1434

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political events

Florence recalls Cosimo de' Medici from exile (see 1433). He will effectively rule the city until his death in 1464, and his family will continue to dominate the city until 1537, trading silk, wool, and other luxury goods from Asia, monopolizing the alum trade, loaning money to popes, kings, and merchants, and collecting taxes for the Vatican (see 1440).

Poland's king Wladyslaw II Jagiello dies at Grodek, near Lwow, on the night of May 31 at age 84 (approximate) after a 38-year reign in which he has joined Poland and Lithuania to create the mightiest power in eastern Europe. He is succeeded by his 10-year-old son, who will reign until 1444 as Wladyslaw III Warnenczyk.

The radical Bohemian priest Prokop the Great leads his Taborites into battle at Lipany but meets defeat as civil war wracks the country (see 1433; 1436).

Sweden's royal administrator Engelbrecht Engelbrechtsen invades the Danish provinces of Halland and Skania in August, plundering the regions until peasant levies force him to fall back behind his border (see 1381; 1436).

A blockade by the Hanseatic League blocks exports of Swedish iron and copper. The miners revolt, and the peasant leader Engelbrecht Engelbrechtsen marches through eastern and southern Sweden, seizing castles and driving out bailiffs in a revolt against Erik XIII (Denmark's Erik VII) that spreads to Norway, where Erik has ruled as Erik III.

human rights, social justice

African slaves introduced into Portugal by a caravel returning from the southern continent are the first of millions that will be exported in the next 4 centuries. Slavery has nearly died out in Europe since the Middle Ages, but the enslavement of Berbers from North Africa begins to revive the practice (see 1441).

exploration, colonization

Portuguese navigator Gil Eannes rounds Cape Bojador south of the Canary Islands on the northwest coast of Africa. A captain who serves Prince Henrique, Gil Eannes (or Gillianes, or Guillanes) has sailed out of the port of Lagos. No one knows how far south Africa extends, the North Star on which European navigators have relied for centuries is not visible south of the Equator, the compass remains an object of suspicion; Gil Eannes's men have feared the rough waters and sea monsters thought to lie beyond Cape Bojador but their anxieties are dispelled (see Cape Verde, 1445).

Phnom Penh is founded at the confluence of the Bassac, Mekong, and Sab river systems to succeed Cambodia's Khmer capital of Angkor Thom (see 1431). The city will be abandoned and reinhabited several times in the course of the next 4 centuries (but see 1865).

art

Painting: Giovanni Arnolfini and His Bride by Jan van Eyck.

architecture, real estate

Venice's palazzo Ca' d'Oro is completed in a brilliant blend of Veneto-Byzantine and Gothic styles.

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