Francisco Pizarro conquered and colonized the nation now known as Peru (homeland of the Incan people). Cortez conquered the Aztecs of Mexico, and Ponce de Leon and Coronado are associated primarily with the Caribbean. While similar, Columbus was not a true conquistador and allegedly never saw the Incas.

The Gunpowder Empires got their name from their reliance of black powder weapons as the crux of their military might. They were strictly run dynastic empires focused on aggressive expansion of territories. They all three were located in the Middle East and could trace their lineage back to early Turkish tribes.

The Inca Empire was founded in 1438. The vast majority of Inca territory was conquered by the Spanish by 1533; therefore, the Inca Empire lasted for ninety-five years, a little less than a century.

Modern-day Mexico City sits on the same site as Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire.

All of these reasons contributed to the conquests of the Spanish conquistadors except the destabilizing impact of Christian missionaries. The expeditions of Cortes (in Mexico) and Pizarro (in Peru) were the first Spaniards that those native people encountered and so there cannot have been any prior contact between Christian missionaries and the native population.

The Safavid Dynasty ruled over territory in modern-day Iran for much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Safavids are considered one of the “modern Persian Empires.”

The Kingdom of Kongo was located in Central Africa. The Kongolese Kingdom existed as an independent state from the late fourteenth century until the late nineteenth century. It had extensive interaction with the Portuguese Empire, and was a Portuguese vassal for parts of the nineteenth and twentieth century.

French colonies in North America were mostly founded in modern-day Canada. Unlike the Spanish who established profitable plantations in the Caribbean and Latin America and the Dutch and British who established permanent settlements on the eastern seaboard of the modern-day United States, the earliest French settlers were fur traders who made their business in the north of the continent. The state of Quebec, in modern-day Canada, is a reminder of the once pervasive French influence in north America.

While the British famously went on to colonize Australia and many of the surrounding islands, they were not the first to discover its existence and relay that information back to Europe. While on a trade expedition to Indonesia Dutch sailor Willem Janszoon was blown off course. It was there he spotted Australia and made landfall. He was promptly attacked by the local aborigines and he returned to Indonesia.

Suleiman the Magnificent is one of the most famous and accomplished of the rulers of the Ottoman Empire. Suleiman expanded Ottoman control into southeastern Europe; he improved the Ottoman legal system and modernized the military; and he was a renowned patron of the arts. The height of the Ottoman Empire’s power and prestige is thought to have occurred during his reign. He was relatively tolerant of other religions, and allowed people to practice their religions freely in the Ottoman Empire.