Children's Timeline of World History

What Happened Between 1500-1600

During the 1500’s Europe was beginning to send explorers all over the world, in hopes of finding
wealth and trade routes to other countries, this period of time was known as the age of exploration. Europe was in the beginning years of the reformation, and in the middle years of the
renaissance.

The reformation started in 1517 when the German priest Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses against the Catholic church’s abuse of money and power to a church door in Germany. This caused thousands of people to convert from a primarily Catholic to a primarily Protestant religion. One of these people was King Henry the VIII of England who closed 800 churches and enslaved and took the land of everyone who did not convert to the Protestant religion. From 1562 to 1600 the French Protestants known as the Huguenots were at war with the Catholics.

The first European colonies in America were St. Augustine, founded by Ponce de Leon of Spain in 1565, and Roanoke, founded by Sir Walter Raleigh of England in 1587 which failed because a supply ship could not be sent due to the fact that England needed all the ships they could get to fend off the invading Spanish armada. When England finally defeated the Spanish armada and a supply ship could be sent the people of Roanoke were gone . In 1588 Sir Henry Drake of England
plagued the Spanish trading vessels of South America. During their never-ending search for gold the Spanish almost completely destroyed the Inca, Maya, And Aztecs of South America and Mexico and enslaved the rest with their superior steel weapons and armor. The two major explorers of the 1500’s were Magellan of Spain in 1519, who was the first one to sail around the world, and Vasco de Gama of Portugal, who was the first one to sail around the tip of Africa in,
1499.

During the Renaissance people were becoming more educated, more books were being made with the help of Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1444. Technology was becoming more advanced and people were able to invent better weapons and armor. The richer people had more money to spend on paintings by people like Michelangelo and Leonardo de Vinci. In China and Japan the Samurai Wars were coming to an end, in the Middle East the ottoman Turks were at their highest point in history moving towards Europe they found themselves at war with the European Catholics , Italy was at war with France, and England was at war with Spain, Europe was in the middle of the reformation. These are the major things that happened during the 1500’s