East India Company founded
A trading company that would come to rule India
On 31 December 1600 Elizabeth I granted London merchants a monopoly on trade with Asia. The East India Company began with pepper and textiles and by the mid-19th century ruled most of India with its own army. After the Indian Rebellion of 1857 its territories passed to the British Crown.
Wikipedia (English) · 16th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1582 Yermak's conquest of Sibir — 18 years earlier
- 1598–1613 Time of Troubles — 2 years earlier
- 1612 Minin and Pozharsky liberate Moscow — 12 years later
- 1613 Election of Michael Romanov as Tsar — 13 years later
Africa
- 1591 Battle of Tondibi and fall of Songhai — 9 years earlier
- 1624–1663 Nzinga becomes Queen of Ndongo — 24 years later
Asia
- 1592–1598 Imjin War — 8 years earlier
- 1600 Battle of Sekigahara — same year
Americas
- 1600 Eruption of Huaynaputina — same year
- c. 1605–1694 Quilombo of Palmares — 5 years later
- 1607 Founding of Jamestown — 7 years later
- 1609 Jesuit reductions among the Guaraní — 9 years later
Alive at the time
- Elizabeth I (aged 67)
- Akbar the Great (aged 58)
- Tokugawa Ieyasu (aged 57)
- Miguel de Cervantes (aged 53)
- William Shakespeare (aged 36)
- Galileo Galilei (aged 36)
- René Descartes (aged 4)
- Matteo Ricci (aged 48)
- Rudolf II (aged 48)
- Henry IV (aged 47)