Early Modern
Franco-Ottoman Alliance (1536): Francis I and Suleiman
France and the Ottoman Empire cooperated against Charles V, and the capitulations became the basis of French trade and influence in the Levant for centuries.
Era · c. 1500 – 1800
Early Modern
Voyages of exploration, the Reformation and the age of revolutions that reshaped Europe and the wider world.
Early Modern
Battle of Las Salinas (1538): Pizarro against Almagro
Victory for the Pizarro faction; Diego de Almagro was captured and executed in Cusco in July 1538.
Early Modern
Battle of Preveza (1538): Barbarossa's Naval Triumph
Ottoman victory; the Holy League fleet withdrew and Venice soon made a costly separate peace, leaving the Ottomans dominant at sea for over three decades.
Early Modern
Hernando de Soto Expedition (1539-1543): Across the Southeast
No gold or empire was found; de Soto died in 1542 and about 300 survivors reached Mexico in 1543, leaving the earliest written record of the Mississippian chiefdoms.
Early Modern
Ardabil Carpet (1539-40): The Famous Safavid Carpet Pair
The two carpets left Iran in the 1880s; the larger one has been in the Victoria and Albert Museum since 1893 and the other in LACMA since 1953.
Early Modern
Mimar Sinan: Chief Architect of the Ottoman Golden Age
Sinan designed hundreds of buildings and created the classical style of Ottoman architecture, culminating in the Selimiye Mosque.
Early Modern
Coronado Expedition (1540-1542): Searching for Cíbola
No gold was found; the expedition returned to Mexico in 1542, having made the first European contact with the Pueblo peoples and the Great Plains.
Early Modern
Fall of Thomas Cromwell (1540): Henry VIII's Minister Executed
Cromwell was condemned without trial by an Act of Attainder for treason and heresy and beheaded on Tower Hill; the king married Catherine Howard the same day.
Early Modern
Founding of the Jesuits (1540): Ignatius of Loyola's Society
The bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae created the Society of Jesus, which grew into the largest teaching and missionary order of the Catholic Reformation.
Early Modern
Sher Shah Suri: The Afghan Ruler Who Drove Out Humayun
Sher Shah expelled Humayun from India and ruled a centralised Sur Empire until his death in 1545; the Mughals returned only in 1555.
Early Modern
Jiajing Wokou Raids (1540s-1567): Piracy on the Ming Coast
Ming armies suppressed the main pirate bands by the mid-1560s, and in 1567 the court relaxed the sea ban by opening Yuegang to licensed private trade.
Early Modern
Pedro de Valdivia and the Founding of Santiago de Chile (1541)
Santiago del Nuevo Extremo was founded as the base of Spanish Chile, beginning a long conflict with the Mapuche known as the Arauco War.