The Land Based Empires are the major players in this period. It’s easy to jump to Columbus et al and assume the Europeans are taking over. They’re not. They are moving into the outer reaches that are not already dominated by major Land Based Empires. Look at the map below. Now compare that to the Maritime Empires. There is virtually no overlap (outside of the Americas). Another knock against the Europeans in this period (1450-1750), is to look at when the Land Based Empires finally fell. Mughals, 1857. Tokugawa, 1868. Manchu Empire, 1911. Ottoman Empire, 1919. So, pump your brakes on the European Empires. They are still back seat to the Land Based empires.

BELOW IS A PAGE DEVOTED TO EACH OF THE THREE ‘LAND BASED EMPIRES’ SECTIONS. CLICK ON A BANNER TO GO TO THAT PAGE:

The above banners are for the units AP WORLD MODERN. But, if you want to focus in on the SPECIFIC LAND BASED EMPIRES that the College Board addresses in Unit 3…
CLICK THE BANNER(s) BELOW:

The first two are PRE-EXISTING EMPIRES. This means that they are simply carrying on from the Empire they replace:

The next three are brand new. They are not another Chinese dynasty or Russian ruler. These are brand new empires for the Early Modern Period:

OK. Your teacher might have stopped there. BUT, they do ALLUDE to the importance of three others. They DO NOT say to know these as Land Based Empires… But, they ARE land based empires that existed in this period… So, here are the final four: