1. "Discovery of New World" i.e. genocide, beginning of debates about who is human, who has a soul, Las Casas, etc. see, e.g., Jan Carew's articles on Columbus and the Origins of Racism in RACE & CLASS a few years back.
2. Moors defeated at Grenada ending hundreds of years of African civilization of the Iberian Peninsula, and commencing a particularly nasty period there.
3. European Discovery of cape sea route to India, altering trade routes and global economic power relations.
4. Papal Bull of 1492-93, dividing the world between Spain and Portugal.
I've seen some strong arguments that there was no "european" self concept or "white" self-concept prior to this period and the well known slaving, plunder, robbery, genocide, etc. that followed.
Plenty of primitive accumulation by 1500. I think some figures can be found in Hosea Jaffee's A HISTORY OF AFRICA, Zed Press. The important points made by Marx in Capital vol. 3 on historical facts regarding merchant capital are relevant here.
On Thu, 28 May 1998, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Speaking of the periodization, by 1600, the exploration of the 'new world'
> had already begun, primitive accumulation had begun (for example, seen in
> More's fictional comments on 'enclosure' in _Utopia_), England was on its
> way to the world domination, the nationalist ideology was in its formative
> stage, and the ideology of coloniaism with its need for racism was in its
> making as well. The nature of racism has changed since then, but race was
> certainly already being made.
>
> This is a very interesting and important history to investigate, and when
> we do so, we can see the simultaneous and mutually reinforcing emergence of
> ideologies + social relations that have made class, race, nation, Europe,
> and so on.
>
> Yoshie
>
>
>