The modern world exists in a state of cultural, political, and economic globalisation. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries two nations, Portugal and Spain, pioneered the European discovery of sea routes that were the first channels of interaction between all of the world's continents, thus beginning the process of globalisation in which we all live today. This tutorial introduces the student to these two pioneering nations, their motivations, their actions, and the inevitable consequences of their colonisation. This tutorial also examines the geographical, technological, economic, political, and cultural patterns of that era.