In 2013, I wrote my first A Year in Review post: for some reason that I no longer remember I had been spending a lot of time thinking/reading/writing about 1913 and wanted to share some of the highlights. Over the next few years, Year in Review posts became a standard part of December here on the Margins. I let them slip for the last two years, mostly because I was so deep in the life and times of Sigrid Schultz. It’s a shame: 1923, for example, was quite a year.*

This year, it’s time to renew the tradition, kicking off with 1624.

 

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In the New World:

The Virginia Company, which owned Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America, was bankrupt. King James I of England** (and VI of Scotland) revoked the company’s charter on May 24 and made Virginia a crown colony. A year later the colony of Virginia butted heads with the crown for the first time. The colonists petitioned the king (now Charles I) for the right to retained their own legislature. Charles refused. Apparently legislation without representation was an issue earlier than I realized.

Also in Jamestown that year, William Tucker was born. He was the first known Black child born in English colonies of North America. He was the son of two Africans who were among the first group of Africans to be brought to North America in 1619 by Portuguese slavers. The group were technically sold to English settlers as indentured servants, but unlike their European counterparts they did not enter this indenture freely. Also unlike their European counterparts, their children were born into slavery. Slavery, too, was an issue in the North Americana colonies from the beginning.

The Dutch West India Company established its own trading post on the Atlantic shore. New Amsterdam was part of the larger colony of New Netherland which included what is now New York City and parts of Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey.

Sir Thomas Warner founded the first British colony in the Caribbean on St. Kitts.

The Dutch seized the capital of Spanish/Portuguese Brazil, after two previous attempts in 1599 and 1604. Their goal was control over the lucrative sugar trade, which was a very big deal.

In the larger world:

The Japanese Shogun expelled the Portuguese and cut off trade with the Philippines, the first step in closing Japan to the west. (Some historical timelines say the Japanese expelled the Spanish. This is technically true. Portugal became part of Spain in 1580. But Portugal’s presence in Japan occurred as part of the Portuguese maritime exploration and subsequent trade empire.)

The English and Dutch were expanding their territories in Asia as well as in the New World. The Dutch East India Company established trading posts on the coast of Taiwan. The English established trading posts in eastern India.

Thanks to well-chosen dynastic marriages and New World wealth, Hapsburg Spain was the Big Bad for the rest of Western Europe over the course of the seventeenth century. In 1624, France and the Netherlands signed the Treaty of Compiègne, a mutual defense treaty designed to isolate Spain. Egged on by Cardinal Richelieu of France, England, Sweden, Denmark-Norway, Savoy and Venice coordinated action against Spain. It all fell apart in 1625, when the Huguenot rebellion distracted Richelieu

Meanwhile in Eastern Europe, Hungarian King Bethlen Gabor and Ferdinand II, who was then ruler of the Hapsburg [!!] Duchy of Lower and Inner Austria and may have been the Holy Roman Emperor,*** signed the Treaty of Vienna, ending the Bohemian phase of the Thirty Years War**** and strengthening Ferdinand’s position the Hungary. This may feel like an obscure event from the perspective of those of us whose history classes focused on American history, but was actually a big deal.

On a smaller scale:

Frans Hals painted The Laughing Cavalier. (An occasional image helps me place things in history. Also, a painting I’ve always loved.  )

English mathematician William Oughtred invited the slide rule, building on John Napier’s invention of logarithms and Edmund Gunter invention of logarthmic scales.

Unlikely as it sounds, the first successful submarine, designed by Dutch inventor Cornelius Drebbel was publicly tested in London on the Thames before an audience of thousands, including King James. The submarine was built on a wooden frame covered with leathered and powered by oars. It submerged for three hours and traveled from Westminster to Greenwich and back—six nautical miles each way. King James took a test dive, but the British Royal Navy wasn’t interested in exploring the technology further.

*The USSR was formed. King Tut’s tomb was opened. Hyperinflation made life difficult in Weimar Germany. It became legal for women to wear trousers in the United States. Etc, etc, etc.

**Also, and originally, James VI of Scotland.

***Untangling the Hapsburg dynasty and its march to what became the Austro-Hungarian Empire is complicated. I definitely don’t have a handle on it.

** Here’s the short version: Reformation vs Counter-Reformation. Here’s a slightly longer version: The Third Year’s War was actually a series of wars, in which Protestant and Catholic princes battled for control of the Holy Roman Empire. The conflict began when the Protestants of Bohemia rebelled against Emperor Ferdinand II, but soon spread throughout the empire and included most of the European powers at one point or another.