THE WORLD ATLAS

Chapter · Early Modern Period

Crisis and New Dynasties

The world in 1650

The mid-17th century was an age of war, rebellion and cold weather, often called the General Crisis. In China the Ming dynasty had fallen in 1644 and the Manchu Qing were conquering the country, while Ming loyalists fought on in the south.

Europe had just ended the Thirty Years' War with the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which confirmed the independence of the Dutch Republic and Switzerland and left Germany devastated. England had beheaded King Charles I in 1649 and become a republic under Parliament and Oliver Cromwell. France was torn by the Fronde revolts during the boyhood of Louis XIV. The Dutch were now the world's leading traders, running a spice empire from Batavia on Java. Russia had reached the Pacific, and the Mughal Empire under Shah Jahan was at its most magnificent, with the Taj Mahal nearing completion. Across the Atlantic, enslaved Africans were being shipped in growing numbers to Caribbean and Brazilian sugar plantations.

Open the map in 1650

The great powers

Region by region

Southern Africa

Queen Nzinga ruled the kingdom of Ndongo-Matamba and had resisted the Portuguese for decades, allying with the Dutch, who held Luanda from 1641 until Portugal retook it in 1648. Kongo under Garcia II was a strong but troubled Christian kingdom. Portugal dominated the Mutapa state and held Mozambique, and the Dutch East India Company would found Cape Town in 1652. Inland, the Luba and Lunda kingdoms were expanding.

Northern Africa

Morocco was fragmented after the decline of the Saadis, with the Dila'i religious lodge controlling Fez and the Alaouite family rising in the Tafilalt. The Ottomans held Egypt and the regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, which lived largely by corsair raiding. Kanem-Bornu, the Hausa states and Oyo were strong in the west, the Funj ruled Sennar, and Emperor Fasilides ruled Ethiopia from his new capital Gondar after expelling the Jesuits.

Europe

After the Peace of Westphalia, Emperor Ferdinand III's Holy Roman Empire was a loose union of hundreds of states, while Queen Christina's Sweden held much of the Baltic coast. England was a republic ruled by the Rump Parliament and Cromwell, who was crushing Ireland and invading Scotland. France was ruled by young Louis XIV and Cardinal Mazarin, Philip IV's Spain was in decline after Portugal regained independence in 1640 under Joao IV, and Poland-Lithuania under John II Casimir faced the great Cossack revolt of Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Tsar Alexis ruled Russia.

Middle East & South Asia

The Ottoman Empire, under the child sultan Mehmed IV, was troubled by palace intrigue and a long war with Venice over Crete. Shah Abbas II ruled Safavid Iran and recaptured Kandahar from the Mughals in 1649. Shah Jahan's Mughal Empire ruled most of the subcontinent from his new city of Shahjahanabad (Delhi), though Bijapur and Golconda remained independent in the Deccan. In 1650 the Omani imam Sultan bin Saif drove the Portuguese out of Muscat, and the Dutch were taking Portugal's forts in Ceylon.

Northern & Central Asia

Russian explorers had crossed all of Siberia, founding Okhotsk on the Pacific coast in 1647; Semyon Dezhnev sailed round Asia's north-eastern tip in 1648 and Yerofey Khabarov was campaigning along the Amur. The Dzungar (Oirat) confederation was rising in the east, the Kazakh Khanate under Zhangir Khan held the central steppe, Kalmyks had moved onto the lower Volga, and Janid khans ruled Bukhara while the historian-khan Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur ruled Khiva.

East Asia

The Qing dynasty, ruling from Beijing under the boy Shunzhi Emperor and his regent Dorgon, controlled most of northern and central China, while Southern Ming claimants and the sea lord Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga) held parts of the south. Korea's King Hyojong, once a hostage of the Manchus, ruled Joseon. In Japan the shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu had closed the country to most foreign contact, allowing only Dutch and Chinese traders at Nagasaki. The Fifth Dalai Lama, backed by the Mongol Gushi Khan, now ruled Tibet.

Southeast Asia

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) ruled Batavia and the Moluccas, had taken Malacca from Portugal in 1641 and held a colony on Taiwan. Mataram under Amangkurat I was the main kingdom on Java, Aceh was ruled by Sultana Taj ul-Alam, and Makassar was a rising trading power. Ayutthaya under King Prasat Thong and the Toungoo kingdom of Burma were the main mainland states, while the Trinh and Nguyen lords fought over Vietnam and Spain ruled the Philippines.

Northern North America

New France had small settlements at Quebec, Trois-Rivieres and Montreal, built on the fur trade with Indigenous allies. In 1649 the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) destroyed the Wendat (Huron) confederacy, France's main trading partners. Newfoundland had seasonal English and French fishing stations. Most of the north, from Labrador to Alaska, belonged to Cree, Innu, Dene, Inuit and other nations.

Southern North America

England had colonies in Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts Bay and other New England settlements, and on Barbados and other Caribbean islands; the Dutch held New Netherland around New Amsterdam under Peter Stuyvesant. Spain ruled New Spain, Florida, Cuba and Hispaniola. Elsewhere, powerful Indigenous nations such as the Haudenosaunee, Creek, Apache and Pueblo peoples held most of the continent.

Northern South America

Spain's Viceroyalty of Peru ruled the Andes and Pacific coast from Lima. Portuguese settlers in Brazil were fighting to expel the Dutch, who had held the sugar-rich north-east around Recife since 1630 and would be driven out in 1654. Dutch, English and French settlers clung to the Guiana coast. Brazilian slave-raiding bands, the bandeirantes, pushed deep into the interior.

Southern Cone

Spain held central Chile, Paraguay and the Rio de la Plata, but the Mapuche kept their independence south of the Biobio River, recognised at the Parliament of Quilin in 1641. Jesuit missions organised tens of thousands of Guarani in the reductions of Paraguay, defending them against bandeirante raiders. The pampas and Patagonia remained Indigenous lands.

Australasia & Oceania

Dutch navigators had charted the western and northern coasts of Australia, calling it New Holland, and in 1642 Abel Tasman reached Tasmania and New Zealand, where Maori warriors repelled his landing. No Europeans had settled. Aboriginal nations, Papuan peoples, Maori iwi and Pacific islanders such as the Tongans and Hawaiians lived as before.

Events

  1. The Thirty Years' War begins in Bohemia
  2. The Dutch East India Company founds Batavia on Java
  3. The Dutch capture Malacca from Portugal
  4. Beijing falls to rebels and then the Manchus; the Qing dynasty takes power
  5. Peace of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years' War; Khmelnytsky's Cossack revolt begins
  6. Charles I of England is executed; the Iroquois destroy the Huron confederacy
  7. Oman expels the Portuguese from Muscat

Moments of this period

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Sources