1684 CE

Francisco de Távora, the Viceroy of Portuguese India, a small colony located in southwestern India at Goa, issues an order prohibiting indigenous residents from speaking their native language, Konkani, and directs them to learn Portuguese within the next three years. René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle sails again from France, with a large expedition designed to establish a French colony on the Gulf of Mexico, at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Morean War: The Republic of Venice captures the fortress town of Preveza from the Ottoman Empire.

In the 1680s, the 17th century.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • February 7 – Morocco retakes control of the city of Tangier from England, which had controlled the North African port since 1661. During the five months prior to evacuation of the English from the city, the Governor, Lord Dartmouth had ordered the destruction of the wall around the city, its fortifications and port facilities that had been built by the English during the occupation.source
  • February 8 – Prince Dumitrașcu Cantacuzino returns to the throne of the principality of Moldavia for a third reign but is overthrown 14 months later on June 25. In 1859, Moldavia will unite with neighboring Wallachia to form the Kingdom of Romania.source
  • June 27 – Francisco de Távora, the Viceroy of Portuguese India, a small colony located in southwestern India at Goa, issues an order prohibiting indigenous residents from speaking their native language, Konkani, and directs them to learn Portuguese within the next three years.source
  • 15 August – Signing of the Truce of RatisbonFrancesource
  • December 17 – The Tibet–Ladakh–Mughal War, which had been going on since 1679, ends with the signing of the Treaty at Tingmosgang between the 5th Dalai Lama (Desi Sangye Gyatso) and King Delek Namgyal of Ladakh. The Ladakh kingdom agrees to not invite foreign armies into the area (now part of the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir) in return for a respect for its sovereignty.source

Conflict & Security

  • April 25 – The Morean War begins as the Republic of Venice declares war on the Ottoman Empire for control of the Peloponnese area of Greece, a peninsula which includes Corinth and Sparta and has been referred to by the Ottomans as Morea.source
  • May 18 – The French Navy begins a 10-day bombardment of the Italian city of Genoa in the course of the War of the Reunions between France and the Republic of Genoa. During the fight, the French fleet, commanded by Abraham Duquesne, fires almost 13,000 cannonballs, pausing only during a cease-fire on May 21 and May 22, and uses the new technology of explosive bombs. When the bombardment ends on May 28, two-thirds of the city has been destroyed or damaged.source
  • June 7 – After a siege of six weeks that began on April 27, Luxembourg City is taken by the French Army from control by Spain, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, previously part of the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium) is acquired by France.source
  • July 21–August 6 – Morean War: Siege of Santa Maura – The Republic of Venice captures the Ottoman island fortress of Santa Maura.source
  • August 15 – France under Louis XIV makes the Truce of Ratisbon separately with the Holy Roman Empire (Habsburg) and Spain.source
  • September 21 – Morean War: The Republic of Venice captures the fortress town of Preveza from the Ottoman Empire.source

Exploration & Expansion

  • February 24 – A treaty is signed between European German colonists in Brandenburg-Prussia, and the African chiefs in what is now Ghana to permit the German colonists to build a second fort on the Brandenburger Gold Coast, and the fortress of Dorotheenschanze is built. The area is now the Ghanaian city of Akwida.source
  • July 24 – René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle sails again from France, with a large expedition designed to establish a French colony on the Gulf of Mexico, at the mouth of the Mississippi River.source
  • The British East India Company receives Chinese permission to build a trading station at Canton. Tea sells in Europe for less than a shilling a pound, but the import duty of 5 shillings makes it too expensive for most English people to afford; hence smuggled tea is drunk much more than legally imported tea.source
  • The first mention of chili peppers in local gazettes in Hunan. They would later become a staple of Hunanese cuisine.Chinasource
  • The Kangxi Emperor lifts the haijin prohibition on sea trade, allowing foreigners to enter Chinese ports in 1684Chinasource

Religion & Belief

  • January 5 – King Charles II of England gives the title Duke of St Albans to Charles Beauclerk, his illegitimate son by Nell Gwyn.source
  • 5 January – Charles II gives the title Duke of St Albans to Charles Beauclerk, his illegitimate son by Nell Gwyn.Englandsource
  • February 18 – "Court of grace" appointed to enquire into tithes on land.Irelandsource
  • March 5 – Pope Innocent XI forms a Holy League with the Habsburg Empire, Venice and Poland, to end Ottoman Turkish rule in Europe.source
  • November 8 – James Renwick, a Scottish minister and one of the "Covenanters" challenging the attempt by Kings James VI and Charles I to take over churches in Scotland, posts his "Apologetical Declaration" on church doors and market crosses in and around Cambusnethan, Lanarkshire.source

Economy & Finance

  • The amount of copper in the alloys if cash coins was reduced from 70% to 60% all while the standard weight was lowered to 1 qián again, while the central government's mints in Beijing started producing cash coins with a weight of 0.7 qián.Chinasource
  • The regiment which becomes the Royal Irish Regiment is formed from independent companies by Arthur Forbes, Viscount Granard (who is elevated to Earl of Granard this year).Irelandsource

Technology & Infrastructure

  • January 15 (January 5 O.S.) – To demonstrate that the River Thames, frozen solid during the Great Frost that started in December, is safe to walk upon, "a Coach and six horses drove over the Thames for a wager" and within three days "whole streets of Booths are built on the Thames and thousands of people are continually walking thereon." Sir Richard Newdigate, 2nd Baronet, records the events in his diary.source
  • February 15 (February 5 O.S.) – The Great Frost in Britain, during which the River Thames was frozen in London and the sea as far as 2 mi out from land and which started the previous December, ends as the Thames begins to thaw. William Maitland later writes that the Frost, which started in December 1683, "congealed the river Thames to that degree that another city, as it were, was erected thereon; where by the great number of streets and shops, with their rich furniture, it represented a great fair, with a variety of carriages, and diversions of all sorts." During the freeze, there had been great loss of beast and of wildlife, especially birds, and similar reports from across Northern Europe. The Chipperfield's Circus dynasty began during the freeze, with James Chipperfield introducing performing animals to the country at the Frost Fair on the Thames in London.source
  • The East India Company receives Chinese permission to build a trading station at Canton.Englandsource
  • The Canal de l'Eure with its notable aqueduct, designed by the military engineer Lieutenant Général Vauban to serve Versailles for Louis XIV, is begun; work is abandoned about 1690Francesource
  • Jeremiah O'Donovan's landownings in County Cork are erected by royal letters patent into the Manor of the Leap.Irelandsource

Science & Discovery

  • January – Edmond Halley, Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke have a conversation in which Hooke later claimed not only to have derived the inverse-square law, but also all the laws of planetary motion attributed to Sir Isaac Newton. Hooke's claim is that in a letter to Newton on 6 January 1680, he first stated the inverse-square law.source
  • March 19 – In Japan, the Tenna era ends on the 21st day of the 2nd month of the Chinese calendar of the 4th year of the Tenna era and the Jōkyō era begins as Japan's royal astronomer, Shibukawa Shunkai institutes the Jōkyō calendar to replace Chinese calendar which had been used in Japan since 859 AD, after calculating that the length of the solar year is 365.2417 days.source
  • August – Edmond Halley goes to Cambridge to discuss the problem of planetary motion with Isaac Newton.source
  • December 10 – Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley.source
  • 10 December – Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmund Halley.Englandsource
  • Robert Hooke invents the semaphore line.Englandsource

Health & Medicine

  • March 25 – Royal Hospital Kilmainham is completed in Dublin as a home for retired soldiers, to the design of Sir William Robinson.Irelandsource

Crime & Justice

  • January 26 – Marcantonio Giustinian is elected Doge of Venice.source
  • 15 March – highwayman John Nevison hanged in York for murder.Englandsource
  • 10 May – Titus Oates arrested for perjury.Englandsource
  • November 19 – Richard Keigwin, who had arrested the East India Company's Governor of Bombay in 1683, Josiah Child and had taken over as the unauthorized administrator of Bombay, turns control back to the company and its envoy, Sir Thomas Grantham, receiving a general pardon.source
  • Gustav Wilhelm von Wedel received the title of Count of Wedel-Jarlsberg.Norwaysource

Disasters & Accidents

  • 31 July – the village of Churchill, Oxfordshire, is largely destroyed by fire.Englandsource
  • The religious process against the visionary Eva Margareta Frölich in Stockholm.Swedensource

Climate & Environment

  • January–March – England has its coldest winter in living memory; the River Thames and the sea as far as 2 miles out from land freezes over. The Chipperfield's Circus dynasty begins when James Chipperfield introduces performing animals to England at the Frost Fair on the Thames in London.Englandsource

Culture & Society

  • January 5 – The earliest form of what is now the University of Tokyo (formally chartered in 1877), the Tenmongata, is established in Japan.source
  • August 15 – Louis XIV decrees the foundation of the Maison royale de Saint-Louis, a boarding school for girls at Saint-Cyr, at the urging of Madame de Maintenon.source
  • Japanese poet Ihara Saikaku composes 23,500 verses in 24 hours at the Sumiyoshi-taisha (shrine) at Osaka; the scribes cannot keep pace with his dictation and just count the verses.source
  • John Bunyan publishes the second part of The Pilgrim's Progress.source
  • John Bunyan writes the second part of The Pilgrim's ProgressEnglandsource
  • The Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, designed by Jules Hardouin Mansart, is completedFrancesource
  • The Château de Marly in the Marly-le-Roi commune is completed for Louis XIVFrancesource
  • Historian Ruaidhrí Ó Flaithbheartaigh (Roderic O'Flaherty) compiles his Chorographical description of West or Iar Connacht for William Molyneux.Irelandsource

Births

  • 23 January – Christian Rantzau, Governor-general of Norway (died 1771)Denmarksource
  • January 24 – Charles Alexander, Duke of Württemberg, regent of the Kingdom of Serbia (1720–1733) (died 1737)source
  • March 22 – William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath, English noble (died 1764)source
  • March 22 – Matthias Bel, Hungarian pastor, polymath (died 1749)source
  • April 15 – Catherine I of Russia, empress consort (died 1727)source
  • May 31 – Timothy Cutler, American Episcopal clergyman, rector of Yale College (died 1765)source
  • August 24 – Sir Robert Munro, 6th Baronet, British politician (died 1746)source
  • September 22 – Charles Louis Auguste Fouquet, duc de Belle-Isle, French general and statesman (died 1761)source
  • October 10 – Jean-Antoine Watteau, French painter (died 1721)source
  • November 11 – Algernon Seymour, 7th Duke of Somerset, English noble (died 1750)source
  • November 12 – Edward Vernon, English admiral (died 1757)source
  • 12 November – Edward Vernon, admiral (died 1757)Englandsource
  • November 16 – Allen Bathurst, 1st Earl Bathurst, English noble (died 1775)source
  • December 3 – Ludvig Holberg, Norwegian historian and writer (died 1754)source
  • 3 December (Julian calendar) – Ludvig Holberg, philosopher, historian, essayist and playwright (died 1754).Norwaysource
  • December 15 – James Jurin, British mathematician, doctor (died 1750)source
  • December 21 – Ippolito Desideri, Italian Tibetologist (died 1733)source
  • Brigitta Scherzenfeldt, memoirist and weaving teacher who was captured during the Great Northern War and lived as a slave in the Dzungar Khanate in Central Asia (died 1736).Swedensource

Deaths

  • January 13 – Henry Howard, 6th Duke of Norfolk, English noble (born 1628)source
  • January 21 – Queen Myeongseong, Korean royal consort (born 1642)source
  • March 24 – Pieter de Hooch, Dutch painter (born 1629)source
  • 1 April – Roger Williams, theologian and colonist (born 1603)Englandsource
  • April 5 – Lord William Brouncker, English mathematician (born 1602)source
  • April 12 – Nicola Amati, Cremonese violin-maker (born 1596)source
  • May 4 – John Nevison, English highwayman (hanged) (born 1639)source
  • May 12 – Edme Mariotte, French physicist and priest (born c. 1620)source
  • July 26 – Elena Cornaro Piscopia, Venetian philosopher of noble descent (born 1646)source
  • August 8 – George Booth, 1st Baron Delamer, English royalist politician, soldier and landowner (born 1622)source
  • October 1 – Pierre Corneille, French playwright (born 1606)source
  • October 7 – Japanese Chief Minister Hotta Masatoshi is assassinated, leaving Shōgun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi without any adequate advisors, leading him to issue impractical edicts and create hardships for the Japanese people.source
  • October 11 – James Tuchet, 3rd Earl of Castlehaven, Anglo-Irish noble and soldier (born c. 1617)source
  • October 15 – Géraud de Cordemoy, French historian, philosopher and lawyer (born 1626)source
  • October 25 – Dud Dudley, English ironmaster (born 1600?)source
  • 31 December – Hans Rostgaard, administrator (born 1625)Denmarksource
  • Yinju (胤䄔; 13 September 1683 – 17 July 1684), 19th son of Kangxi, born through an unnamed Noble Lady, of the Gorolo clan (貴人 郭絡羅氏)Chinasource
  • Pierre Corneille, playwright (born 1606)Francesource