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Spain's Felipe V joins the Quadruple Alliance of Britain, France, Holland, and Austria in January. He signs the Treaty of The Hague February 17 giving up his Italian claims in return for an Austrian promise that his son Carlos will succeed to Parma, Piacenza, and Tuscany (see Treaty of London, 1718). The Holy Roman Emperor Karl VI gives up his claims to Spain, and Savoy receives Sardinia from Austria in return for Sicily (see 1713), but Austria's Hapsburg family will rule Sicily only until 1734.
The Peace of Frederiksborg gives Denmark's Frederik IV assurance of British and French support for his country's sole possession of the duchy of Schleswig, whose administration is to remain separate.
Sweden's Ulrika Eleanora abdicates in favor of her husband, Friedrich of Hesse, 44, who will reign until 1751 as Frederik I, but a new constitution strips the new king of much of his power. Sweden's House of Nobles will largely control affairs of state through the new reign.
Assassins kill Husein Ali Sayyid, and his brother Abdullah is defeated at the Battle of Hasanpur southwest of Delhi, liberating the Mughal emperor Mohammad Shah from Sayyid control (see 1719). Abdullah is succeeded as vizier in January by Muhammad Amin Khan, who dies later in the month; Nizam-ul-Mulk will serve as vizier until Amin Khan's son Qamar-ud-Din comes of age in July 1724. The emperor Muhammad Shah will marry the daughter of the late emperor Farrukh-Siyar next year, but his laxity will allow the empire to become prey to Afghan Rohilla tribesmen and to the Maratha and Persians (see 1739).
A Chinese imperial army invades Tibet and Bhutan, establishing Chinese sovereignty over both (see 1772).
Britain's "South Sea Bubble" collapses, producing widespread financial losses and a loss of confidence by investors in distant overseas enterprises (see 1719). Share prices have soared to £1,050 each, but the asiento concession granted in 1713 has proved disappointing and so has the monopoly in British trade with Spanish America. Rumors have spread in August that the company's directors were quietly selling their shares, whose price falls to £180 by late September. Whig leader Charles Sunderland resigns his positions (president of the Privy Council and first lord of the Treasury), which are assumed by Sir Robert Walpole, who despite his warning last year has actually profited from speculations in the South Sea scheme. But many investors (including mathematician Sir Isaac Newton) lose everything (see 1721). George I gives assent to the establishment of the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation and the London Assurance Corporation, both being set up "exclusive of all other corporations and societies" (see 1696). The king has allegedly received a £300,000 bribe for granting the monopoly, but "private and particular persons" are permitted to operate as underwriters outside the new corporations, whose officers will have trouble persuading experienced underwriters to join them.
John Law wins appointment as controller-general with power over the entire French economy (see 1719), but his so-called Mississippi Company has failed to attract reputable emigrants, New Orleans remains no more than a dismal collection of wooden shacks, Law's grandiose scheme turns out to be a speculative stock fraud much like the South Sea Company, and although the company has increased shipping between France and New Orleans and has brought some colonization of Louisiana, the government has been erratic in printing money and changed its policies from week to week. The collapse of the "Mississippi Bubble" (or "Mississippi Scheme") ruins many French investors (but not the regent for Louis XV, who has sold his stock in the venture at the height of the market). Threatened with hanging, Law escapes from prison and flees the country, leaving behind his wife and virtually all of his wealth, but he has played a key role in demonstrating the flexibility afforded by paper currency, and his demonstration that money can be created by bank or government fiat has established what will hereafter come to be the basis of finance in most of the world (see Britain, 1811).
The cupola furnace devised by naturalist René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur will survive as the most economical and widely used process for melting gray iron.
Concerning the Size and Shape of the Earth (De la grandeur et de la figure de la terre) by astronomer Jacques Cassini, now 43, supports the theory that the Earth is an elongated sphere (see 1712; 1740).
Marseilles has an epidemic of plague; more than 50,000 die in western Europe's last major outbreak of the Black Death.
A famine in Sicily weakens the population of Messina, and thousands there die in a typhus epidemic.
Japan's shōgun Yoshimune Tokugawa removes the century-old ban on importing European books, although he continues the prohibition against religious books. A small group of Japanese begins to study Dutch and, through such studies, to gain a knowledge of Western science, especially of medicine.
Scholar-antiquary-scientist Bishop Pierre-Daniel Huet dies at Paris January 26 at age 90.
Fiction: Memoirs of a Cavalier and Life, Adventures, and Pyracies, of the Famous Captain Singleton by Daniel Defoe, whose latter work is based on the career of the late English buccaneer John Avery, who died at Bideford, Devonshire, sometime after 1696.
Juvenile: the English nursery rhyme "Little Jack Horner" is published for the first time. Horner is believed to have been one Thomas Horner, who was sent by the abbott of Glastonbury to Henry VIII in 1543 with a placating gift of a pie containing deeds to valuable manors owned by the monastery (since Horner's family soon came into possession of a manor it is thought that Horner extracted one deed from the pie for himself).
Painting: Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew by Venetian painter Giambattista (Giovanni Battista) Tiepolo, 24.
Theater: Robin, Bachelor of Love (Arlequin poli par l'amour) by French essayist-playwright Pierre (Carlet) de Marivaux, 32, 10/17 at the Théâtre Italien, Paris. Marivaux has been ruined by the bankruptcy of John Law's Mississippi Company, but his comedy, derived from the Italian commedia dell'arte, launches him on a successful theatrical career; The Love Suicides at Amijima (Shinju ten no Amijima) by Monzaemon Chikamatsu at Osaka.
London's Royal Academy of Music names George Frideric Handel director and presents his oratorio Esther.
Belgian composer Jean Adam Joseph Faber uses the clarinet (chalumeau) for the first time in a serious work.
Parliament authorizes use of workhouses for confining Britain's petty offenders.
Irish-born pirate Anne Bonny, 21, and her shipmate Mary Read are brought to trial in the Jamaican town of St. Jago de la Vega (later Spanish Town). They have sailed with "Calico Jack" Rackam out of New Providence, Bahamas (see 1718), and one Dorothy Thomas testifies against them, saying, "Each of them had a machete and pistol in their hands, and cursed and swore at the men, to murder the deponent [Dorothy Thomas]; and that they should kill her to prevent her coming against them" (see 1721).
Venice's Caffè Florian opens on the Piazza San Marco, where its immovable marble tables will attract visitors for more than 275 years. Proprietor Floriano Francesconi initially calls his coffeehouse the Caffè Venezia Triomphante, but patrons are soon saying, "Let's meet at Florian's" (the final "o" is dropped in the Venetian dialect), and Francesconi puts up a new sign that reads, "Caffè Florian."
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