The 1640s

1640 CE51 entries

• February 9 – Ibrahim I succeeds his brother Murad IV (r. 1623–1640) as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire; he will rule until his death in 1648.
• March 8–13 – Siege of Galle: Dutch troops take the strategic fortress at Galle, Sri Lanka from the Portuguese.
• April 13 – The Short Parliament assembles, as King Charles I of England attempts to fund the second of the Bishops' Wars.

1641 CE76 entries

• January 14 – The Battle of Malacca concludes with the Dutch East India Company ending Portuguese control of Malacca.
• June 2 – Bavarian and Spanish troops capture the town of Bad Kreuznach during the Thirty Years' War, 17 months after it had been taken in a French and Saxon attack.
• October 23 – Irish Rebellion of 1641 breaks out: Irish Catholic gentry, chiefly in Ulster, revolt against the English administration and Scottish settlers in Ireland.

1642 CE75 entries

• February 23–March 11 – Henrietta Maria, queen consort of England, and her eldest daughter Mary, newly created Princess Royal, leave Falmouth, Cornwall, to go into exile at the Dutch court in The Hague.
• May 1 – Honours and titles granted by Charles I of England from this date onward will in 1646 be retrospectively annulled by Parliament.
• October 24 – The first Confederate Assembly of Ireland is held in Kilkenny where it sets up a provisional government, largely Catholic Royalist; start of the Irish Confederate Wars.

1643 CE60 entries

• March 13 – First English Civil War: First Battle of Middlewich – Roundheads (Parliamentarians) rout the Cavaliers (Royalist supporters of King Charles I) at Middlewich in Cheshire.
• July 1 – The Westminster Assembly of theologians ("divines") and parliamentarians is convened at Westminster Abbey with the aim of restructuring the Church of England.
• October 28 – Dutch expedition to Valdivia: The Dutch end their occupation of Valdivia in Chile.

1644 CE62 entries

1645 CE67 entries

• April 10 – Because of the plague, the Edinburgh town council orders that the college graduation ceremony should be moved forward, so that students can leave the city (on November 19, teaching resumes in Linlithgow).
• July 21 – Qing dynasty regent Dorgon issues a queue order ordering all Han Chinese men to shave their forehead, and braid the rest of their hair into a queue, identical to those of the Manchus.
• November 20 – The Colegio de Santo Tomas is elevated by Pope Innocent X into the University of Santo Tomas, in his brief In Supreminenti. It has the oldest extant University Charter in the Philippines, as well as the whole of Asia.

1646 CE57 entries

1647 CE59 entries

• January 16 – Citizens of Dublin declare their support for Rinuccini, and refuse to support the army of the Marquis of Ormond.
• January 20 – A small Qing force led by Li Chengdong captures Guangzhou and kills the Zhu Yuyue, the Shaowu Emperor of the Southern Ming dynasty in China.
• August 17 – Peter Stuyvesant is appointed Director of New Netherlands, the Dutch colony in what is later the U.S. state of New York, by the Dutch West India Company to replace Willem Kieft, who departs New Amsterdam on the ship Princess Amelia.

1648 CE57 entries

1649 CE67 entries

• March 16 – An over 1,000 strong war party of Haudenosaunee Iroquois invade and burn the Huron mission villages of St. Ignace and St. Louis in present-day Simcoe County, Ontario, killing about 300 people.
• August 8 – Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh completes Book VIII of Leabhar na nGenealach, in Galway, within days of an outbreak of the plague.
• August 15 – Oliver Cromwell lands in Dublin, unopposed and with thousands of English troops, to begin the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland.