Events of 1702

January–June

• 12 January – In America, ships from Fort Maurepas arrive at Twenty-Seven Mile Bluff to build Fort Louis de la Mobile (future Mobile, Alabama) to become the capital of French Louisiana.
• 8 March (O.S.) – William III dies; Princess Anne Stuart becomes Queen Anne of England, Scotland and Ireland. Anne is the mother of 17 children by her husband Prince George of Denmark but none of them will survive childhood and she will die without heir to enable the Hanoverian Succession. In the Netherlands, the Staten Generaal do not appoint a new stadtholder and so the United Provinces become a true republic again.
• 11 March (O.S.) – The first regular English language newspaper, The Daily Courant. is published for the first time.
• May – Warsaw is conquered by Charles XII of Sweden, who later the same year defeats Poland again at the Battle of Kliszow.
• 4–14 May – The War of the Spanish Succession widens, as war is declared on France by the Grand Alliance.
• June – Queen Anne's Captain-General John Churchill forces the surrender of Kaiserswerth on the Rhine.

July–December

• September – Churchill forces the surrender of Venlo on the Meuse River.
• 27 October – English troops plunder St. Augustine in Florida.
• October – Sir George Rooke fails to take Cádiz, but captures a Spanish treasure fleet and destroys French and Spanish warships. Churchill forces the surrender of Liège.
• 14 December – John Churchill is created Duke of Marlborough.

Undated

• Delaware designated a separate colony.
• Queen Anne's War (1702–1713). The second of the North American Wars fought from 1689 to 1763, it is concurrent with the War of the Spanish Succession in Europe but is entirely due to the unresolved commercial and colonial rivalry between Great Britain and France.
• The British East India Company buys control of the New (or English) Company that was set up as a rival trading organisation in 1698. An Act of Parliament then amalgamates the two as "The United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies". The charter will be renewed several times in the 18th century, each time with financial concessions to the Crown.

Births

• January 14 – Emperor Nakamikado of Japan (d. 1737)
• February 10 – Carlo Marchionni, Italian architect (d. 1786)
• March 4 – Jack Sheppard, British burglar and escapee (d. 1724)
• March 27 – Johann Ernst Eberlin, German composer (d. 1762)
• May 2 – Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, German theologian (d. 1782)
• June 26 – Philip Doddridge, English religious leader (d. 1751)
• July 31 – Jean Denis Attiret, French Jesuit missionary and painter (d. 1768)
• August 15 – Francesco Zuccarelli, painter, elected to the Venetian Academy in 1763 (d. 1788)
• November 5 – Grégoire Orlyk, Ukrainian-born French Lieutenant General (d. 1759)

Deaths

• March 8 (buried) – Jan de Baen, Dutch portrait painter (b. 1633)
• March 8 – William III of Orange/King William III of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland (b. 1650)
• April 23 – Margaret Fell, English Quaker leader (b. 1614)
• April 27 – Jean Bart, French admiral (b. 1651)
• May 27 – Dominique Bouhours, French critic (b. 1628)
• September 28 – Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland, English statesman (b. 1640)
• November 4 – John Benbow, English admiral (b. 1653)