17th century

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Millennium: 2nd millennium
Centuries:
Decades: 1600s 1610s 1620s 1630s 1640s
1650s 1660s 1670s 1680s 1690s
Categories: Births – Deaths
Establishments – Disestablishments

The 17th century was the century that lasted from January 1, 1601, to December 31, 1700, in the Gregorian calendar. The 17th century falls into the Early Modern period of Europe and in that continent was characterized by the Dutch Golden Age, the Baroque cultural movement, the French Grand Siècle dominated by Louis XIV, the Scientific Revolution, and The General Crisis. This last is characterised in Europe most notably by the Thirty Years' War,[1] the Great Turkish War, the end of the Dutch Revolt, the disintegration of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the English Civil War.

Some historians extend the scope of the General Crisis to encompass the globe, as with the demographic collapse of the Ming Dynasty, China lost approximately 30% of its population. It was during this period also that European colonization of the Americas began in earnest, including the exploitation of the fabulously wealthy silver deposits of Potosí in Upper Peru and Mexico, which resulted in great bouts of inflation as wealth was drawn into Europe from the rest of the world.[2]

Louis XIV visiting the Académie des sciences in 1671. "It is widely accepted that 'modern science' arose in the Europe of the 17th century, introducing a new understanding of the natural world." —Peter Barrett[1]
New Amsterdam as it appeared in 1664. Under British rule it became known as New York.
Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu is the founder of Japan's last shogunate, which lasted well into the 19th century
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.
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 Spanish troops won a great victory in the battle over the combined Protestant armies of Sweden and their German allies
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
Claiming Louisiana for France
Sultan Mehmed IV
Crimean Tatar soldier fighting with the soldier of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Europe's steppe frontier was in a state of semi-permanent warfare until the 18th century.
The 17th century fish market of Batavia (now Jakarta).
City hall of Batavia in 1682 (during the time of Dutch East India Company), later renovated in the 18th century to current form.

In the midst of this global General Crisis, there were victory and triumph: In the Near East, the Ottoman, Safavid Persian and Mughal empires grew in strength and the Sikhs began to rise to power in the Punjab. Farther east in Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Edo period at the beginning of the century, starting the isolationist Sakoku policy that was to last 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.

European politics during the Crisis were dominated by the France of Louis XIV, where royal power was solidified domestically in the civil war of the Fronde, in which 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 to include, among other regions, Rousillon, Artois, Dunkirk, Franche-Comté, Strasbourg, Alsace and Lorraine. It was during this century that England's political system became unique in Europe – by the end of the century, the monarch was a symbolic figurehead and Parliament was the dominant force in government – a stark contrast to the rest of Europe, in particular Louis XIV's France.

By the end of the century, Europeans were also 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 Leibniz, among other luminaries.


Events

1600s

1610s

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.

1620s

1630s

1640s

1650s

1660s

1670s

1680s

Giles Cory was pressed to death during the Salem witch trials in the 1690s

1690s

Significant people

See also: English Restoration
Peter Paul Rubens, Anne of Austria, Queen of France, mother of King Louis XIV, 1622–1625
Elias Gottlieb Haussmann, Johann Sebastian Bach, 1748
Galileo Galilei is often referred to as the Father of Modern Astronomy
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the first person to use a microscope to view bacteria
Miyamoto Musashi, Self-portrait, Samurai, writer and artist, c. 1640
Sir Isaac Newton at 46 in Godfrey Kneller's 1689 portrait
Self portrait by Rembrandt, c. 1655
Probable self-portrait of Francisco Zurbarán as Saint Luke, c. 1635 – 1640[2]
Portrait of René Descartes, dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy", after Frans Hals c. 1648

Musicians and composers

See also: List of Baroque composers

Visual artists

See also: Baroque painting and Baroque sculpture

Literature

See also: Elizabethan era and French literature of the 17th century

Educators

Exploration

See also: Exploration

Science and philosophy

See also: Scientific Revolution and Age of Reason

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

Johannes Kepler, 1610
Denis Papin, best known for his pioneering invention of the steam digester, the forerunner of the steam engine.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, c. 1700

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

References

  1. ↑ "The Thirty-Years-War". Western New England College. Retrieved 2008-05-24. 
  2. ↑ "The Seventeenth-Century Decline". The Library of Iberian resources online. Retrieved 13 August 2008. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Ricklefs (1991), page 28
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Ricklefs (1991), page 29
  5. ↑ History of UST UST.edu.ph. Retrieved December 21, 2008.
  6. ↑ The Tatar Khanate of Crimea
  7. ↑ Miller, George (ed.) (1996). To The Spice Islands and Beyond: Travels in Eastern Indonesia. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. xvi. ISBN 967-65-3099-9. 
  8. ↑ Alan Macfarlane (1997). "The savage wars of peace: England, Japan and the Malthusian trap". 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
  10. ↑ Ricklefs (1991), page 63

External links

  • Vistorica: Timelines of 17th century events, science, culture and persons

Decades and years

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.