1749
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Contents: political eventsexploration, colonization commerce science medicine education literature art music everyday life architecture, real estate agriculture nutrition food and drink population |
French troops move into the Ohio River Valley and claim it for Louis XV. Sent to the region by Roland-Michel Barrin, marquis de La Galissonière, they win over the native tribes, force British traders to leave, and proceed to build forts, but La Galissonière returns home later in the year after just 2 years as commandant general of New France (see 1754).
Venezuelan colonists rebel against the sometimes high-handed rule of Spanish governors sent out by the 21-year-old Caracas Company (Compañia Guipuzcoana). The insurrection will continue for 3 years before it can be suppressed.
The Ohio Company chartered by Britain's George II makes its first settlements in hilly Appalachian country along the Monongahela River (see Treaty of Lancaster, 1744). The king grants half a million acres to a group of London merchants and Virginia gentlemen who include the brothers of George Washington (see Logstown Treaty, 1752).
Halifax, Nova Scotia, is founded to rival the French port of Louisburg. A flotilla of ships carrying 1,000 families arrives in June, and Edward Cornwallis names the new town after London Board of Trade president George Montagu Dunk, 32, earl of Halifax.
Fur trader-explorer Pierre G. de Varennes, sieur de la Vérendrye, receives permission after a long delay to make another trip to the west, having gone farther in that direction than any other white man and done it entirely at his own expense. One of his sons has traced the Saskatchewan River to its source. Vérendrye has been sending some 30,000 beaver pelts to Quebec each year (most of them would otherwise have gone to the rival Hudson's Bay Company), but he falls ill at Montreal and dies there December 5 at age 64 before he can set out on his final expedition.
South Carolina indigo exports to Britain reach 120,000 pounds, thanks to the efforts of Eliza Pinckney (see agriculture, 1744). Pressing the indigo to produce dye creates an extremely obnoxious odor, but slave labor spares planters any unpleasantness.
Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière by French naturalist George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, 42, is published in the first volume of a proposed 50-volume work and represents the first modern effort to present in systematic form all existing knowledge of natural history, anthropology, and geology in one comprehensive series of books. Appointed 10 years ago as keeper of the Jardin du Roi (later the Jardin des Plantes), Buffon has worked up to 12 hours per day on his project. He rejects any preexistence theory of genetics such as that proposed by Jan Swammerdam in 1669, but does not dispute the idea of spontaneous generation. Flying in the face of the biblical view that the Earth is 6,000 years old, he calculates how long it would take for a molten ball knocked loose from the sun by a meteor to cool down (he has heated to incandescence iron spheres, rock, and other materials) and estimates it at 76,000 years. Buffon knows that some geological processes must have taken about 10 million years but doubts that human minds can comprehend that "dark abyss of time." Later studies will suggest that the age of the Earth is 4.5 billion years.
French scholar Gabrielle-Emilie, marquise du Châtelet-Lomont, dies in childbirth at Lunéville, Meurthe-et-Moselle, September 10 at age 42. Mistress to Voltaire since 1733, she has been working tirelessly on a translation of the late Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica.
Scottish physician William Hunter is appointed surgeon-midwife to the British Lying-In Hospital (he holds a similar position at the Middlesex Hospital) and will consult in the delivery of Queen Charlotte, although a midwife will make the actual delivery.
The University of Pennsylvania has its beginnings in Benjamin Franklin's "Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsilvania." The College of Philadelphia will be founded in 1751 pursuant to Franklin's suggestions, and it will evolve into a prestigious institution.
Nonfiction: Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism: On the Idea of a Patriot King published anonymously at London advances the idea of an essential "harmony of interests" among different classes of society. Its author is former English politician Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, now 71, who retired 14 years ago to his wife's French estate near Touraine but has returned to his native Battersea, London; "Discours sur les Arts et Sciences" by French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, 37, whose essay wins first prize at the Academy of Dijon. Born at Vevey, Switzerland, Rousseau fled his engraver's apprenticeship at Geneva at age 16 and was converted to Protestantism by aristocrat Louise-Eléanore de la Tour du Phil, baronne de Warens, at Chambéry in Savoy; he made his way back to her on foot 5 years later when she was 33. She persuaded him to begin a romantic liaison, and he remained on and off at her country house, Les Charmettes, until 1742, sharing her favors with the baronne's steward, one Claude Anet. His essay glorifies the savage state and calls civilized society the inevitable source of moral corruption: "The man who first had the idea of enclosing a field and saying this is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of society."
Fiction: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding ("His designs were strictly honorable, as the phrase is; that is, to rob a lady of her fortune by way of marriage." XI, iv).
Poetry: The Vanity of Human Wishes by London poet-critic Samuel Johnson, 39, is an imitation of a satire by Juvenal but emphasizes moral themes rather than the social and political ones favored by Juvenal. Johnson has been writing critiques and poems for the 18-year-old Gentleman's Magazine since 1738, but this is the first work to be published under his own name.
Painting: Mr. and Mrs. Robert Andrews by English painter Thomas Gainsborough, 22. Alessandro Magnasco dies at Genoa March 12 at age 81.
Oratorio: Elisabeth Duparc sings in an April performance at Covent Garden of G. F. Handel's 1742 work The Messiah.
London cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale, 31, opens a factory that will be famous for its graceful, ornate furniture although many will prefer the work of his contemporary George Hepplewhite, 23, whose workshops are in the London parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate (see Sheraton, 1791).
Oxford's Radcliffe Camera is completed to designs by architect James Gibbs after 12 years of construction. It is Britain's first circular library.
New England suffers a drought so severe that farmers whose powder-dry pastures catch fire must send to Pennsylvania and even to England for hay.
Haricot beans are planted extensively for the first time in France. The flageolets planted near Soissons will soon replace fava beans in the area (see 1528).
Pellagra is described in Italy, where polenta made of cornmeal is a dietary staple in some areas (see 1735). Aztecs and Inca in the New World learned centuries ago to mix their maize with wood ashes, whose slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) altered the corn's protein potential, but whites have not followed their practice. The "corn sickness" will get its name in 1771 from the Italian words pelle agra (rough skin), its further symptoms being diarrhea, dementia, and—ultimately—death. By the end of the next century, Egypt and other African countries will be suffering pellagra epidemics where peasants live mainly on cornmeal (see 1907).
Mme. de Pompadour persuades Louis XV to turn over to her a small porcelain works at Vincennes, set up in 1741 but now so neglected that it has nearly stopped production. The marquise organizes a new company, transfers operations to Sèvres, and begins building up an establishment that will employ 60 painters and 440 other skilled artisans. Using soft paste rather than the hard paste employed at Dresden, they create colorful dinnerware costlier than its Dresden counterpart but so popular that the crown will purchase the works in 1760 and make it the Royal Porcelain Factory at Sèvres (Mme. de Pompadour selects the de roi, bleu turquoise, and pale raspberry that will be called rose pompadour).
China's population reaches 225 million by some accounts (see 1741).
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