1701
Grand Alliance of The Hague
England, the Dutch Republic, and the Holy Roman Empire signed a pact to prevent Bourbon dominion over Spain and its colonies. William III, dying of consumption, bequeathed the coalition to Marlborough. The War of the Spanish Succession would consume a decade and redraw the map of Europe. It was the largest alliance the continent had assembled since the wars against Louis XIV began.
Yale College Founded
Ten Congregationalist ministers met in Branford, Connecticut, each laying a book on the table with the words, I give these books for the founding of a college in this colony. The small library would become Yale. Puritan New England was quietly seeding its own Republic of Letters. Within a century it would rival Harvard and train divines, lawyers, and revolutionaries alike.
Kaempfer's Amoenitates Exoticae
Engelbert Kaempfer, a German physician who had spent two years at the Dutch trading post on Deshima, published his observations on Japan in Lemgo. The book contained the first accurate Western account of Tokugawa society, a description of acupuncture, and a word he invented from the Japanese cha: tea. Europe began to imagine Japan.
Frederick I Crowns Himself in Prussia
In frost-bitten Konigsberg, the Elector of Brandenburg lifted a crown from a cushion and placed it on his own head, then another on his wife. The Holy Roman Emperor had grudgingly agreed: Brandenburg could now call itself a kingdom. A small, sandy, ambitious state had become Prussia. Its army would, within two generations under his grandson Frederick the Great, terrify Europe.
Jethro Tull's Seed Drill
A dyspeptic English barrister-turned-farmer, tired of watching laborers scatter seed with their feet, built a machine that sowed in neat rows at measured depth. Tull's drill was mocked by his neighbors and ignored for decades. It would eventually remake European agriculture. By reducing seed waste and enabling horse-drawn hoeing between rows, the device helped launch the British Agricultural Revolution that fed the Industrial one.
Cadillac Founds Detroit
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, a Gascon adventurer with a forged noble title, canoed down the river between two lakes and raised a stockade on the north bank. He named it for his patron, the Comte de Pontchartrain. A fur-trading post was born where Michigan would one day build cars.