I think, therefore I am.
- René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason in the Search for Truth in the Sciences.
I have a truly marvelous proof of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.
- Pierre de Fermat, note in the margin of his copy of Claude-Gaspar Bachet's translation of the Arithmetica of Diophantus.
In the year AD 1637...
- The Thirty Years' War enters its 19th year.
- The Dutch under Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange recapture the town of Breda from the Spanish after a celebrated four months siege.
- Meanwhile, the sickly Duc de Rohan is forced into retreat, abandoning the Valtellina to the protestant Grisons.
- Battling the Imperials in central Germany, Swedish general Johan Banér finds himself overextended, short on supplies, and outnumbered 2 to 1 by the enemy. When Austrian forces under Matthias, Graf von Gallas are detached from the Rhineland front to try to press the advantage against the Swedes, Banér is forced into headlong retreat, and only a series of brilliant feints and misdirections prevents his army from being annihilated before he can escape to sea. The year closes with the Swedes all but evicted from the continent, clinging precariously to only a tiny swath of land along the coast in Pomerania.
- In other news, the last Duke of Pomerania, Bogislav XIV, dies without issue, ending Pomerania's existence as an independent Dutchy. The territory is awarded to the elector of Brandenburg, but is actually occupied by the Swedes until 1648.
- The Shimabara Rebellion errupts in Japan as disaffected peasants led by messianic Christian convert Amakusa Shiro revolt against heavy taxes.
- The Pequot War errupts in New England between the Pequot tribe and their Naragansett and Mohegan allies and the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies. Hundreds of Native Americans are killed in the fighting, and hundreds more are sold into slavery, eliminating the Pequot as a viable polity in southern New England.
- The Manchus invade Korea for a second time, finally succeeding in subduing the Choson Dynasty and making Korea a vassal state of the Manchu Empire.
- The Dutch Government bans banks from using tulip bulbs as collateral for loan, setting off a panic that brings an end to the Dutch Tulip Bubble.
- French philosopher René Descartes publishes his most famous work, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason in the Search for Truth in the Sciences.
- French mathemetician Pierre de Fermat makes a notation in the margin of a book claiming to have proof of what would become known as Fermat's Last Theorem.
- English king Charles I imposes the English Book of Common Prayer on the Scots in an effort to strengthen the Anglican Church's influence in Scotland, seting in motion a series of events which will culminate in the Bishops' Wars of 1639 and 1640.
- John Winthrop ousts Henry Vane as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and puts dissident Bible study group leader Anne Hutchinson on trial for heresy. Hutchinson is found guilty and banished from the colony.
- John Milton writes "Lycidas," one of his greatest poems, a pastoral elegy upon the death of his dear friend Edward King in a shipwreck off the Irish coast.
- Portuguese explorer Pedro Teixeira embarks on the first significant exploration up the Amazon River.
- A group of Dutch and Swedish investors establish the trading company Nya Sverige, whose agents will later settle Deleware and purchase Manhattan island.
- The first public opera house opens in Venice.
These people were born in 1637...
These people died in 1637...
1636 - 1637 - 1638
17th century