1602

Events

January–March

January 3 – Battle of Kinsale: The English defeat Irish rebels and their Spanish allies.
February 2 – In London, the first known production of William Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night takes place.
March 20 – The United East India Company is established by the United Provinces States-General in Amsterdam, with the stated intention of capturing the spice trade from the Portuguese.

April–June

April 20 – The Danish–Icelandic Trade Monopoly is established.
May 25 – English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold, sailing in the Concord, becomes the first European at Cape Cod.
June 2 – Dutch explorer Joris van Spilbergen lands on the eastern side of the island of Sri Lanka, at Santhamuruthu, and begins the process of attempting to establish a relationship with the rulers of the Kingdom of Kandy.
June 3 – Anglo-Spanish War (1585) - Battle of Sesimbra Bay off of the coast of Portugal: Five galleons of the English Royal Navy defeat a larger force of Spanish Navy ships.
June 5 – James Lancaster's East India Company fleet arrives at Achin, Sumatra to deal with the local ruler. Having defeated Portugal's ally, the ruler is happy to do business, and Lancaster seizes a large Portuguese galleon and loots it.
June 17 – An expedition of 14 Dutch Republic ships, commanded by Admiral Wybrand van Warwijck, departs from Texel on its expedition to the East Indies.
June 18 – Nine Years' War (Ireland): Dunboy Castle in Ireland is taken by the English after 143 Irish defenders had withstood an 11-day siege by more than 4,000 English soldiers under the command of Sir George Carew. Of the 143 soldiers, who had been loyal to Donal Cam O'Sullivan Beare, 85 are killed in the siege, and the 58 survivors are hanged after the English victory.

July–September

July 7 – The German duchy of Saxe-Altenburg, with a capital at Altenburg, is created as a separate duchy as a gift to Johann Philipp, the eldest son of his father Johann II, Duke of Saxe-Weimar.
July 26 – William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet, recently premiered by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, is licensed for publishing in London but not in fact printed at this time.
July 29 – Juan de Zúñiga Flores, Bishop of Cartagena, becomes the Grand Inquisitor of Spain but serves for only five months before his death at the age of 55.
August 22 – Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak, the prime minister for India's Mughal Emperor Akbar, is assassinated at Narwar as part of a plot by Emperor Akbar's son, Prince Salim, who will later succeed Akbar as Emperor Jahangir. Abu'l-Fazl's killer, Vir Singh Bundela, sends the victim's severed head to Prince Salim as proof of the plot's success.
September 1 – The Mutiny of Hoogstraten, a rebellion by soldiers of the Army of Flanders, begins with the seizure by 3,000 disgruntled mercenaries of the town of Hoogstraten. The mutineers hold the town for almost two years before surrendering on 18 May 1604.
September 10 – Rory O'Donnell becomes the last Irish King of Tyrconnell upon the death of his brother, Hugh Roe O'Donnell. After less than a year, Rory allows Tyrconnell to come under Irish control in return for being created the Earl of Tyrconnell.
September 12 – King Sigismund III Vasa of Poland receives the delivery of eight specially woven Persian carpets displaying Poland's royal coat of arms, after having dispatched agent Sefer Muratowicz to Kashan.
September 20 – The siege of the Spanish Netherlands town of De Graaf ends after two months as a Dutch and English army forces the surrender of the Spanish defenders.
September 30 – The siege of Weissenstein, a Swedish town that is now Paide in Estonia, ends after four months with a victory of 2,000 Polish and Lithuanian troops commanded by Jan Zamoyski, the Great Crown Hetman of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

October–December

October 3 – Battle of the Narrow Seas: An English fleet, joined by the Dutch, begins a pursuit of six Spanish galleys through the Strait of Dover, and defeats them the next day.
November 8 – The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford in England is opened.
December 11 – A surprise attack by forces under the command of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, and his brother-in-law, Philip III of Spain, is repelled by the citizens of Geneva.

Ongoing

Date unknown

The Portuguese are expelled from Bahrain.
The Safavid Empire of Persia and the Spanish Empire conclude a defensive alliance and declare war on the Ottoman Empire.
First publication, in London, of:
* Ben Jonson's satirical comedy Poetaster.
* William Shakespeare's comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor.
* The play A Larum for London, or the Siedge of Antwerp.
Copies are printed of the geographical map of East Asia created by Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit stationed in Ming dynasty Beijing, China, with Chinese-written labeling and map symbols.
The iconoclast and Confucian scholar Li Zhi commits suicide while in a Chinese prison, during the late Ming dynasty; he had taught that women were the intellectual equals of men and should be given equal opportunity in education; he was charged with spreading "dangerous ideas".