eliminate foreign influences.

Southeast Asia

In 1511, the Portuguese overthrew the Malacca Sultanate in present-day Malaysia and Indonesian Sumatra. The Portuguese held this important trading territory (and the valuable associated navigational strait) until overthrown by the Dutch in 1641. The Johor Sultanate, centered on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, became the dominant trading power in the region.

European colonization expanded with the Dutch in Indonesia, the Portuguese in Timor, and the Spaniards in the Philippines.

Oceania

The Pacific Islands of Oceania were also affected by European contact, starting with the circumnavigational voyage of Ferdinand Magellan (1519–1522), who landed in the Marianas and other islands. Abel Tasman (1642–1644) sailed to present-day Australia, New Zealand, and nearby islands. James Cook (1768–1779) made the first recorded European contact with Hawaii. In 1788, Britain founded its first Australian colony.

Americas

Several European powers colonized the Americas, largely displacing the native populations and conquering the advanced civilizations of the Aztecs and Inca. Diseases introduced by Europeans devastated American societies, killing 60–90 million people by 1600 and reducing the population by 90–95%. In some cases, colonial policies included the deliberate genocide of indigenous peoples. Spain, Portugal, Britain, and France all made extensive territorial claims, and undertook large-scale settlement, including the importation of large numbers of African slaves. One side-effect of the slave trade was cultural exchange through which various African traditions found their way to the Americas, including cuisine, music, and dance. Portugal claimed Brazil, while Spain seized the rest of South America, Mesoamerica, and southern North America. The Spaniards mined and exported prodigious amounts of gold and silver, leading to a surge in inflation known as the Price Revolution in the 16th and 17th centuries in Western Europe.

In North America, Britain colonized the east coast while France settled the central region. Russia made incursions into the northwest coast of North America, with its first colony in present-day Alaska in 1784, and the outpost of Fort Ross in present-day California in 1812. France lost its North American territory to England and Spain after the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). Britain's Thirteen Colonies declared independence as the United States in 1776, ratified by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, ending the American Revolutionary War. In 1791, African slaves launched a successful rebellion in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. France won back its continental claims from Spain in 1800, but sold them to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.