1583
Akbar Annexes Gujarat
After decades of Mughal campaigns, Akbar finally subdued the rich western province of Gujarat, with its cotton mills and Indian Ocean ports. Surat became a major Mughal outlet for Arab, Persian, and Portuguese traders, funneling revenue toward Agra and opening a new southern theater for imperial patronage. Surat became a major Indian Ocean port, opening direct Mughal contact with Portuguese, Arab, and eventually English traders.
Humphrey Gilbert Claims Newfoundland
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Walter Raleigh, sailed into Saint John's harbor in Newfoundland and formally claimed the island for Elizabeth I. He lost his ship and his life on the return voyage, last seen in the stern of a tiny pinnace calling out that heaven was as near by sea as by land.
Tensho Boy Mission to Europe
Four young Japanese Catholic nobles departed Nagasaki on a Jesuit-orchestrated diplomatic voyage to Europe. They would visit Lisbon, Madrid, Florence, and Rome, meet Philip II and two popes, and return home eight years later with printing presses, astronomical instruments, and painful news about European squabbles. The boys' audience with Pope Gregory XIII was one of the sixteenth century's most dramatic cultural encounters.
Gilbert Publishes Discourse
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, before his doomed voyage to Newfoundland, published A Discourse of a Discoverie for a New Passage to Cataia, arguing the case for an English Northwest Passage to Asia. English colonial imagination was being shaped by such tracts, even as the physical realities of North America continued to defeat expeditions.