The world: 1510s

1510–1519

Events in this period 4

1. 1517 · Europe · Religion

   Ninety-five Theses

   The Ninety-five Theses or Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences is a list of propositions for an academic disputation written in 1517 by Martin Luther, then a professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany. The Theses are retrospectively considered to have launched the Protestant Reformation and the birth of Protestantism, despite various quasi- or proto-Protestant groups having existed previously.

2. 1519 – 1522 · South America · Exploration

   Magellan expedition

   The Magellan expedition, sometimes termed the Magellan–Elcano expedition, was a 16th-century Spanish expedition planned and initially led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and completed by the Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano which resulted in the first circumnavigation of the Earth. Its purpose was to secure a maritime trade route with the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, in present-day Indonesia. The expedition departed Spain in 1519 and returned there in 1522 under the command of Elcano, who continued the voyage after Magellan's death in the Philippines. One of the most significant voyages in the Age of Discovery, the nearly three-year expedition totaled 60,440 km (37,560 mi) and was the first to sail around the earth. It also marked the first crossing of the Pacific by a European expedition, revealing the vast scale of that ocean, and proved that ships could sail around the world on a western sea route.

3. 1511 · Southeast Asia · War

   Capture of Malacca (1511)

   The governor of Portuguese India Afonso de Albuquerque conquered the city of Malacca in 1511.

4. 1516 – 1517 · Africa · War

   Ottoman–Mamluk War (1516–1517)

   The Ottoman–Mamluk War of 1516–1517 was the second major conflict between the Egypt-based Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire, which led to the Fall of the Mamluk Sultanate and the incorporation of the Levant, Egypt, and the Hejaz as provinces of the Ottoman Empire. The war transformed the Ottoman Empire from a realm at the margins of the Islamic world, mainly located in Anatolia and the Balkans, to a huge empire encompassing much of the traditional lands of Islam, including the cities of Mecca, Cairo, Damascus, and Aleppo. Despite this expansion, the seat of the empire's political power remained in Constantinople.

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Still under way

• Sengoku period1467 – 1615

Around the same time

• Columbus reaches the Americas1492
• Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India1497 – 1499
• Pedro Álvares Cabral1500
• Fall of Tenochtitlan1521
• Founding of the Mughal Empire1526
• Battle of Cajamarca1532
• Treaty of Tordesillas1494
• Safavid Iran1501
• Battle of Mactan1521
• Battle of Mohács1526

Other maps for this period

• War mapsSengoku period
• War mapsItalian Wars
• Epidemics mapSweating sickness