Dec. 16, 1689: The English Parliament Confirms the Dutch Takeover of England

Passes the Bill of Rights of 1689., "a restatement in statutory form of the Declaration of Right presented by the Convention Parliament to William and Mary in February 1689, inviting them to become joint sovereigns of England. The Bill of Rights lays down limits on the powers of the monarch and sets out the rights of Parliament, including the requirement for regular parliaments, free elections, and freedom of speech in Parliament. It sets out certain rights of individuals including the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and reestablished the liberty of Protestants to have arms for their defence within the rule of law. Furthermore, the Bill of Rights described and condemned several misdeeds of James II of England  These ideas reflected those of the political thinker John Locke and they quickly became popular in England. It also sets out—or, in the view of its drafters, restates—certain constitutional requirements of the Crown to seek the consent of the people, as represented in Parliament."

1689 Two Treatises of Government, John Locke  (1632-1704).

1689 The Convention Parliament convenes. Invitees William and Mary to rule jointly as sovereigns of England. (Feb). "...an irregular assembly of the Parliament of England which transferred the crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland from James II to William III. It differed from the English Convention (1660) in that it did not unconditionally restore the rightful and lawful monarch but chose to justify the deposing of that monarch in favour of anotherand sought to introduce new laws and arrangements into the constitution....It was not a lawfully constituted assembly, and its actions were in defiance of the English constitution. The Convention sought to justify the overthrow of James II. The Whigs held the ascendancy in the House of Commons and the Tories in the House of Lords.

1688 English provisional government created (Dec). William allows James II to flee, and he goes t France. End of the Stuart Dynasty (Dec. 23).

1688 The Glorious Revolution William of Orange invades England with a Dutch fleet and army (Nov.).

1683 John Locke flees England to the Netherlands. "under strong suspicion of involvement in the Rye House Plot, although there is little evidence to suggest that he was directly involved in the scheme. The philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein argues that during his five years in Holland, Locke chose his friends "from among the same freethinking members of dissenting Protestant groups as Spinoza's small group of loyal confidants."


1669 Rembrandt dies. Self-Portrait,  oil on canvas (1669).

(source)

1677 Ethics, Spinoza (b. 1632). "Spinoza's magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, in which he opposed Descartes' mind–body dualism, has earned him recognition as one of Western philosophy's most important thinkers. In the Ethics, "Spinoza wrote the last indisputable Latin masterpiece, and one in which the refined conceptions of medieval philosophy are finally turned against themselves and destroyed entirely." Hegel said, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all." His philosophical accomplishments and moral character prompted 20th-century philosopher Gilles Deleuze to name him "the 'prince' of philosophers". The book is perhaps the most ambitious attempt to apply the method of Euclid in philosophy. Spinoza puts forward a small number of definitions and axioms from which he attempts to derive hundreds of propositions and corollaries, such as "When the Mind imagines its own lack of power, it is saddened by it", "A free man thinks of nothing less than of death", and "The human Mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the Body, but something of it remains which is eternal." The Euclidean style is larded with stretches of informal and at times pugnacious prose.

1677 Baruch Spinoza dies in The Hague.

1672-1674 Third Anglo-Dutch War. (Derde Engelse Zeeoorlog) 

1669 VOC "the richest private company the world had ever seen, with over 150 merchant ships, 40 warships, 50,000 employees, a private army of 10,000 soldiers, and a dividend payment of 40% on the original investment."

1665–1667 Second Anglo-Dutch War.

1658 VOC capturse Colombo.

1652-1654 First Anglo-Dutch War.

1652 Jan van Riebeeck established an outpost at the Cape of Good Hope (the southwestern tip of Africa, now Cape Town, South Africa) to re-supply VOC ships on their journey to East Asia

1651 Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes.

1648 Treaty of Münster. End of the eighty-year Dutch Revolt against Spain. Spanish crown formally recognizes independence of the United Provinces of the Netherlands.  "a landmark treaty for the Dutch Republic and one of the key events in Dutch history; with it.The treaty was a part of the Peace of Westphalia which ended both the Thirty Years' War and the Eighty Years' War."

1647 Peter Stuyvesant arrives in New Amsterdam and Director-General.

1642-1651 English Civil War.

1640 VOC obtains the port of Galle, Ceylon, from the Portuguese and broke the latter's monopoly of the cinnamon trade.

1637 Tulip Mania in the Netherlands.

1631 Rembrandt moves to Amsterdam. "...then rapidly expanding as the new business capital of the Netherlands, and began to practice as a professional portraitist for the first time, with great success."
 
1628 Self-Portrait by Rembrandt (Age 22).

A young Rembrandt, c. 1628, when he was 22. Partly an exercise in chiaroscuro. Rijksmuseum (source)

1624 New Amsterdam founded. Designed capital of New Netherland  Colony(1625).

1620 The Mayflower and Speedwell leave Delftshaven for the New World, landing in Plymouth.

1620 Diplomatic agreements in Europe in 1620 ushered in a period of co-operation between the Dutch and the English over the spice trade. This ended with a notorious, but disputed incident, known as the 'Amboyna massacre', where ten Englishmen were arrested, tried and beheaded for conspiracy against the Dutch government. Although this caused outrage in Europe and a diplomatic crisis, the English quietly withdrew from most of their Indonesian activities (except trading in Bantam) and focused on other Asian interests.

1619 VOC establishes capital in the port city of Jayakarta "and changed the city name into Batavia (now Jakarta). Over the next two centuries the Company acquired additional ports as trading bases and safeguarded their interests by taking over surrounding territory.^[8] It remained an important trading concern and paid an 18% annual dividend for almost 200 years."

1614 Founding of the New Netherland Colony.

1610 VOC establishes the post of Governor General to more firmly control their affairs in Asia.

1609 Henry Hudson is hired by the VOC " to find a north-east passage to Asia sailing around Scandinavia and Russia. Turned back by the ice of the Arctic in his second attempt, he sailed west to seek a north-west passage rather than return home and ended up exploring the waters off the east coast of North America aboard the vlieboot, Halve Maen."

1603 James I becomes first Stuart monarch of England.

1603 VOC seizes the Santa Catarina off Singapore, a 1500-ton Portuguese merchant carrack. She was such a rich prize that her sale proceeds increased the capital of the V.O.C by more than 50%.

1603 VOC establishes its first permanent trading post on Java at Banten.

1602 Founding of the Dutch East India Company (V.O.C)  to profit from the Malukan spice trade. "[the company] issued shares that were made tradable on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. This invention enhanced the ability of joint-stock companies to attract capital from investors as they could now easily dispose their shares. In 1612 it became the first 'corporation' in intercontinental trade with 'locked in' capital and limited liability. [Its chater] granted monopoly over the Asian trade. The charter of the new company empowered it to build forts, maintain armies, and conclude treaties with Asian rulers. It provided for a venture that would continue for 21 years, with a financial accounting only at the end of each decade. At the time, it was customary for a company to be set up only for the duration of a single voyage, and to be liquidated upon the return of the fleet. Investment in these expeditions was a very high-risk venture, not only because of the usual dangers of piracy, disease and shipwreck, but also because the interplay of inelastic demand and relatively elastic supply of spices could make prices tumble at just the wrong moment, thereby ruining prospects of profitability. To manage such risk the forming of a cartel to control supply would seem logical. The English had been the first to adopt this approach, by bundling their resources into a monopoly enterprise, the English East India Company in 1600, thereby threatening their Dutch competitors with ruin."


1599 Dutch reach the Spice Islands. "a fleet of eight ships under Jacob van Neck was the first Dutch fleet to reach the 'Spice Islands' of Maluku, the source of pepper, cutting out the Javanese middlemen. The ships returned to Europe in 1599 and 1600 and the expedition made a 400 percent profit."

1595 Dutch entrance into Java. Dutch four-ship expedition clashes with Portuguese and native Indonesians at Banten, the principal spice port of Java.

1591 Portugeuese traders cut Antwerp off from the spice trade (Dutch Revolt). ",...the spice trade was dominated by the Portuguese who used Lisbon as a staple port. Before the Dutch Revolt, Antwerp had played an important role as a distribution centre in northern Europe. However, after 1591 the Portuguese used an international syndicate of the German Fuggers and Welsers, and Spanish and Italian firms, that used Hamburg as its northern staple port to distribute their goods, thereby cutting Dutch merchants out of the trade."

1568-1648 The Dutch Revolt. The Netherlands rebel against Spanish rule.

1511 The Praise of Folly, by Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536).