📌 Luther’s challenge

Many people were angry about church corruption, especially the sale of indulgences, which promised reduced punishment for sins. In 1517 the German monk Martin Luther wrote the 95 Theses against this practice. Printing spread them across Germany in weeks. Luther taught that people are saved by faith, and that the Bible is the authority, not the Pope; he translated it into German. At the Diet of Worms in 1521 he refused to retract his views and was declared an outlaw but protected by German princes. His followers were called Protestants.

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⚔️ Spread and conflict

Other reformers followed: John Calvin in Geneva and Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich. In England Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534 (Act of Supremacy) and made himself head of the Church of England. The Catholic Church responded with the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent (1545–1563). The Peace of Augsburg (1555) let each German prince choose Lutheran or Catholic faith for his land. Religious wars followed, including the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), ended by the Peace of Westphalia.

🧭 Why and how

Europeans wanted spices and other goods without paying Muslim and Italian middlemen. New tools helped: the caravel ship, the compass and the astrolabe. Portugal, led by Prince Henry the Navigator, explored down Africa’s coast. Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. Christopher Columbus, sailing for Spain, reached the Caribbean in 1492. Vasco da Gama reached India in 1498. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) divided new lands between Spain and Portugal. Magellan’s expedition (1519–1522) completed the first circumnavigation (Magellan himself died in 1521).

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🌽 The Columbian Exchange

After 1492, plants, animals, people and diseases crossed the Atlantic: the Columbian Exchange. From the Americas came potatoes, maize, tomatoes, cacao and tobacco; to the Americas went horses, cattle, wheat and sugar. Old World diseases such as smallpox devastated Indigenous peoples, who had no immunity. Spain built a vast American empire, taking silver from mines such as Potosí, which flowed around the world and increased trade.

🌞 A new view of the heavens

For 1400 years people accepted Ptolemy’s idea that the Earth was at the centre. In 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus published a model with the Sun at the centre (heliocentric). Johannes Kepler showed that planets move in ellipses. In 1609–1610 Galileo used a telescope to see Jupiter’s moons, the Moon’s mountains and the phases of Venus, evidence for Copernicus. The Church put him on trial in 1633 and he spent his last years under house arrest. Isaac Newton published the Principia in 1687, explaining motion and gravity with maths.

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🧪 A new method

Francis Bacon argued for knowledge from observation and experiment (empiricism). René Descartes stressed doubt and reason. Together they shaped the scientific method: observe, ask a question, form a hypothesis, test, analyse, share. Andreas Vesalius (1543) corrected ancient anatomy by dissection, and William Harvey (1628) showed that the heart pumps blood in a circuit. Scientific societies such as the Royal Society (1660) shared results.

🌙 Ottomans and Mughals

The Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople in 1453 and under Suleiman the Magnificent (reigned 1520–1566) reached its height, ruling the Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa. It used a professional army, the Janissaries, and let non-Muslims practise their faith under the millet system. In India, Babur founded the Mughal Empire in 1526. Akbar (reigned 1556–1605) practised religious tolerance and built a strong administration. Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal (begun in 1632, finished about 1653) in memory of his wife.

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🐉 Ming and Qing China

The Ming dynasty (1368–1644) drove out the Mongols and repaired the Great Wall. It built the Forbidden City in Beijing (1406–1420). Admiral Zheng He led seven great treasure fleets across the Indian Ocean between 1405 and 1433; the largest had about 300 ships. The Ming later turned inward. The Qing dynasty (1644–1912), founded by the Manchus, was China’s last imperial dynasty. Meanwhile Tokugawa Japan (1603–1868) kept strict order and limited contact with foreigners.

🚢 The triangular trade

European colonists in the Americas wanted labour for sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations and for mines. Portuguese ships began carrying enslaved Africans to the Americas in the early 1500s; later the Spanish, Dutch, British, French and others joined. In the triangular trade ships carried manufactured goods to Africa, enslaved people across the Middle Passage to the Americas, and sugar, tobacco and cotton back to Europe. Records show about 12.5 million Africans were forced onto ships, and about 10.7 million survived the crossing. Many died from brutal conditions, disease and violence.

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🕊️ Resistance and abolition

Enslaved people resisted in many ways, from daily acts of defiance to escapes and revolts. In 1791 an uprising in Saint-Domingue led by Toussaint Louverture became the Haitian Revolution; Haiti became independent in 1804, the first state founded by formerly enslaved people. Campaigners such as Olaudah Equiano and William Wilberforce pushed for change. Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 and slavery in most of its empire in 1833. The USA ended slavery in 1865 and Brazil, the last major country in the Americas, in 1888.