Volume II opens with major world events between 1500 and 1789, and considers the development of shipbuilding that sent European explorers around the world.

Following topics include the Ottoman Empire, Mughal India, Manchu China, Spanish conquests in the Americas, European world colonialism, the French Revolution, Napoleonic Europe, British imperial expansion, the revolutions in the Americas, the United States and Canada as world powers, World War I and II, postwar Europe, the end of European colonialism, the Cold War, modern China, and events affecting Pacific nations.