Describe global interaction during early modern period.

I don't know much except that I remember Prince Henry the
Navigator from High School.  Go to Google.com and search books for Portuguese
navigators.

There is a book out now entitled
1434 by Gavin Menzies that is about a Chinese fleet that sailed to
Italy in 1434.

Columbus of course made his famous voyages
in the early modern period.

English fishing fleets were
fishing off of New Foundland before the voyages of Columbus, but they never went ashore,
or at least never claimed to have discovered anything new, like Columbus who claimed to
have discovered a new route to India, or others who followed Columbus who claimed he had
discovered a new world (which he had--new to Europeans).