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

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1601: Battle of Kinsale, the most important battle 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.

1605: Gunpowder Plot failed in England.

1607: The London Company establishes the Jamestown Settlement in North America precipitating the British colonization of the Americas.

1608: Quebec City founded by Samuel de Champlain in New France (present-day Canada).

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1611: The King James Version of the Bible is completed.

1613: The Time of Troubles in Russia ends with the establishment of the House of Romanov which rules until 1917.

1615: The Mughal Empire grants extensive trading rights to the British East India Company.

1618-48: The Thirty Years' War devastates Central Europe.

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1624-42: As chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu centralizes power in France. 1625: New Amsterdam founded by the Dutch West India Company in North America.

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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.

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1640: Portugal regains its independence from Spain bringing an end to 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.

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.

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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.

1656: Velázquez paints Las Meninas

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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.
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.

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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.

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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.
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: Nerchinsk Treaty establishes a border between Russia and China.

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1690s

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

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Significant people

Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden (1594-1632).
Tokugawa Ieyasu
Francis Bacon, English philosopher and politician (1561-1626).
Johann Sebastian Bach, genial german composer(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 compsoer (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
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)
Albrecht von Wallenstein, German General in the Thirty Years' War, Catholic (1583 - 1634)
William III of England (1650 - 1702).
Abel Janszoon Tasman (1603 - 1659), was a 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 King

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Inventions, discoveries, introductions
List of 17th century inventions

First measurement of the speed of light, 1676.

Banknotes were reintroduced in Europe.

Ice cream

Tea and coffee become popular in Europe.

Central Banking in France and modern Finance by Scottish economist John Law.

1609: Johann Carolas of Germany published the 'Relation', the first newspaper

1610: The Orion Nebula was identified by Nicolas de Peiresc of France

c. 1612: The first flintlock musket was likely created for Louis XIII of France by gunsmith Marin de Bourgeoys

1620: Funded by James I of England, Cornelius Drebbei built the first 'submarine' made of wood and greased leather

1623: The first English dictonary, 'English Dictionarie' was published by Henry Cockeram, listing difficult words with definitions

1642: Mezzotint engraving introduced grey tones to printed images

1643: Evangelista Torricelli of Italy invented the mercury Barometer

1645: Giacomo Torelli of Venice, Italy invented the first rotating stage

1657: Christiaan Huygens developed the first functional pendulum clock based on the learnings of Galileo Galilei

1663: The first reflecting telescope was built by James Gregory based on suggestions of Italian astronomer Niccolo Zucchi

c. 1670: Monk Dom Perignon discovered Champagne in France

1676: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek fist discovered Bacteria

1679: Binary system developed by Gottfried Leibnitz, possibly influenced by Shao Yung

1684: Calculus independently developed by both Gottfried Leibnitz and Sir Issac Newton and used to formulate classical mechanics.

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