The sixteenth century was an age of discovery. A number of reasons created interest in exploratory voyages. Seafaring technology improved, Ottoman expansion cut off the traditional routes to eastern markets while demands for goods of the East continued to grow. Lacking export goods, western consumers were forced to purchase eastern luxuries with bullion. The need for greater supplies of bullion also stimulated exploration.

The first nation to initiate exploratory voyages was Portugal which benefited from experience with Atlantic navigation, skilled navigators, and good ships. Early voyages charted the waters of western Africa where bullion and black slaves were the primary products. By the beginning of the sixteenth century, Portuguese explorers had rounded the Cape of Good Hope and established trade routes to the spice markets of India and Indonesia. The Portuguese established a trade empire in Asia with fortifications and garrisons defended strategic discoveries and trade routes. Only in Brazil in the New World did they occupy the land.

While Portuguese efforts were concentrated on the spice trade with the East, the Spanish devoted their attention to the New World. A late starter in the establishment of routes to the East, Spain determined to gamble on a western route to the spice markets. With the support of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Genoese adventurer Christopher Columbus voyaged westward encountering the New World a land previously unknown to Europeans. When potential conflict between Spain and Portugal over the new territories seemed likely, the papacy allotted Brazil to the Portuguese and all other lands to the Spanish in the Treaty of Tordesillas. Full realization of the global arrangement of the new discoveries was only achieved after the circumnavigation of the globe by the crew of Ferdinand Magellan. The voyage destroyed hopes for a practical new route to the spice markets of Asia and forced the Spanish to concentrate on the imperial potential of the New World.

Under the Spanish military adventurer Hernando Cortes, the conquest of the New World began. Military venturers were given control over land they conquered in return for attempts to Christianize the native population and to find marketable commodities, especially bullion, for Spanish markets. Native populations were ruthlessly subdued and converted to semi-free agricultural laborers. Hernando Cortes undertook the conquest of the Aztec empire of central Mexico. With a force of only six hundred men, Cortes defeated the Aztecs under their emperor Montezuma II. Superior technology, firearms, and cavalry (horses were unknown to the Aztecs) and the support of local Indians tribes permitted Cortes to defeat overwhelming numerical superior Aztecs. Another tragic consequence of the arrival of the Spanish in the New World was the introduction of European diseases to which the Amerindians had no immunity and thus decimated the native population. In 1531 Francisco Pizarro repeated Cortes’ success against the Peruvian empire of the Incas. The conquest of the Incas proved the wisdom of the conquistadors in extending the dominions of Spain. Huge supplies of bullion were discovered in the Incan empire and exported to Europe. In return, the Spanish sent colonists, including women, to “civilize” the New World.

By the seventeenth century the New World had been yoked to an international system based on the triangular trade between Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Whether in the East or the New World, imperial motivation could be summarized under the westerners’ search for “gold, God, and glory.” Conquistadors and explorers became popular heroes celebrated in story and song. Despite real natural hazards and imagined dangers, the discoverers carved out new routes and markets. Some successes could be attributed to European technological superiority. Better navigational devices, ship design, and chart making made long-distance sea travel possible. Military advantages through the use of battle-tested gunpowder and cannon insured Western victories over less well-armed peoples. The encounter between Europeans and the world was also a biological and iconological exchange. The introduction of new diseases decimated the peoples of the Americas. While the introduction of European animals changed the lifestyle of the Amerindians, the introduction of American foodstuffs altered the diet of the Europeans. Europe also began to interpret the home civilizations in terms of the newly discovered ones. Essayists became interested in the viewpoint of native Americans, but the concern of intellectuals was insufficient to halt the processes of debasement and enslavement that followed colonization. Intentional and unintentional destruction of native cultures was an invariable concomitant of discovery and conquest.

The voyages of discovery and conquest coincided with the development of more centralized nation states, the New Monarchies, in western Europe.

Three empires created the eastern European boundaries. To the southeast, the khanates of the Mongol empire marked the borders of Europe. Once a single political unit under the great founding khans, the Mongol territories were now divided into smaller states. To the south, the newly emergent Ottoman Empire succeeded to the lands once ruled by the Byzantines. The Balkan peninsula served as a buffer zone between the Ottoman territories and the West. To the northeast, the Russian principalities—notably those centered on Moscow and Kiev—established the limits of European culture. In the latter principalities, the borders between East and West were less absolute. Technically within European boundaries but on the periphery of European political affairs were the lands bordering the Baltic Sea. The Scandinavian nations (Sweden, Denmark, and Norway), the lands of the Teutonic Knights, and Poland-Lithuania surrounded the northern inland sea. Territorially distinct but united to Poland-Lithuania through a single dynasty, the Jagiellons, were Hungary and Bohemia. Bohemia, in particular, was drawn into the European arena as a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Wealth on the eastern frontier of Europe was based on Baltic fisheries, Russian forests, and Hungarian and Bohemian mines. Ethnically, the region was a diverse mixture of German colonists, Asian conquerors, and native Slavic peoples.

All of central Europe was taken up by the ill-defined mass of the Germanic or Holy Roman Empire. The extreme decentralization of the empire left central Europe a jumble of competing political jurisdictions—principalities, imperial cities, and episcopal states. The greater states—Bohemia, Brandenburg and Bavaria—lay in the eastern portions of the Holy Roman Empire. The western half of the empire was completely fragmented into smaller political units. At the mouth of the Rhine lay the Low Countries, still among the wealthiest regions of western Europe. The Holy Roman Empire was rich in resources. It possessed fertile agricultural regions producing grain and the Mediterranean luxury products, wine and olive oil. The European mining industry was centered here. Finally, the Hanseatic League controlled a vast commercial system. Like the Empire, the Italian peninsula remained divided into a series of small states.

The western borders of Europe were taken up by the Iberian Peninsula, France, and the British Isles. During the Middle Ages, Muslims controlled Spain. Muslim domination came to an end in 1492, when the united Christian kingdoms of Castile and Aragon completed the reconquista. In addition to Castile and Aragon, Portugal existed on the Atlantic shoreline. France, like Spain, had ports on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. France was bordered on the east by the Holy Roman Empire, and England lay only a few miles off the northwestern coast. France enjoyed one of the most prosperous agricultural systems in Europe. The British islands included England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Of these, England was the most prosperous with a successful and varied agricultural system. England also developed a woolen cloth industry. Wales and Scotland were less populated than England. Difficult climates and geography limited the economic development of both. Ireland had a better climate for agriculture, but Ireland, too, was less populated than England. The political shape of Europe was still in its formative stages.

In the mid-fifteenth century, there were many factors that made the creation of great states difficult, if not impossible. Distance was the enemy of centralization. Transportation and communication systems were too primitive to permit close contact with far-flung parts of huge empires. Larger regions also tended to be fragmented culturally with different languages and political customs creating distinct regionalism. There were mundane political reasons for smaller states. Inheritance varied from one place to another. In some regions it was still customary to divide the estate among all heirs. France excluded women from the royal line. Uncertainty in the principles of succession commonly implied continual struggles over inheritance and legitimacy. The aristocracy, imperial cities, and the Church also sought to frustrate the creation of centralized monarchies in which their own powers would diminish. The advance of military technology, however, gave princes the power to subdue some of their weaker neighbors. The process of centralization began to take place.

At the outset of the sixteenth century, the most successful program of centralization in eastern Europe had been undertaken in the principality of Muscovy. External threats, such as the Mongols and the Byzantine Empire, had diminished. Indeed, Moscow and its prince became heirs to Constantinople as head of the Orthodox Church. The most successful monarch, Ivan III, the Great, had no internal competitors for the throne. Ivan’s successors maintained his military and political successes. Expansion finally came to an end under Ivan IV, the Terrible. The principality failed to establish a Baltic port after many years of warfare with Poland-Lithuania. Ivan IV also was responsible for social changes in Muscovy. Muscovite society consisted of three estates: the boyars (the old hereditary nobility), the knights or military service class whose lands were received from the prince, and the agricultural workers. Ivan attempted to diminish the authority of the boyars. Ivan reduced the boyars’ control over land, decimated their numbers through trials and suppression, and pushed them down into the ranks of the military service class. The removal of the boyars effectively eliminated the Russian aristocracy and paved the way for centralization. Ivan created administrative offices to deal with all phases of local government. Russian agricultural peasants were ruthlessly ground down into servile status. Poland-Lithuania experienced fragmentation rather than centralization during the same period. Originally the states of Poland, Lithuania, Bohemia, and Hungary were united under a single family. The accession of the Jagiellons was accomplished through concessions to local aristocracies, not through conquest. As a result, all of the territories split into separate jurisdictions in the course of the sixteenth century. The failure of centralization in eastern Europe was due to many reasons. Unlike Muscovy, there were powerful external rivals—Muscovy, itself, and the Ottomans. There were also important internal forces preventing centralization. The regional aristocracy of the eastern frontier was not eliminated. The Habsburgs also challenged the Jagiellons for supremacy in the region.

England’s status as an island gave it immunity from external attack. Factionalism among powerful aristocratic families led by two cadet branches of the royal family led to prolonged civil wars, the Wars of the Roses. Eventually the two cadet families, Lancaster and York, were destroyed. The throne fell to Henry Tudor, a distant relative of the Lancastrians. In order to centralize England, it was necessary to limit the power of the aristocracy and create solvency for the Crown. The new aristocracy of state service replaced the old feudal aristocracy. By 1525 there were only two English dukes left alive. Royal revenues depended on the income from estates and from customs. Parliament limited the king’s ability to tax the real property of the aristocracy. Thus, administrative reform focused on efficiency in running royal estates and in collecting taxes on commerce. The resources available to the Crown remained limited until Henry VIII confiscated all Church property in England. To deal with the financial bonanza, one of Henry VIII’s chief ministers, Thomas Cromwell, created an administrative system composed of separate departments dedicated to specific tasks. All departments were coordinated through the Privy Council, a small body of trusted advisors that functioned as the executive. Cromwell also began the political process of controlling the work of Parliament through the establishment of royal factions.

France became a centralized state only by overcoming significant centrifugal tendencies. Provincialism, a powerful aristocracy, aggressive external neighbors, and the size of the French state all militated against centralization. France’s first challenge was the successful conclusion of the Hundred Years’ War and the related independence of the dukes of Burgundy. Controlling virtually the entire eastern frontier of France, Burgundy posed an enormous threat to a unified France. Thanks to a Swiss revolution against Burgundian influence, the French were able to defeat Burgundy and annex many of the Burgundian territories to France. Under King Louis XI, the French nobility was reduced in influence. Through marriage alliances and simple exhaustion of aristocratic heirs, Louis gained control of most of the major estates of France. Only the Low Countries passed out of his control. Virtually continuous warfare strengthened the principles of royal taxation in France beyond those of any other European state. Similarly, the long years of war created a national army—raised, supplied, and paid for by the state. Taxation and militarization marked the beginning of centralization in France.

The marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile made possible the unification of Spain. Although the two crowns were united, Aragon jealously regarded its traditions of limited royal authority. In some ways, the creation of Spain was a product of the reconquista, the successful campaigns to free the Iberian Peninsula from the influence of North African Muslims. The process was finally completed in 1492 with the conquest of Granada. Militarization, as in France, was the first step in centralization. Most conquered territories were handed over to Castile where they were used to reward helpful aristocrats. As a side-product of the reconquista, Spanish Jews were harassed. In 1492 the Jewish population of Spain was expelled. Ferdinand and Isabella were succeeded by their grandson Charles V, heir to Castile, Aragon, Naples, the Low Countries, and the Holy Roman Empire. Forced to govern such a disparate group of states, Charles depended on Spain for the development of a centralized administrative system of councils. The resultant bureaucracy allowed Charles to be absent for long periods of time. Charles’ real success in the unification of Spain, however, was a result of aggressive foreign policy. He carried on war with the Ottoman Empire, secured Aragonese possession of Naples, and pressed the development of Spanish colonies in the New World.

The development of increasingly centralized states and foreign colonies led inevitably to prolonged warfare between the aspiring monarchs. The sixteenth century was devoted to imperial wars.

Wars were fought in the sixteenth century for the benefit of princes. Conflict was essentially dynastic. As states became more organized, they were better able to practice the arts of war. Bullion from the New World and state taxation permitted the hiring of professional soldiers and the purchase of new technology. Improvements in communication and transportation made long-distance warfare more feasible. Finally, personal ambitions played a role in the growth of militarism. Charles V of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England were bitter rivals and competitors.

The theater for the wars, especially those pitting the French against the Habsburgs of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, was Italy. Constant warfare between major Italian city-states offered opportunities for intervention. The French first interceded on the side of Milan in 1494. Naples was a bone of contention between the royal houses of France and Spain. Conflict between Habsburg and Valois monarchs broke out in 1515, again over Milan. Henry VIII of England also sought to play a role in these conflicts. Eventually allied to the Habsburg emperor, Henry VIII launched a series of abortive invasions of France. While the English failed to gain much, the emperor made use of the distraction to push his advantage in northern Italy. At the battle of Pavia, Charles V actually captured Francis I. In the Treaty of Madrid of 1526, Francis I was forced to cede Burgundy to the Habsburgs and to recognize the Spanish conquest of Navarre and Aragon’s rights to Naples. The French king immediately renounced the treaty and prepared for renewed war. New alliances were created against the Habsburg possessions. England and the Ottoman Empire joined France. The combination proved too much for Charles V. Conflict was finally halted by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis. Six decades of conflict bankrupted both France and Spain financially and in terms of human resources. Exhausted, Charles V divided the Habsburg empire between his brother (the Holy Roman Empire) and his son (Spain, the Low Countries, and Naples). The emperor abdicated and retired to a monastery in 1555.