Timeline

• From 1415, Henry the Navigator started the Age of Discovery by funding Portuguese voyages along Africa's west coast.
• 1453, The fall of Constantinople to the Turkish Muslims disrupted trade from the Silk Roads into Europe.
• 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed west to find a route to India and China but landed in the Caribbean, thinking he had reached the Indies.
• 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas divided newly discovered lands outside Europe between Portugal and Spain.
• 1498, Vasco da Gama reached India, opening a sea route from Europe to Asia by sailing around Africa.
• 1521, Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztec Empire and claimed Mexico for Spain.
• 1564, John Hawkins kidnapped 300 West Africans and sold them in Spanish colonies, marking the start of England's involvement in the slave trade.
• 1584, Queen Elizabeth I gave Sir Walter Raleigh permission to colonise the New World.
• 1607, Jamestown, Virginia, became the first successful British colony in America.
• 1625, the British took Barbados from Spain, and sugar plantations (using enslaved labor) replaced tobacco farms.