The Treaty of Tordesillas was drawn up in 1492 between the Spanish and the Portuguese and signed by the Pope. It basically divided up the whole world, but especially the American hemisphere, into spheres of Spanish and Portuguese influence in an attempt to prevent future conflict.

John Cabot was an Italian explorer who sailed for North America under the sponsorship of King Henry VII of England in 1497. He is credited as being the first European to set foot on the mainland of the North American continent, although most historians believe that the Vikings had previously done so in the eleventh century. 

Although all of these countries would be significant throughout the period of European exploration and colonialism, it was the Portuguese who had the most early success. Portugal established colonies on the Atlantic coast of Brazil, and was the first to travel around Africa, the first to reach India, and the first to reach the Far East.

The Seven Years' War, often called the French and Indian War, was fought between France and Britain between 1756 and 1763. Due to the global nature of the two countries' empires, the war was fought around the world and resulted in numerous territories being exchanged between the two world powers. In the treaty that ended the war, Britain gained control of French holdings in North America and also in the Indian subcontinent.

The six major players in the age of European exploration were France, Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and Sweden. Germany, which was not a unified country until the 1870s, was not a major player in the age of exploration.

Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1487. The Cape of Good Hope is the southernmost tip of the African continent, and traversing it was vital to connecting Portugal with the lucrative trade it would soon develop with India and the Far East.

Jacques Cartier was a French explorer and navigator who discovered the St. Lawrence River and claimed the surrounding territory, which would later come to be called Canada, for the French Empire. Like many early European explorers, Cartier thought he had found a passage through the continent to Asia, but like all other explorers of this time period, he was disappointed. 

Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian explorer and navigator who first understood and demonstrated that the American landmass was not actually part of East Asia, but was instead a separate and distinct landmass. He also made one of the first maps of the New World (rudimentary as it is) and for these achievements had two continents named after him.

Cartography refers to the science of map making, which grew in prominence in the early Age of Exploration as the Spanish and Portuguese explorers (followed later by the Italians, Dutch, French, and English) were discovering new lands (to the Europeans) and thus greatly expanding the size of the known world in Europe and Asia.

The Protestant Reformation began in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of a church in Wittenburg. It was not the first time in European history that a reformer had sought to make radical changes within Christianity to escape the abuses and power of the Catholic Church; however, it was the first time that such a reformation had been attempted since the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439. The printing press allowed Luther's work to be reprinted, translated and transmitted around Europe, spreading the ideas of the Protestant Reformation to a whole new host of people.