1655
English Capture Jamaica
An English expeditionary force, having failed to seize Hispaniola, consoled itself by taking the lightly defended Spanish island of Jamaica. It would become the richest sugar island in the British Empire, a haven for pirates, and in the eighteenth century the largest slave port of the Caribbean. The island's brutal plantation economy would produce both enormous wealth and bottomless suffering.
Swedish Deluge Begins
Swedish armies under Charles X invaded Poland-Lithuania and devastated it from north to south, sacking Warsaw and Krakow and driving the king into exile. The Polish Commonwealth lost perhaps a third of its population to war, plague, and famine. The seventeenth century was burying Poland under snow, and the once-mighty Commonwealth would never regain its former strength.
Queen Nzinga Dies in Matamba
Ana de Sousa Nzinga, the warrior queen of Ndongo and Matamba who had fought the Portuguese slave trade for four decades, died at the age of eighty-one. She had led armies in person, forged alliances with the Dutch, and converted strategically to Christianity. Central Africa had lost its most formidable diplomat and its most dangerous adversary.
Huygens Discovers Titan
The Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, using an improved telescope he had ground himself, noticed a moon orbiting Saturn and named it, unhelpfully, Luna Saturni. It was the first new satellite discovered since Galileo's Jovian moons forty-five years earlier. Huygens would go on to describe Saturn's rings properly in 1659, solving one of the most puzzling sights in the night sky.
Cromwell Readmits Jews to England
Oliver Cromwell quietly permitted Jewish merchants and their families to return to England after an exile of three hundred and sixty-six years. No formal edict was published; instead, individual permissions accumulated. The readmission was driven as much by Puritan millenarianism and commercial pragmatism as by any enlightened tolerance, but it reopened a door that Edward I had slammed shut in 1290.
Want 1655 in context? Print the whole 17th century as a one-sheet timeline chart.
Frequently asked
What happened in the year 1655?
Saeculum lists 5 curated events from 1655. The most significant is English Capture Jamaica: An English expeditionary force, having failed to seize Hispaniola, consoled itself by taking the lightly defended Spanish island of Jamaica.
What era was 1655 part of?
1655 falls within the Enlightenment (1651-1800). Reason, revolution, and the first global wars.
Which regions saw notable events in 1655?
The curated events from 1655 span North America, Europe and Africa.