17th century

As a means of recording the passage of time, the 17th century was that century which lasted from 1601-1700 in the Gregorian calendar.

The 17th century falls into the Early Modern period of Europe and was characterized by the Baroque cultural movement and the beginning of modern science and philosophy, including the contributions of Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton; Europe was torn by warfare throughout the century, by the Thirty Years' War, the Great Turkish War and the English Civil War among others, while European colonization of the Americas began in earnest.

In the east, the 17th century saw the flowering of the Ottoman and Mughal empires, the beginning of the Edo period in feudal Japan, and the transition from the Ming to the Qing Dynasty in China.

Events

1600s

1600: Charles I of England born to James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark.
1601: The Elizabethan Poor Law appoints HI parishes as administrators of poverty relief.
1601: Earl of Essex executed on a count of treason.
1601: Battle of Kinsale, one of the most important battles in Irish history, fought.
1602: Dutch East India Company founded. Its success contributes to the Dutch Golden Age.
1603: Elizabeth I of England dies and is succeeded by her cousin King James VI of Scotland, uniting the crowns of Scotland and England.
1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu seizes control of Japan and establishes the Tokugawa Shogunate which rules the country until 1868.
1603-23: After modernizing his army, Abbas I expands Persia by capturing territory from the Ottomans and the Portuguese.
1604: James I meets the Puritans at the Hampton Court Conference, but eventually demands compliance with all Thirty-Nine Articles. James I bans Jesuit Catholics.
1605: Gunpowder Plot failed in England.
1607: The London Company establishes the Jamestown Settlement in North America precipitating the British colonization of the Americas.
1607: For the first time, Euclid's Elements (幾何原本) are translated into Chinese by the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci and the Chinese mathematician Xu Guangqi (徐光启).
1608: Quebec City founded by Samuel de Champlain in New France (present-day Canada).
1609: Maximilian of Bavaria establishes the Catholic League.

1610s

1611: English and Scottish Protestant colonists settle in Ulster.
1612: Moscow freed from Polish invaders.
1612: Chilean Jesuit missionaries murdered by Indians.
1613: The Time of Troubles in Russia ends with the establishment of the House of Romanov which rules until 1917.
1614: James I of England dissolves the Addled Parliament for failing to pass legislation or new taxes.
1614: Cardinal Richelieu dissolves the States-General, thereby concentrating power in the hands of Louis XIII.
1615: The Mughal Empire grants extensive trading rights to the British East India Company.
1616: Dirk Hartog reaches western Australia and leaves behind the Hartog Plate.
1616: William Shakespeare dies. Supposedly Shakespeare died on his birthday, if the tradition that he was born on April 23 is correct.
1618: The Bohemian Revolt precipitates the Thirty Years' War which devastates Central Europe in the years 1618-48. Starting from a dispute over Protestant churches on Catholic land, the Protestant churches are torched or closed, leading to a protest in Prague. In the Second Defenestration of Prague two Catholic imperial governors are thrown out of the Bohemian Chancellery window, whereafter successive regions enter the dispute for or against Emperor Matthias's sovereignty.
1618: The Manchus start invading China. Their conquest eventually topples the Ming Dynasty.
1618: Sir Walter Raleigh beheaded for attack on Spanish possession Trinidad.
1618: English colonists depart in the Gift of God for the Jamestown Settlement, Virginia.
1618: The Synod of Dort addresses five Protestant controversies.
1619: British North American colonies introduce slavery in expanding plantations.
1619: Spain starts financing Emperor Ferdinand II's military exploits.
1619: Bohemian Protestants reject Emperor Ferdinand II as future sovereign and appoint Frederick V instead.
1620: Emperor Ferdinand II defeats the Bohemian rebels in the Battle of White Mountain.
1620: The Puritan Pilgrims arrive in the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock, Cape Cod.

1620s

1624-42: As chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu centralizes power in France.
1625: New Amsterdam founded by the Dutch West India Company in North America.
1626: St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican completed.
1627: Cardinal Richelieu lays siege to Protestant La Rochelle which eventually capitulates.
1629: Cardinal Richelieu allies with Swedish Protestant forces in the Thirty Years' War to counter Ferdinand II's expansion.

1630s

1632: Building of the Taj Mahal begins, a mausoleum for Mumtaz Mahal.
1637: The Dutch tulip mania bubble bursts.
1637: The Pequot War, the first of the American Indian Wars
1639-51: Wars of the Three Kingdoms, civil wars throughout Scotland, Ireland, and England.

1640s

1640: King Charles was compelled to summon Parliament due to the revolt of the Scots.
1640-68: The Portuguese Restoration War led to the end of the Iberian Union.
1640: Torture is outlawed in England.
1641: The Tokugawa Shogunate institutes Sakoku- foreigners are expelled and no one is allowed to enter or leave Japan.
1642: Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman achieves the first recorded European sighting of New Zealand.
1642-49: Civil War in England; Charles I is beheaded by Cromwell
1644: The Manchu conquer China ending the Ming Dynasty. The subsequent Qing Dynasty rules until 1912.
1648: The Peace of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years' War and the Eighty Years' War and marks the ends of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire as major European powers.
1648-53: Fronde civil war in France.
1648-67: The Deluge wars leave Poland in ruins.
1648-69: The Ottoman Empire captures Crete from the Venetians after the Siege of Candia.

1650s

1652: Cape Town founded by the Dutch East India Company in South Africa.
1652: Anglo-Dutch Wars begin.
1655-61: The Northern Wars cement Sweden's rise as a Great Power.

1660s

1660: The Commonwealth of England ends and the monarchy is brought back during the English Restoration.
1660: Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge founded.
1661: The reign of the Kangxi Emperor of China begins.
1662: Koxinga captures Taiwan from the Dutch and founds the Kingdom of Tungning which rules until 1683.
1662: Jacques Aymar-Vernay, who later reintroduced Dowsing into popular use in Europe, is born.
1663: France takes full political and military control over its colonial possessions in New France.
1664: British troops capture New Amsterdam and rename it New York.
1665: Portugal defeats the Kongo Empire.
1666: The Great Fire of London.
1667-99: The Great Turkish War halts the Ottoman Empire's expansion into Europe.

1670s

1670: The Hudson's Bay Company is founded in Canada.
1672-78: Franco-Dutch War
1674: Maratha Empire founded in India by Shivaji.
1676: Russia and the Ottoman Empire commence the Russo-Turkish Wars.

1680s

1682: Peter the Great becomes joint ruler of Russia (sole tsar in 1696).
1682: La Salle explores the length of the Mississippi River and claims Louisiana for France.
1683: China conquers the Kingdom of Tungning and annexes Taiwan.
1685: Edict of Fontainebleau outlaws Protestantism in France. King Charles II dies
1687: Isaac Newton publishes Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
1688-89: After the Glorious Revolution, England becomes a constitutional monarchy and the Dutch Republic goes into decline.
1688-97: The Grand Alliance sought to stop French expansion during the Nine Years War.
1689: The Treaty of Nerchinsk established a border between Russia and China.

1690s

1692: Salem witch trials in Massachusetts.
1700-21: Russia supplants Sweden as the dominant Baltic power after the Great Northern War.

Significant people

Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden (1594-1632).
Tokugawa Ieyasu
Francis Bacon, English philosopher and politician (1561-1626).
Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer of genius(1685-1750)
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Spanish painter (1599-1660)
Pierre Corneille, French dramatist (1606 - 1684)
William Harvey, medical doctor (1578 – 1657)
Jean Racine, French dramatist (1639 - 1699)
Molière, French dramatist, actor, director (1622 - 1673)
Jean de La Fontaine French poet (1621 - 1695)
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636 - 1711) French poet and critic
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598 - 1680) Italian artist
Jean-Baptiste Lully Italian-born French composer (1632 - 1687)
André Le Nôtre French landscape architect (1613 - 1700)
Gabriel Bethlen, Hungarian prince of Transylvania (1580-1629)
Sir Thomas Browne, English author, philosopher and scientist (1605-1682).
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spanish author (1574 - 1616)
Charles I of England (1600 - 1649).
Charles II of England (1630 - 1685).
Queen Christina of Sweden, high profile Catholic convert, matron of arts (1626 - 1689)
Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland (1599 - 1658)
Richard Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland (1626 - 1712).
René Descartes, French philosopher and mathematician (1596 - 1650)
John Donne, English metaphysical poet (1572 - 1631)
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647 - 1680) English poet
Elizabeth I of England (1533 - 1603).
Galileo Galilei, Italian natural philosopher (1564 - 1642)
Andreas Gryphius, German poet and dramatist(1616 - 1664)
Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher and mathematician (1588 - 1679)
Christiaan Huygens, Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer (1629 - 1695)
Johannes Kepler, German astronomer (1571 - 1630)
Gottfried Leibniz, German philosopher and mathematician (1646 - 1716)
John Locke, English philosopher (1632 - 1704)
James I of England (1566 - 1625).
James II of England (1633 - 1701).
Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor (1640 - 1705)
Louis XIV, King of France, (1638 - 1715)
Mary II of England (1662 - 1694).
Dubhaltach MacFhirbhisigh (d.1671), Irish historian and genealogist.
John Milton, English author and poet (1608 - 1674)
Miyamoto Musashi, famous warrior in Japan, author of The Book of Five Rings, a treatise on strategy and martial combat. (1584 - 1645)
Isaac Newton, English physicist and mathematician (1642 - 1727)
Blaise Pascal, French theologian, mathematician and physicist (1623 - 1662)
Pierre de Fermat French lawyer and mathematician 1601 – 1665
John Dryden, English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright (1631 - 1700)
Samuel Pepys, English civil servant and diarist (1633 - 1703)
Henry Purcell, English composer (1659 - 1695)
Samarth Ramdas, Hindu saint (1608 - 1681)
Sant Tukaram, Hindu saint (1600 - 1650)
Anne of Austria (1601 - 1666) Queen consort and regent of France
Cardinal Richelieu, French cardinal, duke, and politician (1585 - 1642)
Cardinal Mazarin, French cardinal and politician of Italian origin (1602 - 1661)
Françoise-Athénaïs, marquise de Montespan (1641 - 1707) lover of Louis XIV
Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon (1635 - 1719 second wife of Louis XIV
Rembrandt van Rijn, Dutch painter (1606 - 1669)
William Shakespeare, English author and poet (1564 - 1616)
Pedro Calderón de la Barca Spanish dramatist (1600 - 1681)
Shivaji Bhonsle, Hindu king, 1st Maratha ruler, established Hindavi Swaraj. (1630-1680)
Baruch Spinoza, Dutch philosopher (1632 - 1677)
Seathrún Céitinn, Irish historian (ca. 1569 - ca. 1644)
Jan III Sobieski, King of Poland (1629 - 1696)
Imre Thököly, prince of Transylvania, leader of the anti-Habsburg uprising in Hungary (1657 - 1705)
Johannes Vermeer, Dutch Painter (1632 - 1675)
Albrecht von Wallenstein, German general in the Thirty Years' War, Catholic (1583 - 1634)
William III of England (1650 - 1702).
Abel Janszoon Tasman (1603 - 1659), Dutch seafarer and explorer.
Michiel de Ruyter (1607 - 1676), Dutch admiral
Guru Teg Bahadur, (1621 - 1675), 9th Sikh Guru
Peter the Great, (1672 - 1725), Russian tsar

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

List of 17th century inventions

Major changes in philosophy and science take place, often characterized as the Scientific revolution.

Banknotes reintroduced in Europe.
Ice cream
Tea and coffee become popular in Europe.
Central Banking in France and modern Finance by Scottish economist John Law
1604: Supernova SN 1604 is observed in the Milky Way
1605: Johannes Kepler starts investigating elliptical orbits of planets
1608: Hans Lippershey contructs a refracting telescope, the first for which sufficient evidence exists
1609: Johann Carolas of Germany publishes the 'Relation', the first newspaper
1610: The Orion Nebula is identified by Nicolas de Peiresc of France
1610: Galileo Galilei and Simon Marius observe Jupiter's Galilean moons
1611: King James Bible or 'Authorized Version' first published
c. 1612: The first flintlock musket likely created for Louis XIII of France by gunsmith Marin de Bourgeoys
1614: John Napier introduces the logarithm to simplify calculations
1620: Cornelius Drebbei, funded by James I of England, builds the first 'submarine' made of wood and greased leather
1623: The first English dictonary, 'English Dictionarie' is published by Henry Cockeram, listing difficult words with definitions
1628: William Harvey publishes and elucidates his earlier discovery of the circulatory system
1637: Dutch Bible published
1637: Teatro San Cassiano, the first public opera house, opened in Venice
1637: Pierre de Fermat formulates his so-called Last Theorem, unsolved until 1995
1637: Although Chinese naval mines were earlier described in the 14th century Huo Long Jing, the Tian Gong Kai Wu book of Ming Dynasty scholar Song Yingxing describes naval mines wrapped in a lacquer bag and ignited by an ambusher pulling a rip cord on the nearby shore that triggers a steel-wheel flint mechanism.
1642: Blaise Pascal builds an early mechanical calculator for addition and subtraction
1642: Mezzotint engraving introduces grey tones to printed images
1643: Evangelista Torricelli of Italy invents the mercury barometer
1645: Giacomo Torelli of Venice, Italy invents the first rotating stage
1651: Giovanni Riccioli renames the Lunar mare
1656: Christiaan Huygens describes the true shape of the rings of Saturn
1657: Christiaan Huygens develops the first functional pendulum clock based on the learnings of Galileo Galilei
1659: Christiaan Huygens first to observe surface details of Mars
1663: The first reflecting telescope is built by James Gregory based on suggestions of Italian astronomer Niccolo Zucchi
c. 1670: Monk Dom Perignon discovers Champagne in France
1676: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek discovers Bacteria
1676: First measurement of the speed of light
1679: Binary system developed by Gottfried Leibnitz, possibly influenced by Shao Yong
1684: Calculus independently developed by both Gottfried Leibnitz and Sir Issac Newton and used to formulate classical mechanics

Decades and years

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