1601 1602 1603 1604 1605 1606 1607 1608 1609 1610
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Dutch admiral Jacob van Heemskerck, appointed commander of the entire fleet of the United Provinces, directs an attack that results in the capture or destruction of 21 Spanish ships off Gibraltar but is killed in the attack April 25 at age 40. His victory will lead 2 years hence to an armistice in the war that has been going on between Spain and the Dutch since 1568.
Gascony becomes part of France (see 1453).
Lebanese ruler Fakhr ad-Din II, 35, defeats the tyrannical Christian Maronite leader Yusuf Sayfa with Maronite help. Fakhr ad-Din II gains tentative recognition from the Ottoman government at Constantinople (whose officials initially supported him but then shifted their allegiance to Yusuf Sayfa) and determines to unite his Druse people with the Maronites (but see 1614).
New Mexico's colonial governor Juan de Oñate resigns his position and is ordered back to Mexico City by the Spanish viceroy, who charges him with immorality, cruelty to the indigenous population, and misrepresenting the value of the colony to Spain (see 1598). Now 57, he will be convicted of some of the charges in 1614 and stripped of his titles, and although he will have the verdict reversed in 1624 his titles will not be restored.
Jamestown, Virginia, is founded May 14 by Captain Christopher Newport of the London Company, who sailed into Chesapeake Bay April 26 after losing 16 men on the voyage from England (see 1606). Having set out with 120 colonists, Newport has come up a river that he named the James, in honor of the English king, and sails for home June 22, leaving behind colonists under Captain John Smith. Explorer Bartholomew Gosnold has opposed settling at such a swampy site but is named one of seven governing councillors of the colony and supports Captain Smith's efforts to maintain discipline. He dies of malaria August 22 and many others succumb to the fever.
The Plymouth Company attempts a settlement at the mouth of the Kennebec River, but the colonists will abandon George Popham's settlement after a terrible winter (see 1620).
French colonists abandon the settlement founded by Samuel de Champlain in 1604.
The Muscovy Company employs English navigator Henry Hudson, 57, to find a passage to China (see 1555). Hudson coasts the eastern shore of Greenland with 10 men and a boy until he reaches "Newland," or Spitsbergen (see 1596; 1608).
A third English East India Company fleet sails in March for the Indies (see Bantam, 1605). As in 1601, the fleet includes the Red Dragon and the Hector, and it will return with cloves and other cargo that will yield a profit of 234 percent (see 1621).
A Dutch East India Company fleet sails for the Indies under the command of Pieter Verhoeff with assistant merchant Jan Pieterszoon Coen, 20 (see 1602). Verhoeff and 50 of his men will be killed during negotiations with the chiefs of the Banda Islands, but Coen will return home safely in 1610 and submit a report to the company's directors, extolling the possibilities of trade in Southeast Asia (see 1612).
Landless English farm workers in Northamptonshire rebel in May and June against the enclosure of common lands and other abuses by the landed gentry, who have carried out enclosures on a massive basis and forced the laborers into vagrancy (see 1450); several of the insurgents are killed as the landowners raise private armies to suppress "Captain Pouch's revolt," and three are hanged to set an example, but disturbances will continue in neighboring counties for decades as laborers break down fences and hedges.
Mathematician Guidobaldo, marchese del Monte, dies at Montebaroccio January 6 at age 61. He has provided financial support to other scientists, including Galileo Galilei.
Venice comes to terms with Pope Paul V after gaining support from France in response to a threat from the pope to obtain intervention by Spanish troops in the Vatican's effort to obtain the release of two priests (see 1606). The city turns over the priests but reserves the right to try churchmen in civil courts. The pope removes his interdict. Scholar Paolo Sarpi is summoned to appear before the Roman Inquisition, he refuses, and although he is attacked in the street at Venice October 5 he recovers from his stab wounds (see Nonfiction, 1619).
Theater: The Knight of the Burning Pestle by English playwrights Francis Beaumont, 23, and John Fletcher, 27, is the first of some 50 comedies and tragedies that the team will write before Beaumont's death in 1616; A Woman Killed with Kindness by Lincolnshire-born actor-playwright Thomas Heywood, 33, who joined Philip Henslowe's theatrical company, The Admiral's Men, at least 9 years ago (the play is performed at London by Worcester's Men); Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare: "The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,/ Burn'd on the water; the poop was beaten gold;/ Purple the sails, and so perfumed that/ The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,/ Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made/ The water which they beat to follow faster,/ As amorous of their strokes" (II, ii).
Opera: Orfeo 2/24 at Mantua's Court Theater, with music by Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi, 29, who has studied with the late Giovanni da Palestrina and employs a new treatment of discords to provide emotional and dramatic values.
English boys at Jamestown accept a challenge to leave their fort and compete in turning handsprings with Pocahontas, a native girl of about 12 whose father heads the Powhatan Confederacy.
Captain John Smith finds such an "abundance of fish, lying so thicke with their heads above the water, as for want of nets . . . we attempted to catch them with frying pans." Salmon, bigger than any caught in Europe, swim up 30 North American rivers.
Colonists aboard Captain Newport's vessels arrive with horses, cattle, hogs, goats, sheep, and chickens; the hogs thrive on the roots, berries, and snakes that they find in the forest and begin to multiply; the colonists find mussels and oysters lying "thicke as stones" and strawberries "four times bigger and better than ours in England" but lack the fishhooks and nets needed to catch the bass, flounder, herring, shad, sturgeon, and trout that abound in the streams and coastal waters of their new home.
Jamestown's colonists come for the most part from the gentry; they are incompetent farmers, and most of the migratory birds, wild turkeys, grouse, eagles, hawks, and other fowl elude them. By autumn they are sick from malaria and other diseases and starving, having buried at least 50. Captain Smith goes up the Chickahominy River in December to trade for corn with the Algonquin and is captured (see 1608).
1601 1602 1603 1604 1605 1606 1607 1608 1609 1610
