The World 1600

In the 16th century, the Portuguese had established the first pan-global trading empire with outposts from Brazil to Nagasaki, while the Spanish were extracting vast wealth from their viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru. The Ming were in steady decline in China, while the Mughals were at their peak in India under Akbar the Great (1562–1605). To the south the mercantile sultanates of the Deccan and Johore prospered on Indian Ocean trade. In western Europe, the strong nation states of France, England and Spain were beginning to outmuscle the fissiparous Holy Roman Empire. The Russian Empire was entering the Time of Troubles, before resurgence under the Romanovs, while defeats by the Venetian alliance at Lepanto (1571) and the Safavids in the Caucasus marked the beginnings of the long Ottoman decline. Morocco, under Ahmad al Mansur, established a brief trans-Saharan empire with the conquest of the Songhay (1591).