The Anglo-Dutch conflicts have proved useful for the VOC for driving out its competitors, the EIC, from the Indonesian archipelago, by force of arms.

According to the Treaty of Westminster ending the First Anglo-Dutch War of 1652–1654, Pulo Run, the only English factory in the Spice Island, should have been returned to England.

The first attempt in 1660 had failed due to formal constraints by the Dutch; after the second in 1665, the English traders are expelled in the same year and the Dutch destroy the nutmeg trees, excluding the English from the clove trade.

The Japan trade loses most of its importance for the VOC when in 1668 the Shogun embargoes the export of silver, with which the VOC have been using to finance most of its spice trade.

As Spanish bullion is now again easily obtainable for the Dutch, this does not greatly impede the VOC.

The emotion aroused by the false messiah throughout the diaspora, well beyond the Ottoman domains, has made the political loyalty of the Jewish community suspect in the eyes of the sultan.

From the second half of the seventeenth centuryGreeks and Armenians, not Jews, hold the most important posts in the empire.

The Royal Charter of March 27, 1668, leads to the transfer of Bombay from Charles II to the British East India Company on September 21, 1668, for an annual rent of ten pounds (equivalent retail price index of twelve hundred and twenty-six pounds in 2007).

Two days later, George Oxenden becomes the first Governor of Bombay under the British East India Company, which immediately sets about the task of opening up the islands by constructing a quay and warehouses.

A customs house is also built, and fortifications are built around Bombay Castle.

A Judge-Advocate is appointed for the purpose of civil administration.

The VOC is by 1669 the richest private company the world had ever seen, with over one hundred and fifty merchant ships, forty warships, fifty thousand employees, a private army of ten thousand soldiers, and a dividend payment of forty percent on the original investment.

The Dutch government, because of the importance of the French market to its national economy, at first tries to ignore the hostile policies of Colbert.

Its inaction is also caused by differences of opinion about how best to proceed within the States Party.

Amsterdam, and especially the Amsterdam diplomat Coenraad van Beuningen, argue in favor of firm economic countermeasures against the French economic policies, together with the forming of a defensive alliance with Spain and the Holy Roman Empire.

De Witt, however, prefers the avoidance of such foreign entanglements and a conciliatory approach in the economic sphere.

The industrial cities of Leiden and Haarlem, their economic interests severely damaged by the French protectionism, side with Amsterdam in support of a more belligerent diplomacy.

After promising the Rotterdam regents compensation for the damage to their wine trade to win their assent, the States of Holland settle in 1671 on severe retaliatory measures against French imports, in effect banning French wine, vinegar, paper, and sail-canvas, setting the stage set for war.

Friedrich Jacob Merck, an apothecary in Schweinfurt, Germany, in 1668 purchases the "Engel-Apotheke" (Angel Pharmacy) in Darmstadt.

The Merck family is to start the company that will eventually become both Merck KGaA and Merck and Company.

The Sheldonian Theatre, located in Oxford, England, has been built from 1664 to 1668 after a design by Christopher Wren for the University of Oxford.

Wren’s second work, the building is named after Gilbert Sheldon, chancellor of the university at the time and the project's main financial backer.

It is used for music concerts, lectures and university ceremonies, but not for drama.

The building has a prominent eight-sided cupola in the center of the roof, accessed via a staircase leading to the dome over the main ceiling.

The cupola’s large windows on all sides provide views across central Oxford, as they continue to do today.

Newton has been generally credited with constructing in 1668 the first practical reflecting telescope.

It uses a spherically ground metal primary mirror and a small diagonal mirror in an optical configuration that will come to be known as the Newtonian telescope.

Despite the theoretical advantages of the reflector design, the difficulty of construction and the poor performance of the speculum metal mirrors being used at the time means it will it take over one hundred years for these devices to become popular.

Dr. Isaac Barrow, Bishop of Sodor and Mann, shocked at the state of knowledge of the Manx clergy, decides that the best way to eradicate their ignorance is to found an institution to educate prospective clergymen.

He establishes The Bishop Barrow Trust in 1668 by with the idea of building a university on the Isle of Man. (It will not be until a hundred and seventy five years later, in 1833, that King William's College, a fee-paying Public school rather than a university, will open its doors.)