In 1492, the first voyage of Christopher Columbus made the world truly global, bringing the Americas into a system of cultural interchange that stretched from Europe to Asia. As this book shows, Columbus' achievement was just one of many advances that marked the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world. While European states took on familiar borders, huge empires dominated West, South, and East Asia. European settlement of the Americas, meanwhile, grew so quickly that within 300 years colonial Americans on the East Coast had won their independence on the battlefield. Contains global overview maps covering the whole period; regional maps and accompanying essays that highlight contemporary developments; and, curriculum links and glossary terms explained on the page.