Overview
The 1660s were a decade of political restoration, violent conflict, urban catastrophe and cultural renewal across Europe and its overseas empires. In England the monarchy was restored, London was struck by both plague and fire, and Royal Society science and new literature flourished. At the same time naval wars, treaty settlements and imperial competition reshaped colonial possession and trade.
Politics and warfare
In 1660 the English monarchy returned with Charles II, ending the republican interlude and initiating a period of restored institutions and royal patronage. England fought the Dutch in the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1652–1674 phase), with major naval engagements during the mid‑1660s and a damaging Dutch raid on the Medway in 1667. Treaties such as Breda (1667) and Andrusovo (1667) settled several European and eastern‑European conflicts. Meanwhile Louis XIV of France consolidated personal rule from 1661 and expanded centralized administration and mercantile policy under ministers such as Jean‑Baptiste Colbert.
Urban disaster and public health
Two of the era’s most famous calamities occurred in London: the Great Plague (1665–1666), which killed a significant fraction of the city’s population, and the Great Fire of London in 1666, which destroyed much of the medieval city core. The fire prompted large‑scale rebuilding, new regulations for streets and buildings, and architectural responses that shaped later urban planning.
Science, letters and the arts
The decade saw notable scientific and literary achievements. The Royal Society, emerging into formal chartered status, fostered experiments and publications. Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1665) brought detailed microscopic observations to a wide readership. John Milton published Paradise Lost in 1667; Samuel Pepys’s diary (1660–1669) provides a vivid contemporary account of events. In painting and music, the late Dutch Golden Age and continental baroque trends continued—Rembrandt worked into the late 1660s while opera and court music grew in France and Italy.
Global context and colonies
Overseas, European rivalry intensified: the English captured New Netherland and renamed it New York (formalized in the 1660s), while colonial charters and companies expanded settlement in North America and the Caribbean. In East Asia, Koxinga’s seizure of Dutch Fort Zeelandia in 1662 ended Dutch rule of Taiwan. The Ottoman–Venetian Cretan War ended in 1669 with the Ottoman capture of Candia (Heraklion), marking a shift in Mediterranean control. The decade was marked by growing Atlantic trade, mercantilist policies and the continuing, tragic expansion of forced labor systems.
Notable events
- 1660: Restoration of Charles II in England.
- 1662: Publication of Robert Boyle’s and Robert Hooke’s influential works; cultural revival.
- 1665–66: Great Plague and Great Fire of London.
- 1667: Treaty of Breda and Dutch raid on the Medway.
- 1662: Koxinga expels the Dutch from Taiwan.
- 1669: Ottoman conquest of Candia ends the long Cretan War.
The 1660s thus combined restoration and reform, crisis and creativity, and set patterns—political, scientific and imperial—that shaped the late seventeenth century.