⌂ Atlases

The world, 1600–1660

34 narrated atlases. Each follows one polity through sixty years as a chain of people — who succeeded, appointed, married, fought or betrayed whom — on the ground where it happened. Pick one on the map or in the list.

Stuart Britain, 1600–1660How did the crown that joined three kingdoms in 1603 end on the scaffold in 1649, and come back in 1660?▶ watch · 15 min☰ read12 eras · 35 people
France, 1600–1660How did a crown whose king was murdered in 1610, and whose princes kept rising against it, end by making Spain give up land for peace?▶ watch · 14 min☰ read12 eras · 34 people
The Netherlands, 1600–1660How did seven provinces in revolt against their king become, by 1660, a sovereign republic run without a prince, its companies holding forts from the Hudson to Batavia?▶ watch · 14 min☰ read12 eras · 31 people
Italy, 1600–1660France gave up its last foothold in Italy in 1601. How did it fight its way back past Spain, and what did the Italian states pay?▶ watch · 12 min☰ read10 eras · 34 people
Denmark–Norway, 1600–1660How did Denmark–Norway lose its lands across the Sound to Sweden, and its nobles their hold on the crown?▶ watch · 13 min☰ read12 eras · 27 people
The Holy Roman Empire, 1600–1660How did a quarrel among Habsburg brothers become thirty years of war, and what did the peace leave the emperor?▶ watch · 14 min☰ read12 eras · 31 people
Sweden, 1600–1660How did a kingdom at war with its own king become master of the Baltic in sixty years?▶ watch · 13 min☰ read12 eras · 33 people
Poland–Lithuania, 1600–1660How did the Commonwealth whose soldiers held the Kremlin in 1610 come to be overrun from three sides in 1655, and what did surviving cost it?▶ watch · 14 min☰ read12 eras · 29 people
Hungary and Transylvania, 1600–1660How did Transylvania become a principality that emperors had to bargain with, and how did one prince's gamble cost it its western fortresses?▶ watch · 13 min☰ read12 eras · 32 people
Muscovy, 1600–1660How did Muscovy go from a throne no one could hold to a Romanov tsardom fighting for Ukraine?▶ watch · 14 min☰ read12 eras · 33 people
Portugal, 1600–1660How did Portugal, ruled from Madrid, lose its Asian empire, and then take back its crown, Brazil and Angola?▶ watch · 12 min☰ read11 eras · 33 people
Morocco, 1600–1660How did the golden sultan's Morocco break into rival states within sixty years of his death?▶ watch · 11 min☰ read11 eras · 21 people
Spain, 1600–1660How did a monarchy that made peace with England and the Dutch by 1609 come, by 1660, to lose Portugal and cede provinces to France?▶ watch · 13 min☰ read12 eras · 34 people
Algiers, 1600–1660How did the sultan's governors of Algiers lose the city to its own soldiers and corsair captains?▶ watch · 6 min☰ read6 eras · 14 people
Tunis, 1600–1660How did the household of a Corsican slave, set up to tax the countryside, come to choose the rulers of Tunis?▶ watch · 6 min☰ read6 eras · 13 people
The Ottoman Empire, 1600–1660How did an empire whose soldiers made and unmade sultans come, by 1660, to be governed by one grand vizier?▶ watch · 13 min☰ read12 eras · 34 people
Safavid Iran, 1600–1660How did Shah Abbas win back Iran's frontiers, and who held them once he had destroyed his own heirs?▶ watch · 12 min☰ read12 eras · 27 people
Ming China, 1600–1660How did the Ming, which ruled all of China in 1600, lose it by 1660 to the Manchus and to its own former servants?▶ watch · 14 min☰ read12 eras · 35 people
Joseon Korea, 1600–1660How did Joseon go from the ally Ming had rescued to a vassal of the Qing, and what did that do to its royal succession?▶ watch · 12 min☰ read11 eras · 33 people
Japan, 1600–1660How did the lord who won Sekigahara in 1600 build a shogunate that a boy of ten could inherit?▶ watch · 14 min☰ read12 eras · 34 people
Timbuktu, 1600–1660How did the garrison Morocco sent to hold the Niger come to choose its own pashas, and to make kings in Dendi?▶ watch · 7 min☰ read6 eras · 14 people
Mughal India, 1600–1660How did the Mughal throne pass from Akbar to Aurangzeb, each heir rising against his father, while the Deccan's resistance passed from Malik Ambar to Shivaji?▶ watch · 12 min☰ read12 eras · 33 people
The Gold Coast, 1600–1660How did one Portuguese castle become a coast of rival European forts — and who decided which of them stayed?▶ watch · 7 min☰ read6 eras · 15 people
Benin, 1600–1660How did the kings of Benin go from leading its wars to being kept behind the palace walls by their own chiefs?▶ watch · 5 min☰ read6 eras · 9 people
Kano and Katsina, 1600–1660How did Kano's kings end their long war with Katsina, and why could they still not keep their thrones?▶ watch · 7 min☰ read7 eras · 15 people
Bornu, 1600–1660How did the heirs of Idris Alooma hold his empire together, and why did the pashas of Tripoli end up asking Bornu for its trade?▶ watch · 5 min☰ read6 eras · 11 people
Sennar, 1600–1660How did the Funj kings, driven from Sennar by their own northern viceroy in 1606, come to make and unmake his heirs by 1660?▶ watch · 5 min☰ read5 eras · 13 people
Ethiopia, 1600–1660How did a throne the great lords made and unmade become a fixed court at Gondar, Orthodox and closed to Rome?▶ watch · 7 min☰ read7 eras · 14 people
Maritime Southeast Asia, 1600–1660How did a Dutch trading company, one buyer among many in 1600, become the power the courts of the islands had to fight or bargain with by 1660?▶ watch · 13 min☰ read11 eras · 34 people
Mainland Southeast Asia, 1600–1660How did the outer kingdoms Naresuan won for Siam slip from its grasp?▶ watch · 12 min☰ read11 eras · 32 people
Ndongo and Matamba, 1600–1660How did Ndongo's royal house lose its homeland to Portugal and win a new kingdom in Matamba?▶ watch · 7 min☰ read7 eras · 14 people
Kongo, 1600–1660How did Kongo's dukes go from serving its kings to making them, breaking them, and finally becoming them?▶ watch · 8 min☰ read7 eras · 15 people
Mombasa and the Swahili coast, 1600–1660How did the sultans Portugal set up in Mombasa become its enemies, and the coast turn to Oman?▶ watch · 7 min☰ read7 eras · 13 people
Mutapa, 1600–1660How did a Shona king who pawned his mines for Portuguese guns leave his successors vassals of the Portuguese crown?▶ watch · 7 min☰ read6 eras · 14 people