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17th Century Timeline: 1601 to 1700

1601 Dutch defeat the Portuguese in a naval battle in the Indonesian Archipelago (the Spice Islands).

1602 Shah Abbas of Iran drives the Portuguese from Bahrain.

1602 The Dutch government (United Netherlands) grants the Dutch East India Company a monopoly to pursue trade in Asia.

1602 William Shakespeare has written: Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to heaven.” (From All's Well that Ends Well, first performed in 1602.)

1603 Japan's royal court recognizes the military dominance of Tokugawa Ieyasu and grants him the title of shogun. His military government is based at Edo (Tokyo).

1603 A frail Queen Elizabeth dies at age 69. She is succeeded by a Calvinist and devout Presbyterian, King James VI of Scotland, eldest son of Elizabeth's cousin, Mary I, Queen of Scots. James becomes James I, King of England, Ireland and Scotland.

1604 James dislikes England's Puritans but he agrees to their request for an official translation of the Bible - to be known as the Authorized King James Bible - in place of three other versions: the Geneva Bible, the Great Bible (an English language translation authorized by Henry VIII) and the (Anglican) Bishop's Bible.

1605 A plot by extremist Catholics to blow up the Britain's Parliament fails. The perpetrators are hanged.

1605 With the help of British advisors, an Iranian army defeats an Ottoman army of greater size.

1606 The Dutch "discover" northern Australia - at what today is called Cape York Peninsula.

1607 A London company has sent three ships and a small group to what today is the state of Virginia, and there, in the spring, on an island in a river, a settlement is founded, the river to be named after King James, as is the town - James Towne.

1607 The Dutch defeat a Spanish fleet at Gibraltar.

1608 Frenchmen interested in trading with the Indians and in animal furs build a settlement at Quebec. Only 8 of the 28 settlers are to survive the first winter. More settlers are to arrive in the spring.

1609 Henry Hudson, employed by the Dutch East India Company, anchors off Manhattan Island and trades with local Indians. He then sails up the river to be named after him, to look for but not find a water way to the Far East.

1609 The Dutch have ended Portugal's domination of the Indian Ocean, and they establish a trading outpost on the western coast of India.

1609 The Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci, is surprised to find in China an attitude toward homosexuality different from that in Christendom. He finds homosexuality not illegal and people not reluctant to speak of it in public.

1609 Johann Kepler has discovered that Mars is moving about the sun not in a perfect circle but in an ellipse - contradicting Plato's belief about perfection and the heavens.

1610 Henry IV of France, a progressive king who is religiously tolerant, is assassinated by François Ravaillac, who is unbalanced and highly religious.

1611 Galileo exhibits the wonders of the telescope to the pontifical court. He tries to produce scriptural confirmation of the view that the earth revolves around the sun, but he is rebuffed.

1611 The Dutch East India Company builds a factory on India's coast in the southeast, at Pulicat, to make gunpowder.

1612 The English further reduce Portugal's presence in the Indian Ocean by defeating them in a naval battle off the western coast of India, at Surat. From the Mughals the English receive permission to build a factory at Surat. The Mughals, without a navy, had looked to the Portuguese to protect the ship that took Muslim Indians on their annual pilgrimage to Mecca, and now they turn to the English for this protection.

1613 Dutch arrive at the island of Timur, previously claimed by Portugal and now claimed by the Dutch.

1614 The first barrels of cured tobacco reach England from the colony of Virginia.

1614 In Japan, the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu outlaws Christianity.

1615 Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats the last of his competitors, capturing the Osaka castle. The Warring States (Sengoku) period is ended. The Tokugawa Period of Japanese history has begun (from 1603 according to some), to last into the 1800s.

1616 William Shakespeare dies. So too does Tokugawa Ieyasu.

1616 Blown off course, a Dutch sea captain, Dirk Hartog, "discovers" western Australia.

1617 Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu has been succeeded by his son, Tokugawa Hitetada. At Edo he establishes a district for hedonistic impulses that are outside the shogun's code of Confucian conduct. The district provides theater, musical and sexual entertainment to anyone who can afford it. There a new genre of paintings, prints, literature and theater rises.

1617 Ships are carrying 50,000 pounds of cured tobacco annually from Virginia to England. Smoking has become a fad in England, with King James describing it as "loathsome," harmful to the brain and dangerous to the lungs.

1618 The pious Catholic Habsburg, King Ferdinand II, closes some Protestant churches in Prague. His Protestant subjects there rebel. Siding with Ferdinand are Maximilian, the Catholic monarch of Bavaria, and Philip III, King of Spain. Siding with the Protestants are some German princes. It is the beginning of the Thirty Years' War.

1619 Forces of the Dutch East India Company conquer the city of Jayakarta and rename it Batavia (Latin for the Netherlands). They make it their capital in the Spice Islands. Also this year, the Dutch East India Company and the Britain's East India Company agree to cease all fighting, to return each other's captured ships and prisoners and to create a joint fleet (one-third English, two-thirds Dutch) to expel Spain and Portugal from the Spice Islands, China, the Philippines, and the Malay Peninsula.

1619 African slaves are being transported to the West Indies to replace those Africans who have died there. The sugar industry is killing them faster than they can be replaced by procreation.

1619 To work their tobacco fields, colonists in Virginia buy 20 blacks from a Dutch ship that arrives for supplies.

1619 Lucilio Vanini is accused of atheism and burned at the stake.

1620 In England the slide rule is invented.

1621 The ship Mayflower, carrying about 100 Pilgrims is headed for Virginia but is blown off course and lands instead at Plymouth in what today is Massachusetts. The 3,000 or so Massachuset Indians who had been living in the area have already been reduced to less than 800. The Pilgrims believe that the land under their feet had been given them by Jehovah.

1621 The Dutch found a West India Company, for trade in the Caribbean.

1621 In Prague twenty-six noblemen are executed. In Bohemia and Moravia, other nobles who had rebelled against Ferdinand II have their property confiscated and given to nobles who have demonstrated loyalty to the Catholic Church and to Ferdinand.

1623 In cooperation with Britain's East India Company, Shah Abbas I of Iran expels the Portuguese from the island of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.

1623 The grandson of the late Tokugawa Ieyasu, Tokugawa Iemitsu, replaces his father as shogun.

1624 The Dutch establish a fur trading post, Fort Orange, at what today is Albany, New York.

1624 The African kingdom of Ndongo (east of Luanda ) acquires a queen: Nzinga.

1624 In China the Ming emperor has allowed a eunuch the power to dismiss from government service anyone he thinks disloyal to him. A rebellion led by six Confucianists attempting a moral revival of "pure" Confucianism is crushed. They are tortured and beaten to death, and seven hundred of their supporters are purged from their government positions.

1625 Fearing the power of the Catholic monarchs, the King of Denmark, a Lutheran, joins the Thirty Years' War on the side of the Protestants.

1626 The French establish an outpost on Madagascar.

1626 With fish hooks and trinkets, the Dutch buy Manhattan Island from Canarsie chiefs of the Wappinger Confederacy.

1629 In the Holy Roman Empire, hundreds are being burned as witches.

1630 Fearing Habsburg power along the Baltic Sea, Sweden joins the Thirty Year's War. The Swedes invade northern Germany and are not welcomed there by fellow Lutherans.

1631 The English build a fort on the northern "Gold Coast" in Western Africa.

1631 The Republic of Venice, a maritime power, has been declining, exacerbated by the bubonic plague killing almost 500,000 people. The government responds with a church built for Our Lady of Health and Deliverance - Madonna della Salute.

1632 Galileo publishes his ideas about the universe. Intellectuals across Europe applaud. The Church prohibits further sales of the book, and Galileo is ordered to appear before the Inquisition in Rome.

1632 The town of Boston is founded.

1635 Shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu forbids travel abroad, except for restricted voyages by ships to China and Korea. Books from abroad are banned except for those on science, technology and military tactics. A trading post near Nagasake remains after the Dutch there agree to restrictions regarding trading and an end of signs of Christianity. The Dutch enjoy seeing their trading rivals, the Spanish and Portuguese, expelled.

1635 The Puritans in Massachusetts colony see tolerance as compromise with God's will. They banish an English clergyman, Roger Williams.

1636 Roger Williams arrives in what today is Rhode Island, where he is to established a settlement with twelve "loving friends and neighbors."

1636 France, a largely Catholic country but allied with the Dutch and the Swedes, enters the Thirty Years' War against Spain and the Holy Roman Empire.

1637 Manchu troops, 30,000 in number, have crossed the Yalu River into northern Korea. The Koreans recognize Manchu suzerainty in place of Chinese suzerainty. A non-aggression pact and trade agreement are established, and the Manchu withdraw.

1638 A raid by Pequot Indians kills 600 members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1639 Works by the philosopher, mathematician and scientist Rene Descartes have entered Dutch universities. Descartes rejects relying on authorities regarding idea. He advocates disciplined philosophical argumentation integrated with physical science.

1641 An armada of 21 Dutch ships appears off the coast of Angola. The Dutch capture Luanda and Benguela. The Portuguese retreat inland where they resist assaults by the Dutch and by Jaga tribesmen.

1641 In Ireland, an Anglican bishop, John Atherton, just before being hanged, confesses what he had previously denied. His crime is "buggery." Seven years before he was the leading advocate of hanging as punishment for this act.

1641 A fort is founded at what today is Montreal.

1642 King Charles I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, son of King James, has been ruling since 1625 and is considered too friendly towards Catholicism. He is in conflict with his Calvinist and Puritan subjects and with Parliament. Civil war has erupted. On one side is the king and his army, on the other is Parliament and its army.

1642 In Iran, Abbas II, becomes the seventh shah of the Safavid dynasty. Renewing friendly contacts with Europe he is to regain for his dynasty some prestige, while Shia scholars, the ulama, oppose him, believing the shahs are lax and God's punishment. Increasingly, ulama believe that temporal authority should belong to a mujtahid - a scholar predating the ayatollahs.

1642 Continuing violence between Dutch settlers and Wappinger Indians inspires the governor of New Amsterdam (New York) to call for a massacre of the Indians.

1642 The Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn paints The Rabbi.

1642 Wealth in India is not being invested in commerce to the extent that it is by the Dutch. The Mughal emperor, Jahan, has the Taj Mahal built for one of his wives.

1644 Rebels overthrow the Ming Emperor Chongzhen, who hangs himself. A Manchu army takes power in the capital city, Beijing. Ming supporters flee to Taiwan. The Manchu Qing family begins its rule in China, to last into the 20th century, although the Manchus are never to be more than two percent of the population in China.

1645 Low solar activity begins, to be called the Maunder Minimum. Ice will cut off access to Greenland, canals in Holland will routinely freeze solid, and glaciers will advance in the Alps. This period of low solar activity will last to 1715.

1645 The French establish an outpost at the mouth of Africa's Senegal River, where they trade from gum and for slaves.

1646 Queen Nzinga is at war with the Portuguese. Thousands of slave soldiers have deserted to her, but she suffers military setbacks.

1648 Queen Nzinga's alliance with the Dutch comes to nothing as the Portuguese drive the Dutch from Luanda.

1648 European powers fighting the Thirty Years' War, are exhausted. Germany has lost at least a third of its population. A negotiated settlement called the Peace of Westphalia ends the war, except that France and Spain continue their war for ten more years. Habsburg predominance in Europe is ended - replaced by French hegemony. The war ends with a realization of the need for more tolerance between Catholics and Protestants. The settlement speaks of a "Christian and universal peace, and a perpetual, true and sincere amity."

1648 With the peace of Westphalia, the 80 Years' War between Spain's Habsburg monarchy and the Dutch ends, Spain recognizing Dutch independence.

1648 People in Moscow revolt when a tax is put on salt. Cossacks invading Poland slaughter 200,000 Jews.

1649 In Britain, King Charles I and his army have been defeated. Charles is beheaded. England is a republic, a commonwealth without a House of Lords and run by the victors of the civil war - parliament. Parliament sends the Puritan Oliver Cromwell to Ireland to subdue rebellious Catholics. He massacres the populations of Drogheda and Wexford.

1649 Shah Abbas II of Iran pushes the Mughals out of Kandahar.

1650 For five months the famous French philosopher Rene Descartes has been employed as a tutor by Queen Christina of Sweden. The 5 a.m. philosophy sessions with the queen in the cold of her castle aggravates his weakened condition and he dies.

1651 Cromwell defeats Scottish armies.

1651 In Leviathan, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who dislikes democracy and the passions of the mob, favors a commonwealth, a social contract, with people delegating their powers to a central authority and submitting to that authority.

1652 The Dutch East India Company establishes a toe hold in southern Africa, near the Cape of Good Hope, to serve Dutch ships passing to and from the East.

1652 Nikita Nikon, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, wishes to return to the purity of previous times. He wants people to cross themselves with three fingers rather than two and creates a great disturbance among the faithful.

1653 A war begins between the English and Dutch, inspired by commercial competition.

1653 Oliver Cromwell dissolves parliament and his army makes him Lord Protector - a dictator.

1654 Russia has declared war on Poland and captures the cities of Minsk and Vilna.

1657 Ottoman historian, Haji Khalifa dies. He saw Ottoman society as sick because of corruption, high taxation and oppression of the masses.

1657 Edo burns, Japan's biggest urban fire. About 100,000 people die.

1658 In India, Aurangzeb, son of the Mughal emperor Jahan, has defeated his brother, the crown prince, Dara Shikoh. Aurangzeb has imprisonsd his father and his other brother, Murad, and he crowns himself, taking the title Alamgir (Grasper of the Universe). He is to prohibit Hindu fairs and festivals, to re-institute the tax on non-Muslims that his great grandfather removed and to end the semi-independent status that had been given to Hindu kingdoms within the Mughal empire.

1658 Cromwell dies and the English are relieved. They have had their fill of Puritanism.

1659 Near Cape Town, Dutch farmers are taking over Khoikhoi (Hottentot) grazing land. The Khoikhoi attack the Dutch, who successfully defend themselves.

1660 England's parliament restores the monarchy to the eldest son of Charles I, Charles II, who arrives from France three weeks later amid great celebration.

1662 Charles marries a Portuguese princess and acquires Tangier in North Africa and Bombay on the west coast of India.

1665 Speaking of those in the pirate business, Barbados is described as a dung hill where England casts its rubbish.

1665 Another war between the English and Dutch has begun. English soldiers seize the town of New Amsterdam and rename it New York after the king's brother, the Duke of York.

1665 Two-thirds of London is evacuated to avoid the Black Plague, but nearly 70,000 die of the disease in one week.

1665 In England, Elizabeth Gaunt is burned at the stake for treason: her involvement in the Rye House Plot.

1666 It is an era of big city fires. London is a city of mostly thatched roofs or timber and pitch. Much of London burns. Seeing a possible connection between the fire and God's displeasure, authorities began an official investigation into atheism in London, and the English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, burns some of his writings to hide evidence that could be used against him. The city is to be rebuilt with brick and stone and institutionalized fire fighting developed.

1667 The war between Russia and Poland ends, with Russia possessing most of Ukraine.

1668 The French establish their first factory in India, at Surat.

1670 On the Atlantic coast the Carolina colony, Puritans found Charles Town (Charleston) named for Charles II.

1672 Charles II joins Louis XIV of France in another war against the Dutch.

1672 A third living son, Peter, is born to Tsar Alexius (1629-76).

1674 A Hindu conqueror, Shivaji, is crowned king at Rajgarh. Maratha power is established. Shivaji gives assurance to Hindus across India.

1674 The French establish a trading post in India.

1675 The economic burdens of the war and rising opposition to the war by Protestants and Parliament results in Charles II agreeing to a negotiated settlement with the Dutch.

1675 A Dutchman, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, discovers microorganisms, using a microscope of his own design. This would eventually put to rest the theory that small creatures or insects arose from inanimate matter such as dirt or dung.

1675 The Mugal emperor, Alamgir, has escecuted Tegh Bajadur for refusing to accept Islam. Tegh Bajadur's son and successor, Guru Gobind Rai, vows to combat Alamgir's oppression. He adopts the surname Singh (lion) and gives his closest followers the same surname.

1676 Tsar Alexius dies. His son, at the age of twelve, inherits the throne as Theodor III.

1677 The French build a fort on the island of Gorée, a little more than a hundred miles to the south of the mouth of the Senegal River.

1679 Responding to public pressure, England's parliament passes the Habeas Corpus Act, against abusive detentions and detentions without legal authority.

1681 In London a woman is flogged for the crime of having become involved in politics.

1682 Robert Cavalier LaSalle claims the Mississippi River valley for France.

1682 Tsar Theodor III dies without a son. Peter, age 10, is made tsar, with his mother as regent. A war within the royal family ensues, with Peter witnessing the murder of his mother's family. A council of nobles, trying to settle matters, makes Peter a co-tsar with his unhealthy sixteen-year-old brother, Ivan.

1683 Japan is benefiting from an era of peace, order and prosperity. Food production has risen. The use of money, rather than barter, has spread to Japan's farmers. Merchant values such as thrift and prudence in all things mixes with Confucianism's regard for order.

1683 Taiwan submits to Manchu authority.

1683 Tenant farming continues to dominate Korea's agriculture, with slaves laboring for some landowners. Except for small peddlers and rural crafts, commerce is government controlled. Law keeps people bound to their place of work. Confucianism inhibits economic growth, the Confucianists believing that exchange should be that of gift-giving rather inspired by gain.

1683 The Ottoman Empire is trying to resume its conquests of centuries before. An Ottoman army penetrates the outer fortifications of Vienna. An army of 70,000 Habsburg and Polish troops are on their way to rescue Vienna.

1684 Around what today is Zimbabwe, following the breakdown of other African empires, cattle owners have been competing for power, and the cattle owner who emerges supreme has been Changamire Dombo, who controls gold mining and, backed by warriors, collects tributes. He is building an empire and begins expelling the Portuguese.

1686 Isaac Newton presents his Principia, Book I, to the Royal Society. He is changing how people see the world, replacing the magic of the gods with an understanding of gravity, inertia and physical force and counter force. A contemporary poet, Alexander Pope, is to write his epitaph as "nature's laws hid by night, God said Let Newton be! and All was light!"

1687 The Ottomans are falling back. The Austrians push them from Hungary and the city of Budapest.

1688 Hostility to Catholicism and to King James II results in a rebellion against his rule. Parliament has invited a European royal, William of Orange, to rule. William lands with an army and defeats the army of James II - whose overthrow is called the Glorious Revolution.

1689 Parliament creates a Bill of Rights and the Toleration Act. Freedom of speech is guaranteed. People have the right to petition government. They are to be free from cruel and unusual punishments. They are not to be compelled to become members of the Church of England.

1689 The philosopher John Locke returns to England from Holland. He gives conscious ideology to Whig liberalism. He rejects church authority in matters of philosophy and science. He has advocated that churches be voluntary societies rather than appendages of higher authority associated with the state, as has been the Anglican Church. He rejects political power derived from the authority of God, as in rule by divine right of the old monarchies. He is afraid of the passions of the masses and advocates religious tolerance. Not quite a century later his ideas would be a part of the constitution created by the American Revolution.

1690 At a village 60 miles upriver in the Ganges delta, The British East India Company founds a trading post - Calcutta.

1694 In Iran, Shah Suleiman (Sulayman) has died, and his rule follows the tradition of being passed to his son, Shah Husayn. Shah Husayn is not much interested in affairs of state. He is to let influence pass to courtiers and eunuchs and to seek instruction on what to do from the ulama.

1694 In Africa, the English destroy the French fort on the Senegal River.

1695 In Africa, the French blow up the English fort on the Gambia River.

1696 Peter's brother, Ivan, dies. At the age of 24, Peter becomes Russia's sole tsar.

1697 Peter has been building Russia's naval strength is ready to take on the Ottomans. He drives them out of Azov. And that year the Austrians defeat the Ottomans at Zenta, about 100 hundred miles southwest of Budapest.

1698 With an entourage and sometimes disguised as a commoner, Peter is visiting Western Europe to examine the international situation, to strengthen a coalition against the Ottomans and to learn about the economies and cultures of Western Europe.

1699 Under diplomatic pressure from the Dutch, British and Venetians, the Ottomans sign the Treaty of Karlowitz - a dictated treaty. Hungary and Transylvania are ceded to Austria. Podolia, occupied by the Ottomans in 1672, is returned to Poland. The Ottomans give up Morea (the Peloponnesian Peninsula) and most of Dalmatia.

1700 The world is populated by between 600 and 680 million people, up from between 540 to 580 in 1600 - roughly calculated.

1700 Life expectancy at birth in England is 36 years. (Calculated in a study in the 1980s by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure.)