Pedro Alvares Cabral: Did you mean...?

A 1635 map of Portuguese Cochin on the southwest coast of India. Cochin (modern Kochi) was a major hub of the spice trade and was colonised by Portugal in the early years of the 16th century. (Livro das Plantas de Todas as Fortalezas...

A 20th-century mural by Pedro Subercaseaux showing Diego de Almagro (c. 1475-1538), the Spanish conquistador on his expedition of conquest in Chile from 1535 to 1537.

Ferdinand Magellan, or Fernão de Magalhães (c. 1480-1521), was a Portuguese mariner whose expedition was the first to circumnavigate the globe in 1519-22 in the service of Spain. Magellan was killed on the voyage in what is...

Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) was a Spanish conquistador who led the conquest of the Aztec Empire in Mexico from 1519. Taking the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521, Cortés plundered Mesoamerica as he became the first ruler of the...

Spain’s rapid expansion into South America followed the consolidation of its Caribbean footholds by 1512, marking a decisive shift from exploration to imperial conquest. Under the reign of Ferdinand...

From the 16th to 18th centuries, two treasure fleets sailed each year, one to Mexico and the other to Central America, then part of the Spanish Empire. There they collected precious eastern goods and the riches of the Americas...

Prince Henry the Navigator (aka Infante Dom Henrique, 1394-1460) was a Portuguese prince who famously helped capture the North African city of Ceuta, sponsored voyages of exploration with the aim of building colonies in...

Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763-1814) was a French noblewoman who was the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821). She was therefore Empress of the French from 18 May 1804 until the annulment of her marriage on 10 January...

The Florentine Codex is an encyclopedic accounting of life in 16th-century Mexico and an invaluable resource for understanding the exchange between European and Indigenous cultures during...

The Battle of San Jacinto (21 April 1836) was the decisive engagement of the Texas Revolution in which General Sam Houston (1793-1863) defeated the Mexican Army under President and General Antonio López...