The appearance of ships capable of circumnavigating the globe heralded the beginning of the Imperial Age. Muzzle-loading cannons cast in bronze — and later iron — were introduced as seafaring nations battled for access to new resource-rich lands. Massive warships such as the Henry Grāce à Dieu, commissioned by and named after Henry VIII, carried a total of more than 150 large iron cannons and smaller guns.

Small arms continued to advance as well. The flintlock musket was quicker to load and cheaper to produce than the earlier matchlock. As firearms got more accurate and reliable, the era of the archer slowly came to an end. But it wasn't until the introduction of the bayonet — especially the under-the-barrel design adopted by the French army in 1688 — that hand-to-hand weapons like the sword and pike began to disappear. With that development, the fundamental shift from medieval to modern warfare was at hand.

Major changes were also underway in science. The crowning achievement of the Scientific Revolution was the emergence of the scientific method, with its emphasis on empirical data and reproducible experiments. Galileo, an early proponent of the method's principles, used the newly invented telescope to provide the first evidence that the earth was not the center of the universe. Another important achievement of this period was the invention of calculus, attributed to both Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibnitz. Using calculus, Newton was able to describe his basic laws of motion.

The Catholic Church, meanwhile, was coming to grips with the Reformation. In addition to setting up a Roman Inquisition, which put Galileo himself under house arrest, the Church sent missionaries all over the world to convert populations in new lands as well as to reclaim those who had become Protestant.