1725

1721 1722 1723 1724 1725 1726 1727 1728 1729 1730

political events

Russia's Peter I (the Great) dies at St. Petersburg January 28 at age 52 after a 42-year reign in which he has extended his empire from Archangel (Arkhangelsk) on the White Sea to Mazanderan on the Caspian and from the Baltic to the Pacific (see 1724). His consort, 41, has allied herself with the czar's administrator Aleksandr D. Menshikov, who has been in disgrace but succeeds in having her named empress while he himself exercises virtually absolute rule (but see 1729); the late czar's foreign secretary Andrei Ivanovich Osterman becomes vice chancellor to the empress, who will reign until 1727 as Catherine I while her 14-year-old daughter Elizabeth Petrovna pleasures herself with handsome young military officers (see 1741; Peter II, 1727; Anna Ivanovna, 1730).

France's Louis XV, now 15, is married August 15 to Marie Leszczynska, 22, daughter of Poland's former king Stanislaw Leszczynski, who was deposed in 1709 and has been living in impoverished exile. The marriage has been arranged by the inept regent Louis-Henri, 7th prince de Condé, and although the queen will bear him ten children, including (in 1729) a son, she looks upon physical relations with a sense of duty rather than a pleasure, and her husband's feelings toward her will cool (see 1732). The young king was betrothed 4 years ago to the Spanish infanta, Maria, but Condé has cancelled that engagement, and the marriage antagonizes the court at Madrid; it will lead to an alliance between Spain and Austria.

A 70,000-man Ottoman army takes Tabriz after a siege that has cost the Persians 30,000 men, the Turks 20,000 (see 1724). Shah Mahmoud has 39 Safavid princes massacred, killing the first one himself. Persia's nobility elects a nephew of the late Mir Vais to succeed the insane Mahmoud; Shah Ashraf begins a 5-year reign by killing powerful chiefs and confiscating their fortunes. Mahmoud soon dies, possibly killed by order of the new shah (see 1726).

The subedar (nabob) of Bengal and Orissa Murshid Quli Khan dies at Murshidabad after a 19-year reign in which he has ruled over Bihar as well with only nominal allegiance to the Mughal emperor; having opened a mint and built the Katra Masjid mosque. He is succeeded by his son-in-law, who will reign until 1739 as Suja-ud-Din.

Japanese statesman Hakuseki Arai dies at his native Edo June 29 at age 68, having devoted the last 9 years of his life to scholarship (he has written more than 160 books).

science

Peter the Great establishes the Russian Academy of Sciences on his deathbed. Since Russia has no scientists of her own, the academy will be staffed by foreigners for years.

communications, media

The stereotype plaster of Paris impression invented by Edinburgh jeweler William Ged can be used to cast any number of metal printing plates and will lead to faster, cheaper letterpress printing. Papier-maché versions will further reduce costs.

literature

Nonfiction: The New Science (Principi di Una Scienza Nuova d'intorno alla Comune Natura delle Nazioni) by Italian philosopher Giovanni Battista (or Giombattista) Vico, 57, attempts to discover and organize laws common to the evolution of all society; Elements of Metaphysics (Eléments de métaphysique) by Claude Buffier.

Fiction: Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to Utopia by English novelist Eliza Haywood (née Fowler), 32, a onetime actress whose roman à clef scandalizes London society. Her periodical The Female Spectator will appear from 1744 to 1746 and will be followed the following year by The Parrot.

theater, film

Theater: French dancer Marie Sallé, 18, appears at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, London, 10/23 in a revival of Colley Cibber's 1696 play Love's Last Shift; or, The Fool in Fashion.

music

Opera: Rodelinda 2/13 at the King's Theatre, London, with Francesca Cuzzoni in the title role, music by George Frideric Handel; Giulio Cesare in Egitto 3/2 at London's Haymarket Theatre, with music by Handel; Tamerlano 11/11 at London's Haymarket Theatre, with music by Handel.

Concerti: Il Cimento dell'armonia by Antonio Vivaldi, published in the Netherlands, contains The Four Seasons.

Composer Alessandro Scarlatti dies at Naples October 24 at age 65.

crime

English extortionist, fence, highwayman, and crime boss Jonathan Wild is arrested on a minor felony charge after a 15-year criminal career and hanged at Tyburn, London, May 24 at age 62 (approximate).

architecture, real estate

Rome's 137 "Spanish Steps" from the Piazza di Spagna up to the Church of Trinita dei Monti are completed by French architects.

food availability

France has famine. Paris workers riot when a baker raises the price of bread by 4 sous.

food and drink

Poland's former king Stanislaw Leszczynski creates a craze at Paris for onion soup, tripe, and pig's feet; he has reportedly been so impressed with an onion soup that was served to him at an inn en route to Paris from Luneville for the wedding of his daughter to Louis XV that he visited the kitchen in his dressing gown and demanded that the chef show him how to make the soup (connoisseurs will come to prefer the onion soup of Brussels, made with beer, cream, and butter and served late at night in the rue des Bouchers). Stanislaw will douse a kugelhupf with rum from the West Indies to create baba au rhum—a spongelike cake, sometimes containing raisins, that is soaked in a sauce of rum from the French West Indies and topped with whipped cream (its name comes either from the fictional Ali Baba or from the Polish word for good woman).

restaurants

London has nearly 2,000 coffee houses, up from just one in 1652.

population

The city of St. Petersburg founded by the late Peter the Great in 1703 has grown to have a population of 75,000.

1721 1722 1723 1724 1725 1726 1727 1728 1729 1730

Astronomy

John Flamsteed's three-volume Historia coelestis ("celestial history"), published posthumously, catalogs 2884 stars. See also 1712 Astronomy.

Scottish goldsmith William Ged [b. 1690, d. 1749] improves stereotype printing, a technique developed during the 15th century. Instead of printing from the type directly, pages are printed from a plate made of lead, which is obtained by pouring lead in a mold made from papier mâché of the composed type. The plates can then be reused for reprints. See also 1793 Communication.

Luigi Marsigli's Histoire physique de la mer ("physical story of the sea") is the first treatise on oceanography. See also 1855 Earth science.

Homo diluvii testis ("human witness to the flood") by Johann Jakob Scheuchzer [b. Zürich, Switzerland, August 2, 1672, d. Zürich, June 23, 1733] is an important work on fossils. But Scheuchzer misinterprets fossil remains of a giant salamander, saying they are remains of a human drowned in Noah's Flood. See also 1699 Earth science.

A steam engine is operating at a coal mine at Jemeppe-sur-Meuse, near Liège (Belgium). It is one of the earliest steam engines erected on the Continent. See also 1722 Energy; 1726 Energy.

Hammered, wrought-iron plate becomes available commercially.

Abraham De Moivre's Annuities on Lives is the first important mathematical book on the subject of annuities. See also 1718 Mathematics; 1733 Mathematics.

George Graham develops the horizontal escapement, incorporating a rotating cylinder that replaces the function of the anchor. See also 1720 Tools; 1726 Tools.

Basile Bouchon develops a semiautomatic weaving loom in which the index fingers (which lift and lower the warp threads) are controlled by an endless paper tape. Feeding the paper tape is still manual. The loom will be fully automatic in later designs by Vaucanson and Jacquard. See also 1775 Tools.

Essays and Philosophy

• Benjamin Franklin: A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain. Written while abroad in London and published anonymously, Franklin's first pamphlet questions the existence of God. This satirical work amounts to an attack on contemporary religion in the English-speaking world. Franklin would quickly regret the work and attempted to destroy the one hundred copies printed. Some hold that the young Franklin was merely showing off his intellectual prowess in the treatise, doing nothing more than playing devil's advocate.

Nonfiction

• Paul Dudley (1675-1751): "On the Natural History of Whales." In what is considered among the best nature reporting of the colonial era, Dudley, the Massachusetts naturalist, elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1721, supplies his observations on the great mammals.

Poetry, Fiction, and Drama

• Peter Folger: "A Looking-Glass for the Times." Praised by Benjamin Franklin, among others, the rough ballad stanzas of Folger's work deliver a plea for religious freedom. Written in 1676, the poem's call for toleration represents a hallmark of seventeenth-century New England dissent. Its delayed publication demonstrates the radical nature of Folger's poetry and ideas.
• Edward Taylor: Preparatory Meditations. Taylor concludes his private spiritual verse diary, which he had started in 1682. Containing over two hundred poems composed in preparation for the administering of communion, many believe it to be his most powerful work.
• Roger Wolcott (1679-1767): Poetical Meditations. A collection of poetry that notably includes "A Brief Account of the Agency of the Honorable John Winthrop," about Winthrop's struggle to gain the Connecticut charter. It combines elements of the New England elegies and anticipates the epic qualities of the Connecticut Wits, an informal group of Yale students and rectors who would come to prominence in the late eighteenth century.

Publications and Events

• Roger Wolcott (1679-1767)An Astronomical Diary, or An Almanack. Nathaniel Ames (1708-1764) begins his series three years before James Franklin's Rhode Island Almanack and eight years before Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack. An Astronomical Diary sold sixty thousand copies a year and was a valuable resource for contemporary humor, verse, and a variety of issues. Ames would continue to publish this work annually until his death in 1764.
• Roger Wolcott (1679-1767)The New York Gazette. Edited and published by William Bradford, the New York Gazette is the first newspaper to be published in New York City. It would chronicle current events until 1744.

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