1450 – 1750 European Timeline 1503 Leonardo da Vinci’s ...

1450 – 1750 European Timeline 1503 Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa

1452 Habsburg German Frederick III 1509 Switzerland: John Calvin leads
made Holy Roman Emperor 1510 Reformation at Geneva

1453 French victory at Castillon ends India: Portuguese colony at Goa
Hundred Years’ War
1510 Polish astronomer Copernicus
1453 Ottoman conquest of Constantinople 1511 theorizes that Earth revolves around
(now Istanbul) ends Byzantine the sun
Empire
Ferdinand V and Henry VIII join anti-
1455 Gutenberg Bible printed French “Holy League”

1455 England: Wars of the Roses 1511 Erasmus writes In Praise of Folly

1460 Italy: Production of clear glass 1512 Michelangelo completes painting
1462 perfected 1513 ceiling of Sistine Chapel
1514
Ivan III (“the Great”) ends Russian Italy: Niccolò Machiavelli writes
tribute to Golden Horde The Prince

1463 Portuguese capture coastal cities in Ottoman Turks invade Persia
West Africa
1515 Spain: St. Teresa of Ávila

1469 Lorenzo Medici (“the Magnificent”) 1516 Habsburgs win control of Spain
rules Florence through marriage

1477 French under Louis XI and Swiss 1516 England: Sir Thomas More’s Utopia
1477 defeat Charles the Bold at Battle of
Nancy 1517 Selling of indulgences under Pope
1517 Leo X
Spain: Inquisition renewed 1518
1519 Luther’s 95 Theses begin the
1478 Ivan the Great conquers Novgorod 1521 Reformation

1480 Italian inventor and artist Leonardo Hernán Cortés begins conquest of
da Vinci Aztecs

1485 Henry VII begins Tudor dynasty Charles V elected Holy Roman
Emperor
1492 Ferdinand V and Isabella defeat
Moors, unite Spain Ottoman Turks under Suleiman the
Magnificent invade Europe, take
1492 Christopher Columbus reaches Belgrade
1498 North America…
1499 1521 Charles V condemns Luther at Diet
Vasco de Gama reaches Calicut, of Worms
India
1529 Ottoman Turks capture Algeria
Louis XII captures Milan
1529 English Reformation Parliament
1501 First African slaves in West Indies severs ties with Church of Rome

1501 French conquer Naples, begins 1529 Protestant rebellions in Germany,
expansion in northern Italy Switzerland

1531 Francisco Pizarro begins conquest 1577 Dutch painter Peter Paul Rubens
of Incas
1580 France: Michel de Montaigne’s first
1534 Society of Jesus (Jesuits) founded 1582 essays
1584
1535 Sir Thomas More executed in Gregorian calendar introduced
1536 England under Pope Gregory XIII
1541
John Calvin leads reformation at Dutch William of Orange murdered
Geneva, sets up Calvinist
government 1588 English defeat Spanish Armada
Spanish painter El Greco

1545 Council of Trent reforms Catholicism 1589 France: Bourbon dynasty begins
1596 with ascension of Henry IV
1547 Russia: Ivan IV (“the Terrible”) 1598
1549 becomes tsar Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie
Queen
England: Cranmer’s Book of
Common Prayer set to music Edict of Nantes orders toleration of
French Huguenots

1550 Portuguese establish colonies in 1598 Globe Theatre built in London;
Brazil 1600 Shakespeare’s Hamlet

1553 England: Protestants persecuted English and Dutch form East India
under Queen Mary companies, begin battling Portugal
for colonial holdings

1553 England: William Shakespeare 1600 Portuguese, French, and Dutch
establish African colonies

1555 Germany: Peace of Augsburg 1603 England: Queen Elizabeth I dies;
establishes religious freedom 1605 James I begins Stuart dynasty
Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote
1558 Elizabeth I becomes queen of
1559 England 1606 Dutch artist Rembrandt von Rijn

Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis ends 1607 English form colony at Jamestown,
Italian wars between Spain and Virginia
France
1609 Spanish and Dutch commence 12-
1560 John Knox founds Presbyterian year truce
Church
1610 France: Henry IV assassinated,
1562 Religious wars in France follow Louis XIII made king
1564 murder of Huguenots
Galileo Galilei 1611 King James Bible

1571 Turks defeated at Battle of Lepanto

1572 France: St. Bartholomew’s Day 1613 Poles expelled from Russia;
massacre Romanov dynasty begins

1572 English poet John Donne 1618 Defenestration of Prague begins
Thirty Years’ War
1575 Baroque period begins
1619 Germany: Johannes Kepler
develops laws of planetary motion

1620 Mayflower Compact in
Massachusetts

1621 First modern army under Gustavus 1664 Racine and Molière publish in
II of Sweden 1665 France
1665
1623 French scientist Blaise Pascal 1667 Royal observatories constructed in
Paris and Greenwich
1628 French under Cardinal Richelieu
repress Huguenot rebellion England: Isaac Newton develops
law of gravity
1628 England: William Harvey describes
1632 circulation of blood John Milton’s Paradise Lost
English philosopher John Locke
1672 French invade Netherlands

1634 Taj Mahal completed in India 1673 Marquette and Joliet explore Upper
Mississippi
1635 France enters Thirty Years’ War with
1637 Sweden, against Spain 1677 Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics published
1638 René Descartes proposes analytical
geometry 1682 French claim Louisiana territory
Japan closes itself to foreigners
1685 Louis XIV revokes Edict of Nantes

1640 Frederick William takes power in 1685 German composer Johann
Prussia 1685 Sebastian Bach
1686
1643 French found Montreal German-born G. F. Handel
composes in England
1646 German philosopher Gottfried
1648 Leibniz French claim Madagascar
1649
1651 Thirty Years’ War ends with Treaty 1686 League of Augsburg wars against
of Westphalia 1688 France
Dutch Protestant William of Orange
England: Charles I killed, 1688 becomes William I of England in
commonwealth established Glorious Revolution

Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan British poet Alexander Pope

1652 Society of Friends ( Quakers) 1689 Russia: Peter the Great becomes
1653 founded sole ruler
1659
1660 Oliver Cromwell is Lord Protector of 1689 English Bill of Rights
1661 England
1689 Toleration Act in England
French and Spanish sign Peace of
Pyrenees 1690 India: Height of Mughal Empire

Charles II reestablishes English 1692 Witchcraft trials in Salem,
monarchy 1700 Massachusetts
English colony at Bombay 1700
Great Northern War begins; Swedes
1662 Royal Society of London founded defeat Russians

1664 English take New Amsterdam, Charles II dies, ending Habsburg
rename it New York rule of Spain; Bourbon dynasty
begins

1701 Frederick III crowned Frederick I of 1733 Englishman John Kay invents flying
Prussia shuttle loom

1701 War of Spanish Succession begins 1733 War of Polish Succession; Russian
invasion of Poland
1701 England: Jethro Tull invents seed
1703 drill 1735 Russia and Persia defeat Turks at
1707 Baghavand
1709 Russia: St. Petersburg established;
1710 becomes capital in 1713 1735 Sweden: Carl Linnaeus develops
1714 system of taxonomic classification
1714 England and Scotland united as
1715 Great Britain 1738 Treaty of Vienna

England: Process of producing iron 1739 David Hume’s Treatise on Human
in blast furnace 1740 Nature
1740
George Berkeley’s Principles of 1740 Frederick the Great becomes king of
Human Knowledge Prussia

Treaty of Utrecht ends War of Processes of casting and
Spanish Succession galvanizing steel advanced

Germany: Fahrenheit uses mercury War of Austrian Succession
to create thermometer
1744 America: British and French fight
Louis XV becomes king of France King George’s War

1715 France: Rococo architecture 1746 Franciso Goya, Spanish artist

1718 French establish New Orleans 1749 Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones

1718 Spain takes Texas 1750 Robert Clive leads British conquest
1750 of southern India
1720 London: Failure of South Seas
1721 company Beginning of the Industrial
Revolution
Russians under Peter the Great win
Great Northern War

1721 Boston: First smallpox inoculations

1721 Britain: Robert Walpole serves as
first prime minister

1725 Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons
concertos

1726 Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels

1727 George II takes British throne

1730 Bering Strait mapped and named

1730 Rise of Persians under nadirs Kuli
and Shah; capture of Afghanistan
and Delhi