AP World Unit 4: Transoceanic Connections

Tordesillas, a small town in central Spain on the Castilian plateau between the Tagus and Douro rivers, was where Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. The two Iberian powers…

This was the Battle of Diu, fought off Diu — a small coastal outpost on the northwestern tip of the Indian subcontinent, where the Arabian Sea meets the Gujarat coast near the Gulf of Khambhat. In…

This is Goa, on the western coast of India, exactly where the Arabian Sea meets the subcontinent's Konkan shoreline — the geographic crossroads the event title pointed toward. In 1510, the Portuguese…

This event took place in Wittenberg, Germany — a small town sitting on the Elbe River, on the broad North European Plain that stretches from France to Russia with few natural barriers to slow the…

Seville, Spain — sitting on the Guadalquivir River in the southwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula, where Europe reaches closest to Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar and the Atlantic…

This event unfolded in Tenochtitlan, the island capital of the Aztec Empire, built on a lake in the high Valley of Mexico — a volcanic plateau sitting at roughly 2,200 metres above sea level, almost…

The execution took place at the Tower of London, England — a fortress on the north bank of the River Thames, on the island of Great Britain, separated from France by the English Channel. In 1536…

This rebellion unfolded in London, England — a city on the island of Great Britain, divided from France and the rest of continental Europe by the narrow English Channel. In early 1554, Thomas Wyatt…

Manila, the capital of the Philippines, sits on the western edge of a vast Pacific archipelago roughly 1,000 kilometres east of the Vietnamese coast and directly across the South China Sea from…

This event took place in London, England — a city straddling the River Thames near where it widens into the North Sea, on the northwestern edge of the European continent. On December 31, 1600, Queen…

Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, sits at the mouth of the Rhine delta on the North Sea — exactly the northwest European coast where river trade from deep inland Europe meets the sea route between…

Jamestown, Virginia — now part of the United States — sits on a low, marshy peninsula along the James River, which flows into Chesapeake Bay on the Atlantic coast of North America, roughly midway up…

This uprising took place in Santa Fe, in what is now the state of New Mexico, United States — a high desert city nestled in the Rocky Mountains, far inland from the Pacific coast, straddling the…

On 29 April 1770, Lieutenant James Cook and HMS Endeavour landed at what is now Kurnell, on the southern shore of Botany Bay — the first recorded landing by Europeans on the east coast of Australia…