The age of empires

Between 1500 and 1750 the world becomes one connected system for the first time. Ships link every inhabited continent, silver from one mine in South America circulates in China, and a disease from Europe empties cities in Mexico. In the same 250 years Europe splits over religion, fights a series of wars about it, and settles on an arrangement that separates the ruler's territory from the ruler's church. The period ends with a machine that pumps water out of a coal mine, which does not look important at the time.

1500s — Disease empties the Americas. Smallpox reaches Mexico in 1520 and measles, typhus, and influenza follow. The population of the Americas falls by a large majority over the following century. The exact figures are disputed, because the population before contact is itself estimated rather than counted, and estimates range widely. What is not disputed is that disease, not warfare, did most of the killing, and that it did so before most Europeans arrived. The empires that Spanish forces defeated were already collapsing.
1517 CE — The Reformation. Martin Luther publishes objections to the practices of the Catholic Church. Similar objections had been raised before and had been contained. This one was not, and the difference was printing. Luther's writings were reprinted and distributed across German-speaking Europe within weeks, faster than any authority could answer them. A technology from the previous century decided the outcome of a religious argument in this one.
1545 CE — Silver from Potosí. A mountain in what is now Bolivia turns out to hold the largest silver deposit found up to that date. Spanish silver crosses the Atlantic to Europe and crosses the Pacific to China, where demand for silver was high. For the first time a single commodity moves money between four continents, and prices in Europe rise for a century as the supply grows. The mines were worked under forced labour, and the death toll was severe.
1545 to 1563 CE — The Catholic response. The Council of Trent meets over eighteen years and reorganises the Catholic Church, defining doctrine against the Protestant position and reforming the practices that had been attacked. Europe now has two competing Christian systems, each backed by states, and neither is going to absorb the other.
1602 CE — The first joint-stock company. The Dutch East India Company is founded with shares that can be bought and sold by the public. Ownership separates from management, risk spreads across many investors, and the company outlives any of them. This is the structure that almost every large business uses today, and it appears here.
1543 to 1687 CE — The Scientific Revolution. Copernicus publishes the argument that the Earth moves around the Sun in 1543. Newton publishes the laws of motion and gravitation in 1687. Between those two dates, the method for settling questions about the physical world changes. Authority and ancient texts stop being sufficient, and observation and measurement become the test. This is the beginning of a division that runs through the next four centuries, between questions settled by evidence and questions settled by belief.
1633 CE — Galileo condemned. The Catholic Church tries Galileo for supporting the argument that the Earth moves, and he spends the rest of his life under house arrest. The case is remembered because it shows the two systems in direct conflict, with the religious authority winning in the short term and losing over the following century.
1648 CE — The sovereign state is defined. The Peace of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years' War, which had killed a large share of the population of central Europe. The settlement established that a ruler decides religious arrangements inside their own territory and that other rulers do not intervene there. That principle, territory first and everything else inside it, is the basis of the modern state and of international relations. Historians dispute how much Westphalia actually invented and how much it recognised, but the name has stuck to the idea.
1688 and 1689 CE — Written limits on a king. The English Parliament removes one king, installs another on conditions, and passes a Bill of Rights setting out what the crown may not do without Parliament. The direction set at Magna Carta 470 years earlier now becomes a working system rather than a principle.
1694 CE — The Bank of England and national debt. The bank is founded to lend money to the government to fight a war. A state can now borrow from the public at scale and repay over decades, instead of depending on what it can tax immediately. Cheap borrowing decides wars, and it is one reason a small country funded a global navy.
1500s to 1800s — Enclosure. Common land, which villagers had used collectively, is fenced and turned into private holdings. The process runs for centuries and accelerates after 1750, when Parliament passes acts to enclose specific parishes. Farming on enclosed land produces more food with fewer workers. The people no longer needed on the land move to towns, and they become the workforce for what follows.
1700s — The Enlightenment. Writers across Europe argue that reason and evidence should decide questions of government, law, and religion, rather than inherited authority. The arguments circulate in printed books and pamphlets, which is why this movement reaches a wide public and earlier ones did not. Its conclusions appear directly in the revolutions at the end of the century.
1712 CE — The Newcomen engine. Thomas Newcomen builds the first steam engine that works reliably in daily use. It does one job. It pumps water out of mines, using an up and down motion, and it burns a very large amount of coal to do it. That inefficiency means it is only worth running at a coal mine, where the fuel is at hand and effectively free. So the first steam engine changed mining and changed nothing else. Making it useful anywhere else took another 57 years, and that is where the next page starts.