1700
Death of Charles II of Spain
The last Habsburg king of Spain died childless in Madrid, his body so disfigured by inbreeding that courtiers whispered of curses. His will bequeathed the empire to a French Bourbon prince. Europe's chancelleries read the parchment and reached, almost in unison, for their swords. The War of the Spanish Succession that followed would consume the continent for thirteen years.
Forty-Seven Rōnin Incident Begins
In Edo Castle, Lord Asano Naganori drew his sword on the court official Kira Yoshinaka for a perceived insult and was ordered to commit seppuku the same day. His forty-seven retainers, now masterless rōnin, spent the next year planning their revenge. The affair would become Japan's defining parable of loyalty, honor, and law in collision.
Asante Confederacy Consolidates
In the forests of present-day Ghana, Osei Tutu and the priest Okomfo Anokye bound the Akan clans beneath the Golden Stool, which they claimed had descended from the sky. Gold, kola, and slaves flowed through Kumasi. A new African power had taken shape in firelight and ritual. Within a generation, the Asante would dominate trade across the entire Gold Coast hinterland.
Great Northern War Begins
A coalition of Denmark, Saxony, and Russia struck at Sweden's Baltic empire, expecting easy spoils from the teenage Charles XII. The boy-king proved to be a comet. For twenty-one years his armies would blaze across northern Europe before burning out on a Norwegian rampart. The war would end Sweden's brief age as a great power and lift Russia permanently into Europe's councils.
Battle of Narva
Charles XII, just eighteen, marched eight thousand Swedes through a November blizzard and fell upon Peter the Great's army of forty thousand. In two hours the Russians broke. Peter, humiliated, rode home to rebuild an army from iron and will. Charles thought the war already won. It was the miscalculation on which the balance of northern Europe would turn.
Russia Adopts the Julian Calendar
Peter the Great decreed that Russia would count years from the birth of Christ rather than the creation of the world, and begin them in January rather than September. Boyars grumbled; the tsar enforced it with the knout. Muscovy was being dragged, protesting, into Europe's timestream. The old Russian year 7208 became, overnight, a more manageable 1700.
Ethiopia's Gondarine Peak
By the final year of the century, the Ethiopian emperor Iyasu I had rebuilt Gondar as the great stone capital of a Christian highland kingdom, with painted churches, royal libraries, and a cosmopolitan court welcoming Indian ambassadors and European craftsmen. Africa's oldest Christian monarchy was flourishing in its mountain fastness.