1616
Page 44
1616 Cardinal Richelieu named French Secretary of State
1616 Thomas Roe establishes first British embassy in India
1616 Jesuits expelled from Ming court in China
1616 Tokugawa Ieyasu dies, Japan
1616 Vincenz Fettmilch is beheaded, Jews return to Frankfurt
1616 Nurhaci, founder of Qing dynasty, declares himself emperor
1616 Thomas Overbury murder scandal, London, ends with the conviction of the Earl and Countess of Somerset
1616 Fort San Diego, overlooking Acapulco Bay, completed
1618–1648 Thirty Years War
1643–1644 Fall of Ming dynasty, beginning of Qing dynasty, China
People
Shah Abbas of Iran, 27 January, 1571–19 January, 1629
Akbar, Mughal emperor, 1556–1605
Anne of Denmark, 12 December, 1574–2 March, 1619
Bembo, Giovanni, 21 August, 1543–16 March, 1618
Catherine de Medici of France, 13 April, 1519–5 January, 1589
Christian IV of Denmark, 12 April, 1577–28 February, 1648
De Silva, Juan, d. April 19, 1616
Elizabeth I of England, 7 September, 1533–24 March, 1603
Galigai, Leonora, 19 May, 1568–8 July, 1617
Godunov, Boris Feodorovich, c. 1551–April, 1605
Henri IV of France, 13 December, 1553–Paris, 14 May, 1610
Hosokawa Gracia, 1563–August 25, 1600
Ignatius of Loyola, 1491–31 July, 1556
Jahangir, 20 September, 1569–8 November, 1627
James VI of Scotland, I of England, 19 June, 1566–27 March, 1625
Kanō Anisen, 1570–1616
Kanō Tanyu, 1602–1674
Louis XIII of France, 27 September, 1601–14 May, 1643
Marie de Médicis, 26 April, 1575–3 July, 1642
Mary I of Scotland, 8 December, 1542–8 February, 1587
Nurhaci, 21 February, 1559–30 September, 1626
Nur Jahan, 1577–1645
Pope Paul V, 17 September, 1552–28 January, 1621
Philip (Felipe) III of Spain, 14 April, 1578–31 March, 1621
Powhatan (Wahunsenacawh), d. 1618
Raleigh, Walter, c. 1552–29 October, 1618
Romanov, Mikhail Fyodorovich, 12 July, 1596–13 July, 1645
Rudolf II of Austria, 18 July, 1552–20 January, 1612
Tokugawa Hidetada, 2 May, 1579–14 March, 1632
Tokugawa Ieyasu: 31 January, 1543–1 June, 1616
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 2 February, 1536–18 September, 1598
Wallenstein, Albrecht von, 24 September, 1583–25 February, 1634
Wang Yangming, 1472–1529
Wanli emperor, 4 September, 1563–18 August, 1620
TRADE AND TRAVEL
Events
1557 China allows Portuguese to establish a port at Macau
1565 First Spanish settlement in the Philippines
1596 Dutch ships arrive in Indonesia
1602 Dutch East India Company (VOC) founded
1607 Jamestown first successful British settlement in No. America
1616 First African slave brought to Bahamas
1616 Dirk Hartog makes the second recorded landfall in Australia by a European
1616 Willem Schouten rounds Cape Horn
1616 Matoaka (Pocahontas) travels to London
1616 The Tokugawa shogunate, Japan, restricts most foreigners to the ports of Nagasaki and Hirado
1616 Pope Paul V welcomes the embassy of the Japanese samurai Hasekura Tsunenaga in Rome
1616 Peter Paul Rubens begins a series of classical tapestries
1616 Rene Descartes graduates from the University of Poitiers
1616 Pietro Della Valle marries Maani Gioerida in Baghdad
1616 Will Adams travels to Siam
People
Adams, Will, 24 September, 1564–16 May, 1620
Coryate, Thomas, 1577–1617
Della Valle, Pietro, 1586–1652
Erauso, Catalina de, perhaps 1592–1650
Lithgow, William, 1582–1645
Magellan, Ferdinand, c. 1480–27 April, 1521
Malik Ambar, 1546–1626
Matoaka (Rebecca Rolfe / Pocahontas), c. 1595–21 March, 1617
Reis, Yusuf (Jack Ward), c. 1553–1622
Rolfe, John, c. 1585–1622
Schouten, Willem Cornelisz, c. 1567–1625
Sherley, Robert, c. 1581–13 July 1628
Spielbergen, Joris van, 1568–1620
Xu Xiake, 5 January, 1587–8 March, 1641
Yamada Nagamasa, c. 1550–1630
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, MEDICINE
Events
1543 Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies
1596 Kepler, The Cosmic Mystery
1610 Galileo, The Starry Messenger
1613 Heo Jun, Mirror of Eastern Medicine
1616 Galileo meets Pope Paul V in Rome
1616 Edward Wright, Admirable Table of Logarithmes
1619 Kepler, The Harmony of the World
People
Bacon, Francis, 22 January, 1561–9 April, 1626
Boot, Adrian, c. 1590–1648
Bourgeois, Louise, c. 1563–1636
Galilei, Galileo, 15 February, 1564–8 January, 1642
Gilbert, William, 1544–1603
Heo Jun, 1537–1615
Kepler, Johannes, 27 December, 1571–15 November, 1630
Martínez, Enrico, d. 1632
Stevin, Simon, 1548 or 1549–1620
Taqi al-Din, 1526–1585
Tycho Brahe, 14 December, 1546–24 October, 1601
CULTURE
Events
1604–1611 King James Bible
1611 Thomas Coryate, Coryat’s Crudities
1616 Blue Mosque completed, Istanbul
1616 Artemisia Gentileschi admitted to the Academie del Disegno of Florence
1616 John Donne appointed Reader in Divinity, Lincoln’s Inn
1616 First appearance of Father Christmas, in a Christmas masque by Ben Jonson
1616 Ben Jonson, Workes and The Devil Is an Ass
1616 Shakespeare, first folio
1616 Thomas Middleton, The Witch
1616 Dorothy Leigh, The Mother’s Blessing
1616 Banabe Rich, My Lady’s Looking Glass
1616 Domenico Belli, L’Orfeo Dolente
1617 Jacques Olivier, Alphabet of Women’s Imperfections and Malice
People
Abul Hasan, born 1588 or 1589
Andreae, Johan Valentin, 17 August, 1586–27 June, 1654
Avercamp, Hendrick, baptized 27 January, 1585–15 May, 1634
Boehme, Jacob, c. 1575–17 November, 1624
Brueghel, Jan, the Elder, 1568–13 January, 1625
Cervantes, Miguel de, 29 September, 1547–23 April, 1616
De Vega, Lope, 25 November, 1562–27 August, 1635
Dong Qichang, 1555–1636
Donne, John, 1572–31 March, 1631
Fletcher, John, 1579–1625
Fludd, Robert, 17 January, 1574–8 September, 1637
Francken II, Frans, 1581–6 May, 1642
Frith, Mary (Moll Cutpurse), c. 1584–July 26, 1659
Gentileschi, Artemisia, 8 July, 1593–ca. 1656
Goltzius, Hendrik, January or February, 1558–1 January, 1617
Góngora y Argote, Luis de, 11 July, 1561–24 May, 1627
El Greco, 1541–7 April, 1614
Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe, c. 1535–after 1616
Heo Gyun, 1569–1618
Jonson, Ben, June, 1572–6 August, 1637
Jones, Inigo, 15 July, 1573–21 June, 1652
Maier, Michael, 1568–1622
Middleton, Thomas, 18 April, 1580–1627
Modena, Leon, 23 April, 1571–24 March, 1648
Montaigne, Michel de, 28 February, 1533–13 September, 1592
Monteverdi, Claudio Giovanni Antonio, baptized 15 May, 1567–29 November, 1643
Mulla Sadra, c. 1571–1636
Rubens, Peter Paul, 28 June, 1577–30 May, 1640
Shakespeare, William, baptised 26 April, 1564–23 April, 1616
Stampa, Gaspara, 1523–1554
Tang Xianzu, 24 September, 1550–29 July, 1616
Wroth, Mary, 1587–perhaps 1653
The Old Philosopher Chilo Lacedæmonius, 1616, by Jacob de Gheyn III (1596–1641), from the series Septem Sapientum Græciæ Icones (Seven Wise Men of Greece). Etching on paper, 253 mm. × 185 mm. British Museum, AN468768001.
Source Notes
This section and the reading list that follows attempt to acknowledge the most significant of the many debts I owe to other writers. Comprehensive bibliographies of all of the many topics in this book are impossible; instead, I try to list works, mainly in English, that I have particularly relied on or that serve as useful points of entrance to some of the main subjects (the notes are arranged roughly in order of the appearance of topics in the text). Omissions are failures of record keeping not signs of ingratitude, and I apologize for them. Isaac Newton wrote, “If I have seen further, it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants,” and I would be shortsighted indeed were it not for the inspired work of the countless scholars I have depended on.
General
There are, it turns out, a number of books devoted to single years. Some, like Ray Huang’s fascinating 1587: A Year of No Significance, which is a study of a year in the reign of the Wanli emperor, and Christopher Lee’s 1603: The Death of Queen Elizabeth I, the Return of the Black Plague, the Rise of Shakespeare, Piracy, Witchcraft, and the Birth of the Stuart Era, whose concerns are amply announced by its copious subtitle, focus on specific regions. Others, like Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s 1492: The Year the World Began and David Andress’s 1789: The Threshold of the Modern Age, attempt a more global viewpoint (both of these authors see in their years, despite a difference of nearly three centuries, the beginnings of many aspects of the modern world. Probably any year, looked at closely enough, will reveal seeds of modernity).
As this book is about to go to print, Charles C. Mann’s 1493 is receiving a lot of attention. Mann had previously published a book entitled 1491. I have not read these books (I’m just now beginning 1493), but my impression is that the attention is well deserved. I believe that Mann treats his years primarily as symbols of the world before and after the Columbian encounter, so his enterprise is different in nature from those that try to focus more literally on a single calendar year.
Sometime after starting this project I recalled reading reviews of John E. Wills’s 1688: A Global History, which seemed likely to be the most similar of the global histories to my own. So, for fear of being unduly influenced by Wills’s approach, I made sure not to read his book until after I had completed a draft of this one. I did read other of Wills’s fine work, such as his The World from 1450 to 1700 and his contributions to the Cambridge History of China. When I finally reviewed that excellent book, I saw that there is minimal overlap and it takes a somewhat different approach.
Victor Lieberman, professor of history at the University of Michigan, has attempted macrohistories of the early modern period, looking for points of similarity across diverse cultures, in groundbreaking books such as Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800–1830 and Beyond Binary Histories: Re-imagining Eurasia to c. 1830 (a collection of essays in which several scholars challenge or expand on the analysis he presents in a foundation essay).
Timothy Brook’s Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World is a stimulating book that is especially strong on connections between China and the Netherlands. Its main focus is somewhat later in the seventeenth century than this book’s. Brook is a scholar of the Ming dynasty whose enlightening and readable surveys of the period include The Confusions of Pleasure, a cultural history of Ming China that focuses not on large-scale political events but on changing attitudes and patterns of everyday life; The Troubled Empire, a history of the Yuan and Ming dynasties; and The Chinese State in Ming Society.
Taking as one of its goals the correcting of European biases of traditional histories, Charles H. Parker’s Global Interactions in the Early Modern Age, 1400–1800 offers a whirlwind tour of four hundred years of early modern globalism. Globalization in World History, edited by A. G. Hopkins, sounds like it should be even broader in scope but is actually a collection of essays from various contributors that are mostly related to aspects of early modern and modern history. Hopkins outlines several stages of globalism, according to which the early seventeenth century would represent aspects of “archaic” and “proto” globalism, in which state, economic, and industrial components are not yet fully integrated.
Stephen Dale’s recent The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals provides an especially helpful overview of the three great Islamic empires of this period. Catherine B. Asher and Cynthia Talbot’s India before Europe provides a good overview of India around this time. Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary corrects long-standing Western biases. Jerry Brotton’s breezy The Renaissance Bazaar: From the Silk Road to Michelangelo surveys Asian influences on Europe, mostly via the Ottomans, and mainly from an earlier period than that of this book. Andrew J. Newman’s admirably detailed Safavid Iran may be tough sledding for the nonspecialist.
Ashin Das Gupta is excellent on trade in the Indian Ocean region (see too a collection of essays in his honor edited by Rudrangshu Mukherjee). Other books on the Indian Ocean region include works by Sugata Bose, Richard Hall, and M. Pearson. For Southeast Asia, in addition to Lieberman, see works by Anthony Reid.
There are many books devoted to the early modern period in Europe. Good bibliographies are available online from scholars associated with Cambridge, CUNY, and UCLA; a web search for “early modern” + “reading list” should turn up these and similar results. Merry Wiesner-Hanks’s Early Modern Europe, 1450–1789 is a solid introduction that combines thematic and chronological perspectives. Henry Kamen’s Early Modern European Society focuses on social developments rather than large-scale political events. Theodore Rabb’s The Last Days of the Renaissance examines the shift from the early Renaissance to the later early modern period leading to the age of revolutions. H. G. Koenigsberger’s Early Modern Europe 1500–1789, though getting a little long in the tooth, remains a convenient primer.
William J. Bernstein’s Splendid Exchange is a wide-reaching study of global trade through history.
Preface and Prologue
For NICOLAAS GEELKERCKEN see J. Keuning’s article in Imago Mundi. Geelkercken’s map also appears (as does the map by Franc-Antoine de la Porte on the front flap of the hardcover jacket) in Rodney Shirley’s The Mapping of the World, where it is dated later in the seventeenth century.
In Writing Women in Jacobean England, Barbara Kiefer Lewalski has written cogently on THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD and her role as Penthesilea in The Masque of Queens. Texts of the masques discussed in the prologue and epilogue of this book can be found online, as can many other works from the early seventeenth century. In many such cases I have assumed interested readers can locate the texts easily enough and have not given up space in “Selected Reading” for this.
On JAMES I, QUEEN ANNE, AND MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, Alan Stewart’s The Cradle King is solid and thorough (though the narrative does not always sustain momentum). Antonia Fraser’s illustrated King James VI of Scotland, I of England is sympathetic to the royal family.
Victor Lieberman has discussed what he calls the “charter states,” or GOLDEN AGES, embraced by several early modern states. The discussion of the different KINDS OF POLITICAL AUTHORITY of the Islamic empires owes a large debt to Stephen Dale.
BEN JONSON “returns again and again to the myth of the Golden Age, evoking classical and mythological glories with affecting nostalgia and fervid optimism,” according to Claude Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth in Ben Jonson Revised, a critical study that rises above the level of many in the Twain series. Ja
mes Hirsh’s New Perspectives on Ben Jonson collects fairly recent essays on the author. David Riggs’s Ben Jonson: A Life is a reliable biography. On the masques in particular, see works by A. D. Cousins and Alison V. Scott, David Lindley, and Stephen Orgel. Jonson’s 1616 folio Workes was reissued in facsimile in 1976.
On the connection between East Asian and Renaissance European printing technology, see my “Gutenberg and the Koreans,” available online through search.
Among many resources related to the VOC and the other NORTHERN EUROPEAN TRADE COMPANIES is Nick Robins’s The Corporation that Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational. Niels Steensgaard’s Carracks, Caravans and Companies considers the impact of the companies on preexisting trade networks in West Asia and the Indian Ocean region. In A Splendid Exchange William J. Bernstein does a good job of highlighting differences between the Dutch and English companies.
The story of THE SIEGE OF RUN is told in Giles Milton’s rousing Nathaniel’s Nutmeg. For a shorter version, see William J. Bernstein’s Splendid Exchange; it also includes a section on JAN PIETERSZOON COEN.
Silk and Silver
Information on ADRIAN BOOT and, to a lesser degree, ENRIQUE MARTINEZ is sparse. In “The Fortification of Acapulco, 1615–1616” Engel Sluiter provides a progress report from the supervisor of the fortification project and discusses Boot’s role in that context. Louisa Schell Hoberman’s “Technological Change in a Traditional Society: The Case of the Desague in Colonial Mexico” discusses the Mexico City drainage disputes. Valerie L. Mathes also touches on these issues in “Enrico Martínez of New Spain.” Mapping and Empire by Reinhartz and Saxon also briefly discusses the two figures.
Late in my research I discovered the work of Priscilla Connolly and Roberto Mayer, who have investigated the transmission of the works of Adrian Boot and Juan Gómez de Trasmonte. These include a plan and view of Mexico City and views of Acapulco and Veracruz: three are shown here (pp. 32, 39, and 81). According to Connolly and Mayer, “Scholars have generally considered these coloured prints to be the only accurate representations of seventeenth-century Mexico City, Acapulco and Veracruz.” They believe that the originals of these works were drawings, which were probably among the booty of a ship captured by the Dutch pirate Piet Hein in 1628. That would explain how they made their way to the Netherlands, where they were converted into oil paintings, now lost, by David Vinckboons, and then watercolors by his son Johannes Vingboons (ca. 1617–1670). Johannes, they say, inscribed the watercolors with the names of the artists of the original drawings.