Hendrick Zwaardecroon was responsible for the ruthless repression in 1721 of the so-called conspiracy of Pieter Erberfelt, who, it had been claimed (probably falsely), had been plotting to expel the Dutch from the Indies.

Zwaardecroon had gone to the Indies in 1684 as secretary to the commissioner-general of the Dutch East India Company and advanced steadily until he was appointed governor-general in 1718, when the company was in serious financial difficulties.

He has taken harsh steps to halt smuggling and, more constructively, introduced new products into Java and expanded trade with China.

He has stimulated the production of indigo, improved cotton cultivation, and encouraged the production of sappanwood (from the tree Caesalpina sappan), used for dye.

Most important, he has imported the coffee tree, a future staple of the economy. 

The Gǔjīn Túshū Jíchéng ("Complete Collection of Illustrations and Writings from the Earliest to Current Times"), a vast encyclopedic work written in China during the reigns of Qing emperors Kangxi and Yongzheng, completed in 1725, had been headed initially by scholar Chen Menglei, and later by Jiang Tingxi.

One of the Yongzheng Emperor's brothers had patronized the project for a while, although Yongzheng contrives to give exclusive credit to his father Kangxi instead.

It contains eight hundred thousand pages and over one hundred million Chinese characters.

Topics covered include natural phenomena, geography, history, literature and government.

It is meanwhile discovered that Nian had engaged in secret correspondence with Yintang, the Emperor's brother and political rival.

His plea for leave being denied, Nian is, at the end of May, transferred to the post of Tartar General at Hangzhou.

The armies he once commanded come under the control of Yue Zhongqi.

As accusations accumulate from his former friends and officials, Nian is in a few months progressively degraded in rank until he becomes merely a bannerman-at-large.

In November, he is arrested and taken under escort to Beijing.

The Great Northern War, in which the overambitious Augustus II, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, had embroiled Poland, has ruined the country economically.

A crushing defeat of Sweden by Peter I (the Great) of Russia at the Battle of Poltava (Ukraine, Russian Empire) in 1709 had eventually restored Augustus II to the throne but made him dependent on the tsar.

Augustus, having failed to strengthen his position through war and territorial acquisitions, contemplates domestic reforms while his entourage plays with the idea of a coup backed by Saxon troops.

Russia in 1716 and 1717 had intervened in an internal dispute between Augustus and dissident Polish nobles (Confederation of Tarnogród).

A settlement at the “silent Sejm” surrounded by Russian troops had removed Saxon contingents from Poland, but it had brought about certain reforms.

After Peter annexed Livonia in 1720, the king had seen the danger of Russia's growing influence in Polish affairs.

Subsequent attempts by Augustus to mount a coalition against the rising might of Russia founder on the distrust of the king's motives.

He had even been suspected of plotting partitions of the Commonwealth.

During the remaining years of his reign, Augustus's main preoccupation is to ensure the succession of his one legitimate son, Frederick Augustus II (eventually king of Poland as Augustus III), and to secure other lands for his many illegitimate children, but his hopes of establishing a strong hereditary monarchy will come to naught.

The “Saxon Era,” which lasts for more than sixty years, marks the lowest point in Polish history.

The neighboring states had signed agreements among themselves to promote weakness within the Commonwealth, as for instance the Austro-Russian accord of 1675 and the Swedish-Brandenburg pacts of 1686 and 1696, which have been followed by others in the 1720s.

Foreign interlopers corrupt politicians and foment disorder.

Attempts at reform are stymied by the determination of the szlachta to preserve their "golden freedoms" as well as the liberum veto, the use of which has paralyzed ten out of eighteen Sejms during the reign of Augustus II.

A Protestant-Catholic riot in Torun in 1724 had resulted in Protestant officials' being sentenced to death.

Prussian and Russian propagandists speak of a “bloodbath” and use the situation as an opportunity to denounce Polish intolerance.

Posing as a protector of non-Catholics, St. Petersburg is in fact using them as a political instrument.

Polish politics, ways, and manners, as well as declining education and rampant religious bigotry, are increasingly pictured as exotically anachronistic.

The Polish nobles have become the laughingstock of Europe.

Because the promises John Casimir had made during the darkest days of Swedish invasion to improve the lot of the peasantry have remained empty, the oppressed peasants are largely alienated from the nation.

The city of Tabriz is in 1724–1725 again occupied by the Ottomans, who massacre two hundred thousand of its inhabitants.

The city will be later retaken by Persian forces.

The Ottoman Empire, backed by Britain, disputes Russia’s Caspian Sea acquisitions.

The confrontation threatens to blow up into a direct Russo-Turkish war, but this is avoided by the Treaty of Constantinople of 1724, by which the Ottomans receive western Persia (occupying Tabriz, ...

...Kermanshah, and ...

...Hamadan in 1724-25), and ...

...the Russians, northern Persia (holding three Caspian regions and captured territories.)

This is perhaps the first such imposition of precise boundaries by European powers on an Islamic state.

Tahmasp II, as the representative of the ousted Safavid dynasty, controls the provinces of Mazandaran and ...