1628 - Commerce

Commerce

Chinese peasants in Shenxi (Shensi) Province revolt under the leadership of a 22-year-old firebrand who will become known as the Yellow Tiger. Ming dynasty tax collectors have continued to make their rounds despite a ruinous famine that has left most farmers unable to pay, but Zhang Xianzhong (Chang Hsien-chung) gathers a guerrilla force that will raid villages for the next 16 years, plundering northern China as their numbers grow, and although they will be bought off on occasion and meet with defeat at the hands of government troops, they will retreat into the hills, regroup, and resume their hit-and-run raids, putting hundreds of thousands (and perhaps millions) of people to death (see 1644).

English patriots who include Sir John Eliot and John Pym denounce the arbitrary taxation imposed by Charles I and force a Petition of Right upon him (see 1627; 1629).

Puritans obtain a patent for the Massachusetts Bay colony with help from Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, and Salem is founded on Massachusetts Bay by some 50 Puritan colonists; they arrive in September with John Endecott, 39, who with five other Englishmen has bought a patent to the territory from the Plymouth Council in England and will serve as first governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony until 1630 (see exploration, colonization [Cambridge Agreement], 1629).

The Dutch West India Company founded in 1621 declares a 50 percent dividend after its freebooting admiral Piet Heyn surrounds and captures a Spanish silver fleet August 8 off the Cuban coast, seizing at least 8 million guilders of silver (see politics [Heyn], 1627). The 4 million ducats (12 million gulden) that he takes will provide the wherewithal for the Dutch Republic to pursue its struggle for control of the Spanish Lowlands. Heyn scores another triumph in September at Cuba's Matanzas Bay by capturing part of a Spanish fleet carrying the annual shipment of gold, silver, and other metals from the mines of New Spain (Mexico) and Peru.

The London Company sends ships directly to the Persian Gulf, antagonizing the Levant Company.