| World Chronology: 1671 |
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Contents: political eventshuman rights, social justice exploration, colonization science literature theater, film music agriculture food and drink population |
Loyalist Cossacks capture the hetman Stenka Razin on the Don April 24 and turn him over to czarist authorities (see 1670). Executed in Moscow's Red Square June 16 after being tortured (he is drawn and quartered), he will be immortalized in legends and folk songs as a symbol of man's effort to free himself from the bonds of serfdom and oppression. Astrakhan finally surrenders in December after the Russians have burned rebel-held villages and executed other rebel leaders.
The Ottoman Turks declare war on Poland with a view to conquering the Ukraine. The Polish commander-in-chief General Jan Sobieski has been building a reputation with further victories against the Cossacks (while secretly undermining the royal authority of Mikhail Wishniowiecki; he now prepares to resist the mighty Ottoman war machine; see 1672).
Former parliamentary army commander in chief Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Baron Fairfax (of Cameron), dies at Nun Appleton, Yorkshire, November 12 at age 59.
Welsh-born buccaneer Henry Morgan 36, captures Panama City in violation of last year's Anglo-Spanish treaty. Morgan stands trial, but Charles II forgives him, knights him, will make him lieutenant-governor of Jamaica in 1674, and charge him with the task of putting an end to piracy.
English proprietors of the Bahamas appoint John Wentworth as first governor of the colony (see 1670), but he will have difficulty defending his capital at New Providence from inroads by the Spanish and French, sometimes both, and keeping settlers from profiting in trade with the pirates who infest the region.
The Virginia colony's governor estimates that blacks comprise less than 5 percent of the population (see 1649; 1652; 1715).
Maryland colony landowner-lawyer Margaret Brent dies in the spring at age 70 (approximate) after a career that will make her remembered in history as probably the first American feminist (see 1648).
A small English party penetrates the Ohio River watershed beyond the Blue Ridge mountains.
Mathematician Isaac Newton completes a treatise on the calculus that will not be published until 1736 (see 1666). Using ideas from kinematics, he has investigated relations among "fluents" (variables whose magnitude flows with time, later to be called functions) and their "fluxions" (derivatives, or the rate of change with respect to time) (see Barrow, 1670; Leibniz, 1675).
Astronomer Jean Picard visits the observatory of the late Tycho Brache on Hven Island, Sweden, to determine its exact location in order that observations there can be compared with precision to those made elsewhere (see 1669). He returns to Paris with copies of Brahe's work and will use them to help him obtain an accurate measurement of the length of a degree of a meridian (longitude line) for use in computing the size of the Earth.
Nonfiction: New Physical Hypothesis (Hypothesis Physica Nova) by Gottfried W. Leibniz enunciates the principle that nothing occurs without a reason but echoes the theory of the late astronomer Johannes Kepler by asserting that astronomical and other movement depends on the action of a divine spirit.
Poetry: Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes by John Milton. He has written Paradise Regained at the suggestion of Quaker Thomas Ellwood, 32, who comes to his house each day to read to him in Latin; Samson Agonistes is a powerful drama based on Greek tragedy and comprises among other things the autobiography and epitaph of its author.
Theater: Psyché by Pierre Corneille, Molière, and Philippe Quinault 1/17 at the Salle des Machines, Paris, with music by Jean Baptiste Lully; Love in a Wood by English playwright William Wycherley, 31, who acts in his coarse comedy at London's Theatre Royal in Bridges Street and gains the patronage of the duchess of Cleveland and George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham; Almanzor and Almahide, or The Conquest of Granada (Part II) by John Dryden.
The French Académie de Royale Musique opens March 3 in the Salle du Jeu de Paume de la Bouteille. Jean Baptiste Lully will take over the Paris Opéra beginning next year and run it until 1687, rebuilding the house after fires that will destroy it in 1678 and 1681 (see 1669; 1875).
Rice is introduced into the Carolina colony by physician Henry Woodward (see 1670). The story that Dr. Woodward received some Madagascar rice seed from visiting sea captain James Thurber is one of several that will be told about the introduction of rice to the colony (another is that a planter perceived the land to be suitable for rice production and simply imported a barrel of seed; still another is that a ship from Madagascar was blown off course, that it put into Charleston (Charlestown) harbor (see 1672), and that colonist Landegrave T. Smith obtained rice seed from the ship's captain and planted it in the governor's garden), but the grain will for years be merely a garden curiosity since nobody knows how to husk it and use it for food. Rice will not be cultivated seriously until about 1694 (see 1694).
England's "Cavalier Parliament" forbids freeholders with incomes of less than £100 per year from killing game, even on their own property, and restricts use of shotguns to richer landholders, even though it is the smaller farmers who depend more on game to feed their families.
French police receive the right to search houses during Lent and give any forbidden items of food they may find to the hospitals.
Mme. de Sévigné writes to her daughter the comtesse de Grignan that "the marquise de Coetlogon took so much chocolate, being pregnant last year, that she was brought to bed of a little boy who was as black as the devil who died.")
Mme. de Sévigné disparages use of the condom as a means of contraception. Writing to her daughter the comtesse de Grignan, she describes it as "an armor against enjoyment and a spider web against danger" (see 1655; Kennett, 1723).
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