1700s (decade)

The 1700s decade ran from January 1, 1700, to December 31, 1709.

The decade is marked by a shift in the political structure of the Indian subcontinent, and the decline of the Mughal Empire.

Events

1700

January–March

April–June

  • April 15 – The coronation of King Frederick IV of Denmark takes place at Frederiksborg Castle in Copenhagen.
  • April 18 – Hungarian freedom activist Ferenc Rákóczi is arrested by Austrian authorities and charged with sedition. Imprisoned near Vienna and facing a death sentence, he escapes and later leads the overthrow of the Habsburg control of Hungary.
  • April 21 – In India, the siege of the fortress of Sajjangad (located in the Maharashtra state) is begun by an army led by Fateullahakhan. The fortress falls on June 6.
  • April – Fire destroys many buildings in Gondar, the capital of Ethiopia, including two in the palace complex.
  • May 5 – Within a few days of poet John Dryden's death in London (May 1 O.S.), his last written work (The Secular Masque) is performed as part of Vanbrugh's version of The Pilgrim.
  • May – In Rhode Island (American colony), Walter Clarke, three-term former Governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, is elected deputy governor for the second time, serving under his brother-in-law Samuel Cranston.
  • June 8 (May 28 O.S.) – The legislature for the Province of Massachusetts Bay (the modern-day Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States) passes into law "An Act against Jesuits & Popish Priests" making a finding that Roman Catholic clerics have attempted to incite American Indians into a rebellion against the Crown, and declaring "That all and every Jesuit, Seminary Priest, Missionary, or other Spiritual or Ecclesiastical Person made or ordained by any Authority, Power or Jurisdiction derived, challenged or pretended from the Pope or See of Rome, now residing within this Province or any part thereof, shall depart from and out of the same, at or before the tenth day of September next, in this present year, One Thousand and Seven Hundred." The Province of New York enacts similar legislation later in the year.

July–September

October–December

Date unknown

1701

January–June

April–June

July–September

October–December

Date unknown

  • English agriculturalist Jethro Tull invents a drill for planting seeds in rows.
  • The Philharmonic Society (Academia Philharmonicorum) is established in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

1702

January–March

April–June

July–September

October–December

Date unknown

  • The travel diary Oku no Hosomichi ("Narrow road to the deep north"), a major work of haibun by the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō and one of the major texts of Japanese literature of the Edo period, is published eight years after Bashō's death.
  • The Delaware Colony legislature is separated from that of Pennsylvania.
  • Richard Bentley at Cambridge in England introduces the first written (as opposed to oral) competitive examinations in a Western university.

1703

January–March

April–June

July–September

October–December

Date unknown

1704

January–March

April–June

July–September

October–December

Date unknown

1705

January–March

April–June

July–September

October–December

Date unknown

  • Construction begins on Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire designed by John Vanbrugh for the Duke of Marlborough and partly funded by the Crown. It is completed in 1724.
  • Taichung City, Taiwan is founded as the village of Dadun.
  • Edmond Halley publicly predicts the periodicity of Halley's Comet and computes its expected path of return in 1758.
  • With the interest paid from daimyō loans, the Konoike buy a tract of ponds and swampland, turn the land into rice paddies, and settle 480 households numbering perhaps 2,880 peasants on the land.
  • The Shogunate confiscates the property of a merchant in Osaka "for conduct unbecoming a member of the commercial class". The government seizes 50 pairs of gold screens, 360 carpets, several mansions, 48 granaries and warehouses scattered around the country, and hundreds of thousands of gold pieces.

1706

January–March

April–June

July–September

October–December

1707

January–March

April–June

July– September

October– December

Date unknown

1708

January–June

July–December

Date unknown

1709

January–March

April–June

July–December

Date unknown

Births

1700

1701

1702

1703

1704

1705

1706

1707

1708

1709

Deaths

1700

1701

1702

1703

  • date unknownAnastasiya Dabizha, princess of Moldavia and Wallachia and Hetmana of Ukraine.

1704

1705

1706

1707

1708

1709