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The 1690s

982 sourced entries across 10 years, inside the 17th century. Each year below opens its own page; the lines under it are that year’s highest-ranked entries.

1690 CE106 entries

  • 30 June – War of the Grand Alliance: Battle of Beachy Head: French naval victory over the English and Dutch.
  • August 24 – In India, the fort and trading settlement of Sutanuti is founded on the Hooghly River by the English East India Company, following the signing of an Anglo-Mughal treaty.
  • 24 August – In India, Sutanuti – which later becomes Kolkata – is founded by Job Charnock of the English East India Company.

1691 CE87 entries

  • August 19 – The Battle of Slankamen takes place between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire and allies at Syrmia (now the Serbian province of Vojvodina), and 25,000 Ottomans are killed, including Köprülüzade Fazıl Mustafa Pasha, the Grand Vizier.
  • September 18 – War of the Grand Alliance: English and Dutch forces are defeated by the French in the Battle of Leuze.
  • October 3 – The Treaty of Limerick, ending the Williamite War in Ireland and guaranteeing civil rights to Roman Catholics, is signed. The Flight of the Wild Geese follows.

1692 CE93 entries

  • 29 May–4 June – War of the Grand Alliance: The threat of a French invasion of England is diminished by victory at the Battles of Barfleur and La Hogue.
  • July 1 – The siege of the Belgian city of Namur in the Spanish Netherlands ends as Dutch General Menno van Coehoorn capitulates to King Louis XIV of France after five weeks. The siege, a battle in the ongoing Nine Years War, had begun on May 24.
  • November – Henri de Massue, 2nd Marquis de Ruvigny, a French Huguenot soldier in English service and commander in chief in Ireland for a time this year, is created Viscount Galway and Baron Portarlington in the Peerage of Ireland and receives a large grant of seized estates in Ireland.

1693 CE95 entries

  • 8 February – the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, is granted a Royal charter from King William III and Queen Mary II of England.
  • 9 March – the House of Commons of England presents an address to King William III complaining of mismanagement of Irish affairs. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Viscount Sydney, is recalled on 13 June and administration left in the hands of Lords Justices.
  • April – Tituba, a slave who had been convicted at the Salem witch trials of practicing witchcraft after making a confession, is released from jail in Boston after 13 months when an unknown purchaser pays her jail fees.

1694 CE90 entries

  • 9 January – Henry Purcell's ode Great Parent, Hail! and John Blow's anthem I Beheld, and Lo! are performed in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, at a concert to mark the centenary of Trinity College.
  • November 12 – The Army of Algeria captures Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, after a siege of three months, bringing an end to the Tunisian–Algerian War. Mohamed Bey El Mouradi, the Bey of Tunis, flees southward while Prince Muhammad ben Cheker of Tunisia becomes the new Dey on behalf of the Dey of Algiers, Hadj Ahmed.
  • 28 December – with the death of Queen Mary II (aged 32) from smallpox at Kensington Palace, King William III becomes sole monarch.

1695 CE108 entries

  • January 7 (December 28, 1694 O.S.) – The United Kingdom's last joint monarchy, the reign of husband-and-wife King William III and Queen Mary II comes to an end with the death of Queen Mary, at the age of 32. Princess Mary had been installed as the monarch along with her husband and cousin, Willem Hendrik von Oranje, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, in 1689 after King James II was deposed by Willem during the "Glorious Revolution".
  • 10 May – Alan Brodrick is appointed Solicitor-General for Ireland; he is a supporter of Penal Laws against Roman Catholics.
  • September 24 – All but eight of the remaining 305 crew of the Royal Navy ship HMS Winchester are killed when the ship founders in the Florida Keys. According to the ship's logbook, an epidemic of yellow fever began on August 1 and had killed 45 people before the hurricane struck, and left all but seven crew members too ill to walk.

1696 CE105 entries

  • January – Colley Cibber's play Love's Last Shift is first performed in London.
  • April 27 – an act of the Parliament of England for encouraging linen manufacture in Ireland allows plain linen to be exported to England without an import tariff being applied.
  • June 12 – China's Kangxi Emperor leads troops in the Battle of Jao Modo, about 37 mi from the modern Mongolian capital, Ulan Bator, and defeats 5,000 Mongolian troops of the Dzungar Khanate under the command of Galdan Boshugtu Khan.

1697 CE102 entries

  • February 26 – Conquistador Martín de Ursúa y Arizmendi and 114 soldiers arrive at Lake Petén Itzá in what is now Guatemala and begin the Spanish conquest of Guatemala with an attack on the capital of the Itza people there before moving northward to the Yucatan peninsula.
  • March 13 – The Spanish conquest of Petén, and of Yucatán, is completed with the fall of Nojpetén, capital of the Itza Maya Kingdom, the last independent Maya state.
  • December 8 – Tsangyang Gyatso is installed in Tibet as the 6th Dalai Lama in a ceremony at Lhasa, filling a vacancy that had existed since 1682.

1698 CE108 entries

  • March 8 – The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the oldest Anglican mission organization in the world, is founded by English clergyman Thomas Bray and four other people at Lincoln's Inn in London, along with Sir Humphrey Mackworth, Maynard Colchester, Lord Guilford and John Hooke.
  • 24 October – Iberville and Bienville sail from Brest to the Gulf of Mexico to defend the southern borders of New France; they will eventually found three capitals of Louisiana (New France), as the future American cities: Mobile, Biloxi & New Orleans.
  • November – Tani Jinzan, astronomer and calendar scholar, observes a fire destroy Tosa (now Kōchi) in Japan at the same time as a Leonid meteor shower, taking it as evidence to reinforce belief in the "Theory of Areas".

1699 CE88 entries

  • January 26 – The Republic of Venice, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Holy Roman Empire sign the Treaty of Karlowitz with the Ottoman Empire, marking an end to the major phase of the Ottoman–Habsburg wars. The treaty marks a major geopolitical shift, as the Ottoman Empire subsequently abandons its expansionism and adopts a defensive posture while the Habsburg monarchy expands its influence.
  • January 26–June 14 – the Parliament of Ireland meets and enacts legislation to levy duties on exported woolens; to encourage the construction of parsonages; to oblige landowners to plant and conserve trees; and to prevent Roman Catholics from becoming solicitors.
  • November 22 – The Treaty of Preobrazhenskoye, negotiated by Johann Patkul, is signed at a palace of the Tsar of Russia Peter the Great, and representatives of Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony to provide for the partition of Swedish Empire between Saxony, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Kingdoms of Denmark-Norway and the Russian Empire. The attack on Sweden, which takes place on February 22, starts the Great Northern War.