1600

Lore & Background

The year 1600 saw the Battle of Nieuwpoort on July 2, where the Dutch Republic gained a tactical victory over the Spanish Empire during the Eighty Years' War. Other events included the Battle of Sekigahara in Japan on October 21, which ended the Sengoku period and established the Tokugawa shogunate, and the granting of a Royal charter to the East India Company in England on December 31.

In Their Own Story

The candle in the war room has burned to a stub. Outside, the bells of the cathedral mark the hour, and the map spread across the long table shows a continent stitched with red and blue lines—borders that shift with every alliance, every papal bull, every privateer's capture in the Channel. The chancellor sets a fresh dispatch from the Dutch provinces onto the stack: the truce holds, for now, but the merchants in Amsterdam are already fitting out new ships. You trace the Habsburg border with a tired finger. Somewhere in Bohemia, a Protestant noble is drafting a letter that will, in eighteen years, set the continent alight. You sign the decree. The ink dries.

Reader's Guide

The source does not mention any peace treaty or truce between the Dutch Republic and Spain in 1600 or the preceding year. The only reference to the Dutch-Spanish conflict is the Battle of Nieuwpoort.

Did You Know?

• The first Dutch ship to arrive in Japan, the Liefde, anchored in Sashifu on April 19.
• The Huaynaputina volcano in Peru erupted on February 19 in what remains the worst recorded volcanic eruption in South America.
• The earliest known fully surviving work of modern opera, Jacopo Peri's Euridice, premiered in Florence on October 6.
• William Gilbert's De Magnete, describing Earth's magnetic field, was published this year, coining the term 'electrus' (amber-like) and laying groundwork for modern electricity theory.