| 1600 | English East India Company founded |
| 1601 | Elizabethan Poor Law passed (institutes parish relief) |
| 1607 | founding of Jamestown |
| 1620 | founding of Plymouth |
| 1630 | founding of Massachusetts Bay Colony |
| 1630s | the Great Migration |
| 1639-1640 | Bishops War |
| 1642-1649 | English Civil War/ War of the Three Kingdoms |
| 1649 | execution of Charles I |
| 1651 | Navigation Acts (mercantilism) |
| 1655 | Britain seizes Jamaica from Spain |
| 1660 | Restoration of Charles II |
| 1664 | Britain takes New Amsterdam from the Dutch |
| 1666 | Great Fire of London Newton's gravity theory and three laws of motion published > debate |
| 1698 | founding and failure of the Darien Colony (Scots) |
| 1702-1714 | War of the Spanish Succession |
| 1704 | Britain takes Gibraltar |
| 1707 | Act of Union (England and Scotland) > Kingdom of Great Britain |
| 1733 | Georgia founded |
| 1738 | rise of Methodism |
| 1739-1748 | War of Jenkins Ear/ War of the Austrian Succession |
| 1756-1763 | Seven Years War > territorial gains for Britain |
| 1765 | beginnings of territorial empire in India |
| 1770 | Cook's first voyage |
| 1776 | Declaration of Independence |
| 1788 | first fleet of convicts arrives in New South Wales |
| 1800 | Act of Union (Great Britain and Ireland) > United Kingdom |
| 1805 | Battle of Trafalgar |
| 1807 | abolition of the slave trade |
| 1812-1814 | War of 1812 |
| 1815 | end of Napoleonic Wars; territorial gains for Britain |
| 1833 | abolition of slavery and emancipation (1834) |
| 1839-1842 | first Anglo-Chinese (Opium) War |
| 1845-1849 | Great Famine (Ireland) |