Jan Huyghen van Linschoten was a Dutch merchant, trader and historian. He travelled extensively along the East Indies' regions under Portuguese influence and served as the Portuguese Viceroy's secretary in Goa between 1583 and 1588. He...

Sir Thomas Cavendish was an English explorer and a privateer known as "The Navigator" because he was the first who deliberately tried to emulate Sir Francis Drake and raid the Spanish towns and ships in the Pacific and return by circumnavig...

Sir Walter Raleigh was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England. He rose rapidly in the favour of Queen Elizabeth I, and was knighted in 1585. H...

Matteo Ricci was an Italian Jesuit priest, and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China Mission, as it existed in the 17th-18th centuries. His current title is Servant of God. Ricci started learning theology and law in a Roman Jesuit...

Willem Barentsz was a Dutch navigator, cartographer, and Arctic explorer. Barentsz went on three expeditions to the far north in search for a Northeast passage. He reached as far as Novaya Zemlya and the Kara Sea in his first two voyages...

Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira (or Neyra) was a Spanish navigator. Born in Congosto, in León, he was the nephew of Lope García de Castro, viceroy of Peru. He is best known for the two voyages of discovery he led into the Pacific in 1567 and 159...

Sir Martin Frobisher was an English seaman who made three voyages to the New World to look for the Northwest Passage. All landed in northeastern Canada, around today's Resolution Island and Frobisher Bay. On his second voyage, Frobisher fou...

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was a Spanish admiral and explorer, best remembered for founding St. Augustine, Florida in 1565. This was the first successful Spanish foothold in La Florida and remained the most significant city in the region for...

Francisco de Orellana was a Spanish explorer and conquistador. He completed the first known navigation of the length of the Amazon River, which was originally named for him. He also founded the city of Guayaquil in modern-day Ecuador. Th...

Francis Xavier was a pioneering Roman Catholic missionary born in the Kingdom of Navarre (currently Spain) and co-founder of the Society of Jesus. He was a student of Ignatius of Loyola and one of the first seven Jesuits, dedicated at Montm...

Gonzalo Pizarro y Alonso was a Spanish conquistador, brother of Francisco Pizarro. A lieutenant of his brother in the conquest of Peru, Gonzalo aided in the defense of Cuzco (1536-37) against the Inca Manco Capac, subdued Charcas (present B...

Miguel López de Legazpi, also known as El Adelantado and El Viejo (The Elder), was a Spanish conquistador who established one of the first European settlements in the East Indies and the Pacific Islands in 1565. He was the first Governor-Ge...

Ambrosius Ehinger, also (Ambrosio Alfínger in Spanish) was a German conquistador and the first governor of the Welser concession, also known as “Little Venice”, in New Granada, now Venezuela and Colombia. Ehinger was a factor in Madrid for...

Pedro Gutiérrez de Valdivia or Valdiva was a Spanish conquistador and the first royal governor of Chile. After serving with the Spanish army in Italy and Flanders, he was sent to South America in 1534, where he served as lieutenant under Fr...

Friar Andrés de Urdaneta was a Spanish circumnavigator, explorer and Augustinian friar. As a navigator he achieved in 1536 the "second" world circumnavigation (after the first one led by Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastián Elcano and thei...