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Today it’s possible to go to most places on the planet and find common ground with the people you meet – cultural references that mean just as much in Lima as they do in London – or buy products you could also pick up in your local shop.

This week in A History of the World in 100 objects we’ll hear how the long process that led to the world becoming truly globalised started in the sixteenth century AD.

JD Hill, Lead curator of the series, explains how our five objects this week show the world coming together as the kingdoms of Europe set sail in search of trade:

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The Portuguese reach South Africa in the 1480s and Columbus ‘found’ the Americas in 1492. Within a generation, in the 1520s, Magellan had sailed around the world.

Yet if you were looking at the world in around 1450-60 and you asked the question: in 100 year’s time where will the balance of power lie? The answer would probably not be Western Europe, and that’s why this is such a great turning point.

The world was quite quickly a smaller place, thanks in no small part to Europe’s enthusiasm for shipbuilding – a story told through our mechanical galleon.

The galleon is a symbol for Europe’s new found sense of itself – great princes built great ships and it was these ships that enabled maritime empires to be made.

This is the beginning of the modern world. It’s about Europe’s maritime adventure. All of the objects are, in one way or another, about the expansion of trade and, in some cases, conquest undertaken by small Western European countries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

As these maritime connections brought continents such as Europe and the Americas together, different cultures encountered each other for the first time and the results were varied

The arrival of Spanish explorers in Mexico led to the destruction of the Aztec Empire, a story we explore through the Double-headed serpent.

In contrast, Portugal’s first encounters with the major West African kingdom of Benin would be of mutual benefit. The Europeans provided, among other things, the brass to craft the stunning plaques that decorated the oba’s – king’s – palace, and commodities such as ivory and palm oil went the other way.

Massive trade across vast distances, requires massive enterprise. So it’s no surprise that in this period we see the first multinational conglomerates emerge. Organisations like the Dutch East India Company, responsible for shipping goods, such as our porcelain elephants, from East Asia to the well-appointed homes of Europe’s elite.

And fuelling, or should I say funding, much of this global trade was silver; mined in the newly-conquered Spanish territories of South America and transported around the world in the form of the planet’s first global currency: pieces of eight.

These infamous coins have been popularised in tall tales of piracy, treasure and adventure but, in truth, their influence on the world at the time was much, much more significant than that.

In fact, they’re still with us in perhaps the most potent symbol of global economics and trade. Pieces of eight were the original silver dollar, which evolved into the American currency of the same name.

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• The photo of the girl looking at the globe is by and it's used .
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