What happened in 1670–1679

World7

• 1671The Danish West India Company, a charter ship company whose operations include human trafficking of African slaves to the Western Hemisphere by its Danish Africa Company subsidiary, is founded.
• 1675King Philip's War breaks out, as the Wampanoags attack Swansea.
• 1675The English population of Willoughbyland arrives in Jamaica following provisions of the Treaty of Westminster (1674).
• 1675Guru Teg Bahadur, ninth of the Sikh gurus, is executed by Mughal rulers, proclaiming that he prefers death rather than disavowing the right of Hindus to practice their own religion. He is succeeded by Guru Gobind Singh, who becomes the tenth Guru.
• 1676Bacon's Rebellion: Jamestown is burned to the ground by the forces of Nathaniel Bacon.
• 1676Battle of Gegodog: Trunajaya defeats the Mataram Sultanate.
• 1679The Tibet–Ladakh–Mughal war (1679–84) begins with the Tibetan invasion of Ladakh.

Japan1

• 1673Kintai Bridge is officially completed in Iwakuni, Suō Province (modern-day Yamaguchi Prefecture), Japan.

North America5

• 1670The Hudson's Bay Company is granted a royal charter in England with the jurisdiction to control administration and commerce in "Rupert's Land", governed for the crown by Rupert, Duke of Cumberland, the cousin of King Charles II. The land is a 1.5 million square mile area of what is now Canada around Hudson Bay. The area controlled covers all of the modern province of Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan, and significant portions of Alberta and Nunavut, as well as parts of what are now Ontario and Quebec, and parts of the U.S. states of Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana.
• 1675John Sassamon, an English-educated Native American Christian, dies at Assawampsett Pond, an event which will trigger a year-long war between the English American colonists of New England, and the Algonquian Native American tribes.
• 1675United colonial forces attack the Narragansetts at the Great Swamp Fight.
• 1676Six months into King Philip's War, Metacomet (King Philip), leader of the Algonquian tribe known as the Wampanoag, travels westward to the Mohawk nation, seeking an alliance with the Mohawks against the English colonists of New England; his efforts in creating such an alliance are a failure.
• 1676Sudbury Fight: The village of Sudbury, Massachusetts is attacked by Metacom's Wampanoag Confederation as one of the last major battles of King Phillip's War. Captain Samuel Wadworth and 28 of his men are killed in the defense of the town.

Europe70

• 1670Louis XIV inaugurates the construction of Les Invalides, a veterans' hospital in Paris.
• 1672The Third Anglo-Dutch War begins as the Kingdom of England declares war on the Dutch Republic.
• 1672France declares war on the Dutch Republic, invading the country on April 29.
• 1672Third Anglo-Dutch War – Battle of Solebay: An indecisive sea battle results, between the Dutch Republic, and the joined forces of England and France.
• 1672Troops of the Dutch Republic, under the command of Carl von Rabenhaupt, are able to reclaim lost territory for the first time in the Third Anglo-Dutch War, liberating Coevorden, which had been forced to surrender to France on July 1. The moment, a boost for morale in what is remembered in Dutch history as the Rampjaar (the "Disaster Year"), is later memorialized in a painting by Pieter Wouwerman, The Storming of Coevorden.
• 1673Molière's comédie-ballet The Imaginary Invalid premiers in Paris. During the fourth performance, on February 17, the playwright, playing the title rôle, collapses on stage, dying soon after.
• 1673First Battle of Schooneveld: In a sea battle of the Third Anglo-Dutch War, fought off the Netherlands coast, the Dutch Republic fleet (commanded by Michiel de Ruyter) defeats the allied Anglo-French fleet, commanded by Prince Rupert of the Rhine.
• 1673Battle of Khotyn: Polish and Lithuanian military units, under the command of soon-to-be-king Jan Sobieski, defeat the Turkish army. In this battle, which takes place one day after the death of Poland and Lithuania's monarch, Michał Korybut Wiśniowiecki, the rockets invented by Kazimierz Siemienowicz are successfully used.
• 1675Reconstruction of St Paul's Cathedral begins in London under the direction of Christopher Wren, to replace the portion destroyed by the Great Fire of London nine years earlier.
• 1676Scanian War: Battle of Öland – A combined fleet of the Dutch Republic and Denmark–Norway decisively defeats the Swedish Navy, which loses its flagship Stora Kronan. The man-of-war, Kronan, one of the largest seagoing vessels in the world, goes down with at at least 600 members of its 650-man crew and will remain at the bottom of the Baltic Sea for more than 300 years before being rediscovered in 1980.
• 1676The Russo-Turkish War (1676–1681) begins, with Russo-Ukrainian troops forcing pro-Ottoman Hetman Ivan Samoylovych to surrender Chyhyryn.
• 1676Pope Innocent XI succeeds Pope Clement X, as the 240th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.
• 1676Scanian War – Battle of Lund: Sweden defeats the forces of Denmark.
• 1677During war between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, Russian troops led by Grigory Romodanovsky and Ukrainian Cossacks led by Ivan Samoylovych arrive at the besieged Ukrainian city of Chigirin (modern-day Chyhyryn) and inflict heavy casualties on the encamped Turkish and Tatar troops. Ibrahim Pasha, leader of the 45,000 member Ottoman force, retreats the next day and, by the time of the relief of Chigirin on September 5, the Ottoman Army has lost 20,000 men. Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV, outraged by the defeat, sends 200,000 troops the following year and destroys the city.
• 1677Spinoza's Ethics (Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata) is published as part of his Opera Posthuma in Amsterdam.

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Asia11

• 1670The Battle of Sinhagad takes place in India (in the modern-day Maharashtra state) as the Maratha Empire army, led by Tanaji Malusare, leads an assault on the Kondhana Fortress that had been captured by the Mughal Empire. Tanaji, called "The Lion" by his followers, captures the fortress by guiding the successful scaling of the walls of the fortress with ladders created from rope, but is killed in the battle. The Maratha emperor Shivaji orders the fortress named Sinhagad, the Marathi language words for "Lion's Fort".
• 1671In the Battle of Saraighat in India, fought in mid-March, General Lachit Borphukan of the Ahom kingdom, located in what is now the Indian state of Assam defeats a larger force of Mughal Empire troops on the outskirts of what is now Guwahati.
• 1673In China, General Wu Sangui begins the Revolt of the Three Feudatories, a rebellion against the Qing dynasty by killing the Governor of the Yunnan province, Zhu Guozhi. Within 10 days, he leads troops on an expedition to take over the neighboring Guizhou province and by 1676 controls 11 of China's provinces.
• 1674In India, Shivaji Bhonsale, the Chhatrapati of the Maratha Empire, captures the Kenjalgad Fort in what is now the Maharashtra state.
• 1674Shivaji Maharaj is crowned as Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj of the Maratha Empire at Raigad Fort in India.
• 1674Sukjong of the Joseon Dynasty, age 13, becomes the new Emperor of Korea upon the death of his father, the Emperor Hyeonjong. Sukjong reigns for more than 45 years until his death on July 12, 1720.
• 1675The Siege of Ponda, an action by the Maratha Empire in southern India against the Sultanate of Bijapur, ends after four weeks when the Mughal Empire fails to send reinforcements. Most of the defenders are massacred after Emperor Shivaji's troops storm the fortress in what is now a small city in the Indian state of Goa.
• 1678Revolt of the Three Feudatories in southern China: rebel general Wu Sangui, lord of the Yunnan fief, takes the imperial crown, names himself monarch of "The Great Zhou", based in the Hunan province, with Hengyang as his capital. He contracts dysentery over the summer and dies on October 2, ending the rebellion against the Kangxi Emperor.
• 1678On the island of Java in modern-day Indonesia, the Kediri campaign begins as Mataram Sultanate and Dutch East India Company (VOC) forces under the command of VOC Captain François Tack begin marching from Jepara toward Kediri to suppress the Trunajaya rebellion that had driven out the Mataram Sultan. They are joined by two other columns of troops over the next fortnight.
• 1679A 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Armenia strikes near Yerevan, at the time part of the Persian Empire.
• 1679The 8.0 magnitude Sanhe-Pinggu earthquake devastates Beijing and Hebei in China.

Middle East3

• 1671The Ottoman Empire declares war on Poland.
• 1672The Treaty of Buchach, between the Ottoman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, is signed.
• 1676The Treaty of Żurawno is signed, between the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire and Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Latin America2

• 1671Henry Morgan's Panama expedition – the city of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Panamá, founded more than 150 years earlier at the Isthmus of Panama by Spanish settlers and the first permanent European settlement on the Pacific Ocean, is destroyed by the Welsh pirate Henry Morgan. The last surviving original structures are now part of Panama City, capital of the Central American nation of Panama.
• 1676Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, the oldest institution of higher education in Central America, is founded.

Africa1

• 1670The Battle of Kitombo takes place in southwest Africa in Angola, when colonial soldiers of the Army of Portugal invade Soyo, an independent BaKongo kingdom, with the intent of annexing it to Portuguese West Africa. The 400 Portuguese troops, led by João Soares de Almeida, encounter a stiff resistance. Soyo's Estevao da Silva, whose army has the benefit of weapons supplied by the Dutch Republic, is joined in battle by troops from the neighboring Kingdom of Ngoyo on the other side of the Congo River. General Soares de Almeida is killed, and most of his troops die or are captured; Soyo's General da Silva is killed in the process of winning the battle. Because of the defeat, Portugal makes no further attempt to conquer Soyo or Ngoyo.