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17th century

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The 17th century was the century that lasted from January 1, 1601 (MDCI), to December 31, 1700 (MDCC). It falls into the Early Modern period of Europe and in that continent (whose impact on the world was increasing) was characterized by the Baroque cultural movement, the latter part of the Spanish Golden Age, the Dutch Golden Age, the French Grand Siècle dominated by Louis XIV, the Scientific Revolution, the world's first public company and megacorporation known as the Dutch East India Company, and according to some historians, the General Crisis. The greatest military conflicts were the Thirty Years' War,[1] the Great Turkish War, Mughal–Safavid Wars (Mughal–Safavid War (1622–23), Mughal–Safavid War (1649–53)), Anglo-Mughal Indian War, and the Dutch–Portuguese War. It was during this period also that European colonization of the Americas began in earnest, including the exploitation of the silver deposits, which resulted in bouts of inflation as wealth was drawn into Europe.[2]

Mughal emperor Aurangzeb
A scene on the ice, Dutch Republic, first half of 17th century
Persian Ambassador during his entry into Kraków for the wedding ceremonies of King Sigismund III of Poland in 1605.
Åbo Akademi University's inauguration on 1640 in Turku.
Catholic general Albrecht von Wallenstein
René Descartes with Queen Christina of Sweden.
James I of England and VI of Scotland
Tsar Michael I of Russia
Battle of Nördlingen (1634). The Catholic Imperial army, bolstered by professional Habsburg Spanish troops won a great victory in the battle over the combined Protestant armies of Sweden and their German allies
Taj Mahal, built by Shah Jahan, one of the Wonders of the World.
The Night Watch or The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, 1642. Oil on canvas; on display at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The massacre of settlers in 1622. The massacre was instrumental in causing English colonists to view all natives as enemies.
Map of Europe in 1648 at the end of the Thirty Years' War
Cardinal Mazarin
Claiming Louisiana for France
Shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu is the founder of Japan's last shogunate, which lasted well into the 19th century

In the Islamic world, the gunpowder empires – the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal – grew in strength. Especially in the Indian subcontinent, Mughal architecture, culture and art reached its zenith, while the empire itself, during the sharia reign of Emperor Aurangzeb, is believed to have had the world's largest economy, bigger than the entirety of Western Europe and worth 25% of global GDP,[3] and its wealthiest province, the Bengal Subah, signaled the period of proto-industrialization.[4]

In Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Tokugawa shogunate at the beginning of the century, beginning the Edo period; the isolationist Sakoku policy began in the 1630s and lasted until the 19th century. In China, the collapsing Ming dynasty was challenged by a series of conquests led by the Manchu warlord Nurhaci, which were consolidated by his son Hong Taiji and finally consummated by his grandson, the Shunzi Emperor, founder of the Qing dynasty.

From the middle decades of the 17th century, European politics were increasingly dominated by the Kingdom of France of Louis XIV, where royal power was solidified domestically in the civil war of the Fronde. The semi-feudal territorial French nobility was weakened and subjugated to the power of an absolute monarchy through the reinvention of the Palace of Versailles from a hunting lodge to a gilded prison, in which a greatly expanded royal court could be more easily kept under surveillance. With domestic peace assured, Louis XIV caused the borders of France to be expanded. It was during this century that the English monarch became a symbolic figurehead and Parliament was the dominant force in government – a contrast to most of Europe, in particular France.

By the end of the century, Europeans were aware of logarithms, electricity, the telescope and microscope, calculus, universal gravitation, Newton's Laws of Motion, air pressure and calculating machines due to the work of the first scientists of the Scientific Revolution, including Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Pierre Fermat, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Christiaan Huygens, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. It was also a period of development of culture in general (especially theater, music, visual arts and philosophy).

Events

Main article: Timeline of the 17th century

1601–1650

Jan Pieterszoon Coen (8 January 1587 – 21 September 1629), the founder of Batavia, was an officer of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the early seventeenth century, holding two terms as its Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.

1651–1700

French invasion of the Netherlands, which Louis XIV initiated in 1672, starting the Franco-Dutch War
The Battle of Vienna marked the historic end of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire into Europe.

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

See also: Timeline of historic inventions § 17th century

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

References

  1. ^ "The Thirty-Years-War". Western New England College. Archived from the original on 1999-10-09. Retrieved 2008-05-24.
  2. ^ "The Seventeenth-Century Decline". The Library of Iberian resources online. Retrieved 13 August 2008.
  3. ^ Maddison, Angus (2003): Development Centre Studies The World Economy Historical Statistics: Historical Statistics, OECD Publishing, ISBN 9264104143, pages 259–261
  4. ^ Lex Heerma van Voss; Els Hiemstra-Kuperus; Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk (2010). "The Long Globalization and Textile Producers in India". The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650–2000. Ashgate Publishing. p. 255.
  5. ^ Ricklefs (1991), page 28
  6. ^ History of UST UST.edu.ph. Retrieved December 21, 2008.
  7. ^ "The Tatar Khanate of Crimea". Archived from the original on 2016-03-23. Retrieved 2008-06-05.
  8. ^ Alan Macfarlane (1997). The savage wars of peace: England, Japan and the Malthusian trap. Wiley . p. 64. ISBN 0-631-18117-2
  9. ^ Karen J. Cullen (2010). "Famine in Scotland: The 'Ill Years' of the 1690s". Edinburgh University Press. p. 20. ISBN 0-7486-3887-3

Further reading

Detail of a 17th-century Tekke Turkmen carpet
  • Chang, Chun-shu, and Shelley Hsueh-lun Chang. Crisis and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century China" (1998).
  • Langer, William. An Encyclopedia of World History (5th ed. 1973); highly detailed outline of events online free
  • Reid, A. J. S. Trade and State Power in 16th & 17th Century Southeast Asia (1977).
  • Spence, J. D. The Death of Woman Wang: Rural Life in China in the 17th Century (1978).

Focus on Europe

Wikimedia Commons has media related to 17th century.
  • Vistorica: Timelines of 17th century events, science, culture and persons
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