1625, A new Oyo leader regains empire’s old homeland from Nupe people and successors build new capital north of the forest belt. Oyo now use cavalry to dominate enemies in drier savannah to the north, but cannot raid into the forest for fear of infection of horses.
1625, First Dutch attempt to take Elmina on Gold Coast ends disastrously when 56 Portuguese soldiers and 200 black allies ambush and all but wipe out the Dutch landing force of 1,200, October. Dutch fleet bombards fort-factory then slinks away.
1626, The Carib leader Tegremond plots to kill English and French settlers threatening to take over island. But a Carib woman betrays plan to settlers who kill Tegremond and 2,000 others at Bloody Point. Surviving Indians removed to Domenica by 1640.
1626, First 11 black slaves brought to New Amsterdam by new Dutch West India Company, two years after settlement is founded. They are from Angola, Kongo and São Tomé, and are liberated in 1644 after petitioning local authorities; the reasons are murky. They also receive 300 acres of land, from Bowery Road to present-day 39th Street.
First New Amsterdam slave auction is held in 1655.
Henry Powell arrives in Barbados with settlers.
1627, Henry Powell settles on Barbados, two years after brother John claims it for England. Henry brings 80 settlers and 10 black captives. Sugar cane introduced in 1637 from Brazil.
In 1650s, Barbados (167 square miles) has more settlers and indentured servants, 44,000, than Virginia and New England combined. It also has 5,600 slaves. Life expectation is short for settlers, shorter for slaves.
Rum, first distilled on Barbados from molasses, dates to 1650s.
By 1700, free whites are down to 15,000; slaves number 50,000. Slave uprisings in 1675 and 1692 end with execution of leaders.
French Settlers Arrive on St. Kitts.
1627, France’s first West Indies colony is established on St. Kitts by Pierre Bélain, Sieur d’Esnambuc. French settlers claim both Martinique and Guadaloupe in 1635 for the Compagnie des Îles d’Amérique (inaugurated by Cardinal Richelieu).
While St. Kitts is eventually conceded to Britain, Martinique and Guadaloupe are part of metropolitan France today.
Dutch and Indians fight over Beaver.
1628, Beaver Wars begin between French, Algonquin and Hurons on one side and Iroquois confederation on the other, supported at first by the Dutch. Indians are fighting over lucrative beaver trade as well as defense of homelands (the Iroquois in today’s upstate New York; the Algonquin and Huron on the north side of Lakes Ontario and Erie, and in the Ohio valley).
Beaver, in demand for men’s hats in Europe, is the great prize in early colonial days for both New France (Montreal and Québec) and New Netherlands (New Amsterdam and Fort Orange, at present-day Albany).
1628, Dutch fleet under Piet Heyn intercepts 16-ship Spanish treasure fleet off Matanzas, Cuba, September. Total haul is 6 million pesos worth of gold, silver and indigo, by far the largest ever taken from the treasure fleets, and without loss of life on either side. The loot supports the long Dutch siege and capture of the Spanish fortress at 's-Hertogenbosch, 1629, as well as the Dutch West India Company’s designs on Brazil.
1630, Following a failed 1625 attempt to hold the Brazilian capital of Salvador, Dutch send a fleet of 65 ships to take Olinda and Recife, March. By 1635, Dutch West India Company holds Pernambuco and its sugar plantations.
Dutch expand “New Holland” to include parts of Bahia and Maranhão, 1641, but guerrilla warfare and resentment on part of Portuguese owners of slave plantations reduce sugar production over next 18 years.
Portugal maintains control of southern Brazil from Salvador.
1630, John Winthrop leads 700 colonists in 11 ships to new Massachusetts Bay Colony. This begins the decade of the “Great Migration” of 40,000 Puritan men, women and children, largely from East Anglia, to Massachusetts Bay and the West Indies (mainly Barbados).
They flee religious tension and hard economy in England. But more than 2,000 will return to England after 1641 to join the Puritan army against Charles I at the beginning of English Civil Wars.
1630, The Furnas volcano erupts explosively on São Miguel, largest island in the Azores. More than 200 are killed.
First Group of mixed-race merchant women in Portugal.
c. 1630, Dame Portugaise, the first of the mixed-race merchant women known as signares or nhara (in Portuguese) and métis (in French), presides over the slave trade between the Caray kingdom and the Portuguese at Rufisque (near Cape Verde). She is believed to be the daughter of a Portugese man and a Wolof woman of high standing.
More famous is Bibiana Vaz de França, whose father was a Luso-African born in the Cape Verde Islands. She is married to a Sr. Gomez, the wealthiest man in Guinea; they live in Cacheu. She wields considerable power in slave trade and political influence. In 1687 she is arrested and held prisoner on Santiago, only to be pardoned.
1633-1634, Smallpox, introduced by either Dutch traders or new English settlers, sweeps up the Connecticut Valley and throughout New England, wiping out entire Indian villages. While the Plymouth Colony loses 20 people, including its only physician, Increase Mather says God has forestalled an attack by Indians.
1634, Dutch West India Company fleet removes 30 Spaniards from Curaçao (but allows 30 Taíno families to stay). Piracy becomes profitable, then salt-panning. Jews from Amsterdam and Dutch Brazil organize first Jewish congregation in the Americas, 1651.
1635, Long Island and southern New England struck by Great Colonial Hurricane, Aug. 24. Based on contemporary accounts, meteorologists believe it is the strongest hurricane ever to hit New England since the coming of the Pilgrims.
Winds of up to 125 mph and an estimated 22-foot storm surge flatten coastal villages and wigwams, sink several ships, and kill scores of Indians and settlers. Damage to harvests threaten famine and exacerbate tensions between colonists and Pequot people in particular.
1635, French expedition (from St. Kitts, where they have been since 1625) lands on Martinique and overpowers Carib Indians, who are eliminated entirely by 1660.
1636, Mexico develops first laws to spell out status of “chattel slavery” for black Africans. Slaves are slaves for life and can be sold or willed to others. Children are classified slaves if their mothers are slaves.
But relatively few female Africans are sent to Mexico. Male slaves, able by law to choose Indian and mestizo wives, do so in large numbers. The resulting Afro-mestizo children may be regarded as “low-born,” but they are free under the laws of both Spain and the Church.
With total slaves brought to Mexico estimated at 200,000 and most of their children born free, black slavery here never reaches levels of the 13 British colonies. Today, only 1.2% of Mexico’s 120 million people identify as African descendants.
1636, Several hundred African captives who have escaped one or two Dutch slave ships—perhaps after shipwreck—land on the Miskito Coast of Honduras. They intermarry with indigenous Miskito people to create the mixed Miskito-Zambos who dominate the region and non-Zambo Miskitos to the south. The latter are undermined by smallpox in 1727.
The Miskito-Zambos ally with English and Dutch privateers based on Jamaica and nearby Belize and Providence Island. Despite Spanish dominance of Honduras and Nicaragua, they maintain their independence well into the 19th century.
Roaming bandeirantes.
1636, From Brazil’s southern São Paulo region a bandeira, led by António Raposo Tavares and comprising 69 white Paulistas, 900 Portuguese-Indian mamelucos and perhaps 2,000 allied Tupi warriors captures many thousands of Indians to be sold as slaves. They also destroy a series of Spanish Jesuit missions.
The bandeirantes, quite ruthless, operate well into the 18th century as slavers and fortune hunters (especially for gold), significantly expanding Brazilian territory with their expeditions.
1636-1638, White settlers from Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Providence and Saybrook colonies, joined by several Indian-tribe allies, kill hundreds of Pequot at Mystic, CT and later at Fairfield, CT. Some survivors sold into slavery in West Indies; others agree to disperse to other tribes.
Fighting at Elmina.
1637, Johan Maurits of Nassau sends a Dutch fleet from Recife to finally capture Portugal’s castle-factory at Elmina on the Gold Coast, Aug. 29. Dutch appropriate further factories at Shama and Axim.
In just seven years, the Dutch West India Company has seized both the northern Brazil and Gold Coast ends of Portugal’s most lucrative slave-trade-and-sugar operations.
Under Dutch control, as many as 30,000 slaves are held each year in Elmina dungeons for shipment, most going to Recife and Pernambuco. Dutch will further expand slaving operations with capture of Luanda in 1641 (see below).
1638, French establish their first factory on Bocos Island near mouth of Senegal river, giving them trade access to Wolofs and other peoples. This is moved 16 miles to Île Saint-Louis in 1659, where they preside with only brief interruptions for the next 300 years.
1638-1640, Continuing Dutch-Portuguese strife in northern Brazil enables many hundreds of slaves to flee to interior mocambos in Palmares, bringing their population to perhaps 20,000. In addition to runaway blacks, the mocambos include Indians, mixed-race people, and a significant number of white deserters from the military.
African slaves working in sugar plantations.
1640-1680, British introduce large-scale African slave labor to their Caribbean sugar plantations, beginning with Barbados, and followed by Antigua, St. Kitts and Nevis. The numbers increase dramatically after 1655, when Britain seizes Jamaica from Spain.
1640, Portuguese nobles rise up (40 Conspirators), kill Spanish governor in Lisbon and imprison Duchess of Mantua, winning support of people. Rebel motives include anger at Spanish failure to block Dutch takeover of Pernambuco and Elmina. João, duke of Braganza, acclaimed king, ending 60 years of control by Spanish kings.
Portugal still must fight a long war before Spain recognizes Portuguese independence in 1668 treaty.
First laws specifically legalizing slavery are adopted by Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop and the General Court, Dec. 10. Followed by laws dictating slave marriage restrictions, curfews and taxes.
In 1644, Boston merchants begin slave-smuggling operations to West Indies to get around Royal African Company’s monopoly on African captives.
King Charles I.
1641, Catholic uprising in Ireland, focused against Plantation of Ulster, with 4,000 Scots-Irish settlers killed on previously Catholic lands. Both sides engage in more massacres with Irish Confederation and Royalists taking control of most of island.
Further divides Charles I from Parliament and leads to Wars of Three Kingdoms, including the English Civil War.
Adm. Cornelis Jol with fleet.
1641, Adm. Cornelis Jol, leading another Dutch West India Company fleet from Recife, takes Luanda and São Tomé, only to die of malaria on the latter island, Oct. 31.
Portuguese withdraw from Luanda up Kwanza river to Massangano as Dutch forge alliance with Queen Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba, and King Garcia of Kongo (all Ambundu Bantu). But they cannot finish off Portuguese who are able to disrupt Dutch access to slaves.
Lisbon, focused on homeland fight to free Portugal of Spanish dominance, can offer little help to its Angolan colonists.
Queen Nzinga: Daughter of a king and his slave concubine, she learns Portuguese, has herself baptized into Catholicism, then wheels, deals and wars with Imbangala, Kongo and other neighboring kingdoms, and particularly with the Portuguese for nearly 40 years. Much of the fighting is over control of Angola’s large slave trade. She also welcomes Catholic missionaries and wins praise from Pope Alexander VII, 1661.
1642, English Civil War erupts over whether Charles I or Parliament should direct response to Irish rebellion. It goes on seven years, with victorious Oliver Cromwell and Parliament beheading Charles I, 1649, and establishing a Commonwealth with Cromwell as dictatorial “lord protector” in place of the monarchy.
1642, Virginia’s new governor, William Berkeley, favors the Crown’s side in the civil war and attracts immigrants from the landed gentry—the Cavaliers—during and after the fighting. They include forbearers of Washington and Randolph families (1643); first Lee, however, arrived in 1639.
1645, Portuguese establish Ziguinchor slave factory at the mouth of Senegal’s Casamance river to trade with the Jola people of the Kingdom of Khasso, who deal extensively in slaves. Manjak, Balanta and Papel peoples are also found in the region, known for its long tradition of rice cultivation in mangrove swamps.
1647, First definitive outbreak of yellow fever in New World, on Barbados. Presumed to have been carried from Africa on slave ships. Spread is accelerated by clearing of land for plantations (which reduces bird population) and wide use of sugar pots (which retain still water ideal for mosquito breeding).
Yellow fever breaks out on Guadeloupe and the Yucatán peninsula in 1648.
Patrons gather inside first coffeehouse in Europe.
1647, First coffeehouse in Europe opens in Venice; first London coffeehouse opens in 1652. First tea served in London, at a coffeehouse, in 1657. By 1675, there are 3,000 coffeehouses in England. As popularity of both bitter beverages spreads throughout Europe, demand for sugar soars.
1647, Massachusetts mandates that every town of 50-plus families support an elementary school for both boys and girls, and that every town of 100-plus families support a Latin (grammar) school for older boys in preparation for college, the ministry or law. Goal: To insure all Puritan children can read Bible.
By 1750, New England male literacy rates are far higher than English male literacy.
1647, Peter Stuyvesant arrives in a demoralized New Amsterdam to take over directorship of New Netherlands. He soon petitions Dutch West India Company to send more slaves to help rebuild the colony.
Many slaves in are assigned to skill jobs and have a certain amount of free time. The West India Company is the colony’s largest slaveholder in the colony, but Stuyvesant, with 40, is the leading private slaveholder.
1648, With over-trapped beaver disappearing from Hudson and Mohawk valleys, Dutch sell guns to give Iroquois an advantage in expanding their territory in present-day Ontario at expense of Huron and their French allies.
Iroquois kill many Algonquin warriors (and three Jesuit missionaries) and take women and children captive in attack near present-day Georgian Bay (Lake Huron). By 1660, Iroquois are raiding French settlements of Montreal and Québec. Off-and-on conflicts continue into 1660s.
Portuguese fighting to defeat Dutch.
1648, In Pernambuco, mixed Portuguese force (including long-rebellious planters, enslaved and freed blacks, and Indians) defeat Dutch, including reinforcements from Amsterdam, at Guararapas, April.
Dutch in Luanda also submit to a large Portuguese force sailing from Brazil under Salvador Correia de Sá, August. Warriors of Queen Nzinga, vital Dutch ally, are also defeated. De Sá also takes back São Tomé and Benguela. These defeats deprive Dutch of slaves for Brazil.
1648, In Peace of Münster, signed May 15, Spain affirms Dutch independence while retaining Flemish provinces and assuring toleration of Catholicism in Dutch Republic. This ends bitter and bloody Eighty Years’ War (which included a 12-year truce).
Spain also grants Dutch asiento to provide slaves to Spanish colonies, withdrawing it from Portugal and its slave merchants. Spain still hopes to regain control of Portugal. Agreement does not end Dutch-Portuguese conflict overseas.
Münster agreement is part of the overall Peace of Westphalia, ending the Thirty Years’ War in the Holy Roman Empire (Ferdinand III of Austria is emperor), in which more than 8 million Europeans died, more from disease and starvation than from fighting. The fighting, however, was particularly ruthless, fired by religious passion.
Monarchs are renewed right to determine dominant religion of their lands (Catholic, Lutheran or Calvinist) but must permit practice of other Christian faiths by individuals. Independence of Switzerland formally recognized. France gains much, Sweden less, Austria and Spain least. Free navigation of Rhine endorsed.
1649, Mixed local Portuguese force defeats Dutch mercenaries at Second Battle of Guararapas, Feb. 16. André Vidal de Negreiros is the Portuguese leader in this Pernambucana Insurrection; also prominent are Henrique Dias, an Afro-Brazilian, and Filipe Camarão, a Potiguara Indian.
Dutch presence in Brazil shrinks steadily. Besieged in Recife, they finally depart in 1654 as Portugal re-establishes dominance in Angola-slave-trade-Brazil-sugar-production. This is finally confirmed by treaty in 1661, the Netherlands receiving 8 million guilders in compensation.
Cromwell's army invades Drogheda.
1649, Six months after the Jan. 30 beheading of Charles I, Cromwell invades Ireland with New Model Army. That army’s siege of Drogheda ends with post-surrender death of most defenders and many civilians, Sept. 11.Survivors shipped in forced servitude to Barbados.
Ultimately Cromwell defeats Irish Confederation and remaining Royalists. Guerrilla war leads to brutal repression and confiscation of Catholic lands. Over three years, violence, famine and plague kill at least 200,000, mostly Catholic. As many as 50,000 are transported to American colonies as forced indentured laborers.
Cromwell also defeats a Scottish army under Charles’s son at Worcester, 1651, to bring the last of the Wars of Three Kingdoms to an end. The son escapes to France, to return nine years later as King Charles II.