1531 Martin Luther warns that Catholic clergy and monks are sodomites.
1531 German Protestants form the League of Schmalkalden to defend against the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, and the Roman Catholic states.
1532 Machiavelli's The Prince, written in 1513, is published.
1532 The Portuguese begin to ship slaves to Brazil, slaves they have paid for in Africa with manufactured goods.
1532 In South America a Spaniard in his mid-fifties, Francisco Pizarro, arrives in Inca territory with 102 men, 62 horses and some interpreters. Meanwhile in the civil war between the two Inca brothers, Huascar and Atahualpa, Atahualpa proves himself the superior commander. His forces defeat Huascar’s forces.
1533 Pizarro has imprisoned Atahualpa, who offers a room full of gold for his freedom. He is executed by the Spaniards for the murder of his brother.
1535 Henry VIII breaks from Catholicism and declares himself head of English Church.
1536 Japan's Toyotomi Hideyoshi is born in a thatched hut, the son of a poor farmer.
1536 Henry VIII charges his second wife, Anne Boleyn, with adultery. He has her beheaded and marries her lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour.
1538 At Preveza (on the coast of western Greece, 200 kilometers southeast of the Italian peninsula), a Barbary pirate, Barbarossa, employed by the Ottoman Empire, destroys the combined Christian fleets of the Pope, Venice and Spain. The Ottoman Empire dominates the Mediterranean Sea.
1539 In Japan, trading monopolies end and a free market begins.
1540 Babur's eldest son, Humayun, has been ruling in India, but the empire he inherited has barely been held together by force of arms. Humayan is dislodged from power by Islamic nobles allied with Afghans. Humayun goes into exile and allies himself with the Safavid sultan in Iran.
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