Age of Sail and Empire

The transformation of Portugal from a semi-autonomous county of the Kingdom of León into a global maritime powerhouse began on the battlefield.

Sometime around 1300 CE, a subtle but persistent chill began to settle over the Northern Hemisphere, initiating a centuries-long epoch of erratic cooling known as the Little Ice Age.

Before he dismantled the largest empire in the Americas, Francisco Pizarro was an illiterate youth from Trujillo, Spain, born into poverty to a family of pig farmers.

Before he was a marquis, Hernando Cortés was a mutineer.

The impulse to sail beyond the horizon transformed a fragmented planet into a single, interconnected world-system, binding previously isolated civilizations together for the first time.

Legend has it that she was born with her umbilical cord twisted around her neck—a sign to the Mbundu people of central West Africa that the newborn girl would grow to possess spiritual gifts, pride, and immense power.

Born on the coast of Japan to a Chinese merchant father and a Japanese mother, the boy first named Fukumatsu would spend his short, tempestuous life navigating the violent collapse of one empire and the birth of a…

The throne of Mthwakazi was won not by birthright, but by the arbitration of the spear.