Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga (or "Francisco Felipe Faxicura", as he was baptized in Spain) was a Japanese samurai and retainer of Date Masamune, the daimyo of Sendai. In the years 1613 through 1620, Hasekura headed a diplomatic mission to...

Frederick de Houtman was a Dutch explorer, navigator, and colonial governor who sailed along the coastal regions of western Australia on the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies from 1595 until 1597, during which time he made observati...

Jacques Specx was a Dutch merchant, who founded the trade on Japan and Korea in 1609. Jacques Specx received the support of William Adams to obtain extensive trading rights from the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu on August 24, 1609, which allowed h...

Jan Pieterszoon Coen was an officer of Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the early seventeenth century, holding two terms as its Governor-General in the Dutch East Indies. He was long considered a national hero in the Netherlands, for provi...

Shah Jahan was the fifth Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1628 to 1658. He was widely considered to be the most competent of Emperor Jahangir's four sons and after Jahangir's death in late 1627, when a war of succession ensued, Shah Jahan e...

Mikhail I Fyodorovich Romanov was the first Russian Tsar of the house of Romanov. He was the son of Feodor Nikitich Romanov (later known as Patriarch Filaret) and Xenia (later known as "the great nun" Martha). His reign marked the end of th...

Aurangzeb Alamgir and by his imperial title Alamgir ("world-seizer or universe-seizer") was the sixth Mughal Emperor and ruled over most of the Indian subcontinent. His reign lasted for 49 years from 1658 until his death in 1707. Aurangzeb...

Shivaji Bhonsle was an Indian warrior king and a member of the Bhonsle Maratha clan, Shivaji, in 1674, carved out an enclave from the declining Adilshahi sultanate of Bijapur that formed the genesis of an independent Maratha kingdom with Ra...

Father of Peter the Great. Alexey Mikhailovich Romanov was a Tsar of Russia during some of the most eventful decades of the mid-17th century. The son of Tsar Mikhail I and Eudoxia Streshneva, he was sixteen years old at the time of his fath...

Hendrick Hamel was the first Westerner to provide a first hand account of Joseon Korea. After spending thirteen years there, he wrote "Hamel's Journal and a Description of the Kingdom of Korea, 1653-1666," which was subsequently published i...

The Kangxi Emperor was the third emperor of the Qing Dynasty and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper, from 1661 to 1722. Kangxi's reign of 61 years makes him the longest-reigning Chinese emperor in history (although his grands...

Grigory Dmitriyevich Stroganov was a Russian landowner and statesman, the most notable member of the prominent Stroganov family in the late 17th century-early 18th century, a strong supporter of the reforms and initiatives of Peter the Grea...

Feodor III of Russia was the Tsar of all Russia between 1676 and 1682. Fyodor was born in Moscow, the eldest surviving son of Tsar Alexis and Maria Miloslavskaya. In 1676, at the age of fifteen, he succeeded his father on the throne. He was...

Charles II (Spanish: Carlos II) was the last Habsburg ruler of Spain. His realm included Southern Netherlands and Spain's overseas empire, stretching from the Americas to the Spanish East Indies. Known as "the Bewitched" (Spanish: el Hechiz...

Ivan V Alekseyevich Romanov was a joint Tsar of Russia (with his younger half-brother Peter I) who co-reigned between 1682 and 1696. He was the youngest son of Alexis I of Russia and Maria Miloslavskaya. His reign was only formal, since he...