Early Modern
Bunce Island: The British Slave Castle in Sierra Leone
Tens of thousands of Africans were shipped from the island into Atlantic slavery, many of them to the rice plantations of South Carolina and Georgia.
Era · c. 1500 – 1800
Early Modern
Voyages of exploration, the Reformation and the age of revolutions that reshaped Europe and the wider world.
Early Modern
Hudson's Bay Company (1670): Fur Trade Empire in North America
A royal charter created a trading company with a monopoly over Rupert's Land, the Hudson Bay drainage basin, which it held until 1870.
Early Modern
Stenka Razin's Rebellion (1670-1671): Cossack Revolt on the Volga
The rebellion was crushed; Razin was captured, handed to Moscow and executed in June 1671, and Astrakhan was retaken in November 1671.
Early Modern
Rampjaar (1672): The Dutch Republic's Disaster Year
The Republic survived invasion behind the flooded Water Line, but the De Witt regime collapsed, the brothers were murdered, and William III became stadtholder and leader of the state.
Early Modern
Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678): Louis XIV Invades the Republic
The Dutch Republic survived intact; France gained the Franche-Comté and a belt of towns in the Spanish Netherlands at the Peace of Nijmegen.
Early Modern
Revolt of the Three Feudatories (1673): Wu Sangui Against Kangxi
Qing victory; the three feudatories were abolished and southern China came under direct imperial rule.
Early Modern
Marquette and Jolliet Expedition (1673): Down the Mississippi
The expedition charted the upper and middle Mississippi and showed that the river flowed to the Gulf of Mexico, not the Pacific, opening the way for French claims in the interior.
Early Modern
Shivaji's Coronation (1674) and the Rise of the Marathas
Shivaji was proclaimed Chhatrapati, giving the Maratha state a sovereign king and a formal government independent of the Mughals and Bijapur.
Early Modern
Royal Observatory, Greenwich (1675): Charles II's Observatory
England gained a national observatory whose star catalogues, almanacs and time signals made Greenwich the reference point for world longitude and time.
Early Modern
King Philip's War (1675–1676): Metacom's War in New England
The colonies defeated the Native coalition; Metacom was killed in August 1676, and the Native peoples of southern New England lost much of their population, land and independence.
Early Modern
Leeuwenhoek Discovers Microorganisms (1676): The Animalcules
Leeuwenhoek's letter of 9 October 1676 gave the first detailed descriptions of microorganisms, later confirmed by the Royal Society in 1677.
Early Modern
Bacon's Rebellion (1676): Uprising Against Virginia's Governor
The rebellion collapsed after Bacon's death in October 1676; Berkeley was recalled to England and the Crown tightened its control over Virginia.