History is connected.
“We tend to learn history in discrete chunks, carved up by area studies and chronology. The Protestant Reformation, the Thirty Years War, Queen Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada, the Sengoku, the conquest of the New World, the French Wars of Religion, the Ottoman Empire, the fall of the Ming Dynasty, Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea, the voyages of exploration of Ferdinand Magellan and Christopher Columbus, the rise of the United Provinces, etc, etc. But these events overlapped and intersected with each other. Spanish power in the 16th century was advancing on every continent except Antarctica and Australia, and its masters saw this as a unified process and a singular clash for religious and political domination.”