The Lao kingdom of Lan Xang has for centuries maintained its independence through a complex network of vassal relations with lesser princes.

Suliyavongsa, the king of Lan Xang during its golden age of prosperity, had welcomed the first European visitors to Laos.

Having ascended the throne in 1637 at a time of dynastic conflict and instability, Suliyavongsa had authoritatively restored peace and delimited Lan Xang's frontiers with its neighbors.

Dutch visitors to his capital, Vientiane, in the 1640s, and Italian Jesuits in the 1660s, described a vigorous, powerful, and prosperous kingdom.

Suliyavongsa's execution of his crown prince for a romantic indiscretion leaves the kingdom without an immediate heir to the throne, and on the king’s death in 1694, Lan Xang falls prey to a series of rival pretenders to its throne.

As a result of the ensuing struggles, the kingdom informally ends and splits into three rival polities—Vientiane, ...

...Luang Phrabang, and ...

...Champasak.

Spener obtains positions for his disciples, the philosophers Christian Thomasius and August Hermann Francke, the founder of the Pietistic school, at the new University of Halle, founded on a Pietist basis by the Elector of Brandenburg in 1694,

The University of Halle, which has been described as the first real modern university, originated in a Ritterschule, or “knight's school,” imitative of the schools for chevaliers in France, and in 1694 the Holy Roman emperor Leopold I grants it a charter.

The primary object in founding a university in Halle is to create a center for the Lutheran party; but its character, under the influence of its two most notable teachers, Thomasius and Francke, will soon expand beyond the limits of this conception.

Thomasius is the first to set the example of lecturing in the vernacular instead of the customary Latin; this is a declaration of war against Scholasticism.

Maximilian II Emanuel's marriage in 1694 to Teresa Kunigunda Sobieska, daughter of John III, opens the possibility of the Polish succession.

Having sided with the Habsburgs during the War of the Grand Alliance, Maximilian Emanuel had been appointed governor of the Spanish Netherlands in 1692.

Through his marriage to Maria Antonia, a daughter of the emperor Leopold I, Maximilian Emanuel exercises some claim to the Habsburg succession; and his son, Joseph Ferdinand, is expected to inherit most of the Spanish possessions.

Maria Antonia died in 1692.

Venice, which has repulsed Ottoman attacks on Dalmatia for several decades after the Battle of Mohács in 1526, helps to push the Turks from the coastal area after 1693, ...

...capturing the Aegean island of Chios in 1694.

The Montenegrins’ loss of their influential prince-bishop (vladika) Visarion Bajica, and the destruction, at Turkish hands, of Cetinje monastery, is accompanied in the last decade of the seventeenth century by devastating illnesses and starvation.

In a search for new vladika, Montenegrins refuse to nominate candidates of Serbian Patriarch Arsenije III Carnojevic, as well as one put forth by Patriarch Kalinik of Pec, who considers the diocese of Cetinje to be under his jurisdiction.

In a traditional popular assembly in 1694, Montenegrins instead elect as the new vladika a native son, Sava Kaludjerovic of Ocinici.

Swiss-German Mennonite leader Jacob Amman believes the Mennonites are drifting away from the teachings of Simons and the 1632 Mennonite Dordrecht Confession of Faith, particularly the practice of shunning excluded members (known as the ban or Meidung).

However, the Swiss Mennonites (who, because of unwelcoming conditions in Switzerland, are by now scattered throughout Alsace and the Palatinate) have never practiced strict shunning as the Lowland Anabaptists do.

Amman insists upon this practice, even to the point of expecting a spouse to refuse to sleep or eat with the banned member until he or she repents of his or her behavior.

This strict literalism brings about a division in the Swiss Mennonite movement in 1693 and leads to the establishment of the Amish. (Because the Amish are the result of a division with the Mennonites, some consider the Amish a conservative Mennonite group.)

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort had in 1688 received an appointment as professor at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, a position he is to hold until his death.

The French botanist and physician collects many plant species on scientific expeditions to the Pyrenees, Asia Minor, and Greece and acquired a wide reputation for his botanical works, particularly the beautifully illustrated Éléments de botanique (1694).

A pioneer in systematic botany, his system of plant classification represents a major advance in his day and remains, in some respects, valid to the present time.

Tournefort places primary emphasis on the classification of genera, basing his classification entirely upon the structure of the flower and fruit.

He is less innovative in theory, however, for he denies the sexuality of plants, and the classifications that he puts forward above the level of the genus are often artificial.

By his use of a single Latin name for the genus, followed by a few descriptive words for the species, he provides a major step in the development of the binomial nomenclature—that is, the use of a two-word Latin name to denote each species.