17th-century Births

The 17th century 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.

From the mid-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).

It was during this period that the 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. Also during this period, there would be a more intense European presence in Southeast Asia and East Asia (such as the colonization of Taiwan). These foreign elements would contribute to a revolution in Ayutthaya. While the Mataram Sultanate and the Aceh Sultanate would be the major powers of the region, especially during the first half of the 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 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. The southern half of India would see the decline of the Deccan Sultanates and extinction of the Vijayanagara Empire. The Dutch would colonize Ceylon and endure hostilities with Kandy. 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 Shunzhi Emperor, founder of the Qing dynasty.

The greatest military conflicts of the century were the Thirty Years' War, Dutch–Portuguese War, the Great Turkish War, the Nine Years' War, Mughal–Safavid Wars, and the Qing annexation of the Ming.

Events

1601–1650

* 1601: In the Battle of Kinsale, England defeats Irish and Spanish forces, driving the Gaelic aristocracy out of Ireland and destroying the Gaelic clan system.
* 1601– 1603: The Russian famine of 1601–1603 kills perhaps one-third of Russia.
* 1602: Matteo Ricci produces the Map of the Myriad Countries of the World (坤輿萬國全圖, ''Kūnyú Wànguó Quántú''), a world map that will be used throughout East Asia for centuries.
* 1602: The Dutch East India Company (VOC) is established by merging competing Dutch trading companies.Ricklefs (1991), page 28 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 takes the title of ''shōgun'', establishing the Tokugawa shogunate. This begins the Edo period, which will last until 1868.
* 1603: In Nagasaki, the Portuguese Jesuit missionary João Rodrigues publishes '' Nippo Jisho'', the first dictionary of Japanese to a European (Portuguese) language.
* 1605: The King of Gowa, a Makassarese kingdom in South Sulawesi, converts to Islam.
*1605– 1627: The reign of Mughal emperor Jahangir after the death of emperor Akbar.
* 1606: The Long Turkish War between the Ottoman Empire and Austria is ended with the Peace of Zsitvatorok—Austria abandons Transylvania.
* 1606: Treaty of Vienna ends an anti-Habsburg uprising in Royal Hungary.
* 1607: Flight of the Earls (the fleeing of most of the native Gaelic aristocracy) occurs from County Donegal in the west of Ulster in Ireland.
* 1607: Iskandar Muda becomes the Sultan of Aceh for 30 years. He will launch a series of naval conquests that will transform Aceh into a great power in the western Malay Archipelago.
* 1610: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth army defeats combined Russian–Swedish forces at the Battle of Klushino and conquers Moscow.
* 1610: King Henry IV of France is assassinated by François Ravaillac.
* 1611: The Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, the oldest existing university in Asia, is established by the Dominican Order in ManilaHistory of UST
UST.edu.ph. Retrieved December 21, 2008.
* 1611: The first publication of the King James Bible.
* 1612: The first Cotswold Olympic Games, an annual public celebration of games and sports begins in the Cotswolds, England.
* 1613: The Time of Troubles in Russia ends with the establishment of the House of Romanov, which rules until 1917.
* 1613– 1617: Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth is invaded by the Tatars

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