European Contact

The 19th century saw the rise of one of the largest, most powerful empires of the modern era. The sun never set on the British Empire, whose holdings spanned the globe, in one form or another. Its naval supremacy linked the Commonwealth of Canada with the colonies in South Africa and India, and through them trade flowed east and west. An integral but underutilized part of this vast trade network included China, a reclusive Asian kingdom closed off from the Western world that desired none of its goods.

Mesoamerica is a cultural area including central and southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and El Salvador. In this area, Prehispanic societies developed over thousands of years before coming into contact with Spanish conquistadores in the early 16th century. Mesoamerican civilizations flourished, developing complex social, political, and economic systems-based, to a certain extent, on their knowledge of nature.