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Moscow and Constantinople sign a treaty for the dismemberment of Persia, whose territory they have invaded. Persia's Shah Mahmoud goes totally mad and orders a wholesale massacre at Isfahan (see 1723; 1725).
Qamar-ud-din assumes office as vizier of India's Mughal Empire in July, claiming his hereditary right as son of the late vizier Muhammad Amin Khan to the title vacated last year by Chin Qilich Khan, who found it impossible to reform the corrupt administration of the emperor Muhammad Shah (see 1720). The emperor bows to the opinions of his consort Koki Jio and those of her relations and associates in affairs of state, so disgusting Chin Quilich Khan that he marches south in October and establishes the state of Hyderabad in the Deccan.
Russia's Peter the Great plunges into the icy Gulf of Finland in the autumn to rescue some soldiers in danger of drowning after their ship has run aground on a sandbank. He catches a chill, and as winter comes on the chill turns into a serious illness (see 1725).
Louisiana's territorial governor, the sieur de Bienville, proclaims a Code Noir for regulating the blacks and expelling the Jews.
Black slaves outnumber whites two to one in the South Carolina colony, where importation has increased on a vast scale to provide labor for the colony's rice fields. New arrivals from mangrove rice-growing areas of West Africa help move cultivation from the uplands to higher-yielding inland swamps, creating embankments, canals, and sluices like the ones they have known in Africa (see 1761).
Rhode Island establishes property ownership qualifications for voters, but owning property does not qualify a woman to vote.
Philadelphia artisans establish a craft guild along the lines of European guilds that flourished in medieval times.
Former British chancellor of the exchequer Robert Harley, 1st earl of Oxford, dies at his native London May 21 at age 62.
The Female Physician by English physician John Maubray observes that the "Politer Part of the World" has already begun to put itself in the hands of men physicians rather than midwives and that the "middling classes" are doing likewise, but says of his colleagues, "I know some Chirurgeon-Practioners are too much acquainted with the Use of INSTRUMENTS to lay them aside; no, they do not [it may be] think of themselves in their Duty or proper Office, if they have not their cruel Accoutrements at Hand. And what is most unaccountable and unbecoming a Christian is that, when they have perhaps wounded the MOTHER, kill'd the INFANT, and with violent Torture and inexpressible Pain, drawn it out Piece-meal, they think no reward sufficient for such an extraordinary piece of mangled work."
Guy's Hospital founder Thomas Guy dies at his native London December 27 at age 79 or 80. A bookseller since 1668, he dealt mostly in bibles, made a fortune from printing and investments, became a director of St. Thomas's Hospital in 1704, paid for the construction 3 years later of three new wards, and when St. Thomas's remained overcrowded put up another hospital across the street, endowing it entirely out of his own pocket.
Pope Innocent XIII dies at Rome March 7 at age 68 after a reign of less than 3 years in which he has dealt firmly with Jansenists. He is succeeded by Pietro Francesco Cardinal Orsini, 75, who will reign until 1730 as Benedict XIII.
Anglican preacher Henry Sacheverell dies at London June 5 at age 49 (approximate).
Nonfiction: Treatise on First Truths and on the Source of Our Judgments (Traité des vérités premières et de la source do nos jugements) by Warsaw-born French Jesuit philosopher-historian-philologist Claude Buffier, 63, who rejects the à priori (deductive) method of reasoning espoused by the late René Descartes but uses a common-sense approach to seek out the ultimate principle of human knowledge. Buffier was exiled for 5 years beginning in 1696 for opposing his archbishop's support of Jansenism; The Origin of Myths (De l'Origine des fables) by Bernard de Fontenelle explores the psychological and intellectual roots of mythology. Fontenelle refutes popular beliefs and superstitions.
Fiction: Roxana, The Fortunate Mistress, or, a History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Beleau, afterwards called the Countess de Wintselsheim in Germany Being the Person known by the Name of the Lady Roxana in the time of Charles II by Daniel Defoe, now 64, who has his protagonist say, "I thought a woman was a free agent, as well as a man, and was born free, and could she manage herself suitably, might enjoy that liberty to as much purpose as the men do; that the laws of matrimony were indeed otherwise . . . and those such that a woman gave herself entirely away from herself, in marriage, and capitulated only to be, at best, but an upper servant."
Theater: Caesar in Aegypt by Colley Cibber 12/9 at London's Drury Lane Theatre.
London authorities apprehend thief John "Jack" Sheppard, 21, April 24 and imprison him in St. Giles Roundhouse. He soon escapes, commits more thefts, is arrested again, incarcerated in New Prison, and escapes for a second time May 25 after somehow getting out of his irons, cutting through bars, descending a wall, and climbing another. Betrayed by the infamous London crime boss Jonathan Wild after committing a series of thefts, highway robberies, and burglaries, he is captured for a third time July 23, tried, and condemned to death, but escapes once again with help from a file smuggled into the Old Bailey jail by his girlfriend Poll Maggot. Arrested for a fourth time September 10, he is locked up in the strongest part of Newgate Prison, where he is manacled to the floor but breaks his chains, climbs a chimney, forces several bolted doors, returns to his cell to obtain a blanket that he can use as a rope, descends a wall, and engages in further pilfering and burglary. Caught after a drunken spree, he is hanged at Tyburn, London, November 16 in an execution reportedly witnessed by 200,000 observers.
Vienna's Belvedere Palace is completed after 7 years of construction.
French champagne growers appeal to the government for the right to ship their vin gris in bottles rather than barrels in order to control and insure the foam mousse (see 1728; Dom Perignon, 1699).
E. Rémy Martin Cognac is introduced by a French distiller (see Martell, 1715; Hennessy, 1765).
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