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Contents: political eventsexploration, colonization commerce energy transportation science literature art theater, film music environment marine resources food availability food and drink population |
Portugal's João V dies at his native Lisbon July 31 at age 61 after a 44-year reign and is succeeded by his 35-year-old son, who will reign until 1777 as José Manuel. The new king appoints Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, 51, marques de Pombal, as his chief minister, and Pombal strips the Inquisition of its powers.
Memorandum Concerning the Usefulness of the Provincial Estates . . . (Mémoire concernant l'utilité des états provinciaux . . .) by French political economist Victor Riqueti, 34, marquis de Mirabeau, is an attack on the highly centralized governmental system established by Louis XIV; Mirabeau proposes that the provincial assemblies that exist in a small part of the country be established throughout the realm.
France's marshal general Maurice, comte de Saxe, dies at his château at Chambord November 30 at age 54, having led his country's armies to victory in the War of the Austrian Succession.
The Zand dynasty that will rule central and southern Persia until 1779 comes to power as Mohammad Karim Khan Zand gains supremacy (see 1794).
The Mughal vizier Safdar Jang joins the Marathas of northwest India in trying to plunder the empire of the ineffectual emperor (see 1748). The vizier has been defeated by Afghans of the Doab (see 1754; Lahore, 1752).
Ojibwe (Chippewa) tribesmen defeat Sioux at the Battle of Kathio and gain undisputed possession of wild rice stands in the lakes of northern Minnesota.
Cumberland Gap through the Appalachians is found at an altitude of 1,665 feet by Virginia-born English physician and land speculator Thomas Walker, 35, agent for Virginia's Loyal Land Company. He names the gap for William Augustus, duke of Cumberland, and goes on to explore the Kentucky region.
The Iron Act passed by Parliament prohibits Britain's American colonists from manufacturing iron products while permitting them to produce bar and pig iron from their ore deposits, using the fuel they have in abundance, and permitting them to exchange the iron for manufactured articles. The act is an expression of classic mercantilism and embodies the chief principle of the British colonial system, namely to restrict the colonies to producing raw materials that the mother country can process or resell, and to use the colonies as a market for the mother country's manufactured goods. But the Iron Act will be generally ignored, and by 1776 there will be as many iron mills in America as in England (see 1663; Woolens Act, 1699; Sugar Act, 1764).
The treatise "On Money" ("Della moneta") by Italian economist Ferdinando Galiani, 21, is an eclectic work enunciating a theory of value based on utility and scarcity in a clear and methodical presentation.
Bituminous coal is mined for the first time in America at Richmond Basin in the Virginia colony (see Coal River, 1742).
London's Westminster Bridge opens to traffic. Built with the proceeds of a public lottery held in the 1730s, it is the first new bridge to span the Thames since London Bridge in the 10th century.
The flatboat invented by Pennsylvania colonist Jacob Yoder makes inland waterways navigable.
German military engineer Karl (Jakob) Weber begins systematic excavation of Pompeii under the patronage of Carlos VII, king of Naples and Sicily (see Herculaneum, 1738). Weber will continue his work until 1764, but other excavations are generally haphazard and many valuable relics will be destroyed or stolen (see Fiorelli, 1860).
Nonfiction: Anti-Senèque, System d'Epicure by French philosopher-physician Julien Offray de La Mettrie, 41, says that the only pleasures are those of the senses, life should be spent in enjoyment as advocated by the 3rd century B.C. Athenian philosopher Epicurus, and the soul dies with the body. La Mettrie has come under attack in France for his materialist teachings and lives at Berlin.
Fiction: The Dream of the Red Chamber (Hong Lou Meng [Hung Lou Meng] by Chinese novelist Cao Xueqin (Tsao Hsieh-chin) relates the rise and fall of the well-to-do Jia family in the Qing dynasty; Fanny Hill, or the Memoires of a Woman of Pleasure by English pornographic novelist John Cleland, 41, will remain the classic of erotic literature for 2½ centuries.
Poetry: Autumn by James Thomson, whose works are published together as The Seasons. He embarks on a grand tour of Europe as companion to Charles Richard Talbot.
Painting: The Four Stages of Cruelty by William Hogarth. Rachel Ruysch dies at her native Amsterdam August 12 at age 86 (approximate), having continued her still-life painting to the end.
Theater: The Rehearsal, or Boys in Petticoats by actress-turned playwright Kitty Clive 3/15 at London's Drury Lane Theatre; Irish-born actress George Anne Bellamy, 23, appears as Juliet opposite David Garrick's Romeo, astonishing audiences with her beauty and "soft" femininity to the point that many say she is better than Susanna Cibber, who is appearing in a rival production; The Coffee House (La botega di caffè) by Carlo Goldoni 5/2 at Mantua; The Liar (Il bugiardo) by Goldoni 5/23 at Mantua; The Comic Theater (Il teatro comica) by Goldoni 10/5 at Venice's Teatro Sant' Angelo.
Munich's Residenztheater is completed for the elector of Bavaria by his court dwarf and architect, François de Cuvilles, 52.
Johann Sebastian Bach suffers a stroke and dies at Leipzig July 28 at age 65, leaving The Art of the Fugue unfinished. Probably diabetic, he has had two eye operations that have only served further to impair his eyesight, and when he asked on his deathbed to hear his chorale "Wenn wir in höchsten Noten sein" performed on a pedal harpsichord he felt bound to make a few minor improvements in its counterpoint, melody, and rhythm. Few of his works have been intended for public performance and many, such as "The Goldberg Variations," will not become popular until the 20th century.
Wild rice (Zizania aquatica) in northern Minnesota is known to voyageurs as folle aveoine, or wild oats; it was originally harvested in the waters of the Manomini River near what later will be Green Bay, Wisconsin, by another Algonquin tribe, the Manomines; the Chippewa call it manomin (good berry), and it supplies about 25 percent of their caloric intake (see 1862).
England raises the bounty on whales to 40 shillings per ton in a move that encourages Scotsmen to enter the whaling industry.
Famine ravages France.
Massachusetts has 63 distilleries producing rum made from molasses supplied in some cases by slave traders who sell it to the Puritan distillers for the capital needed to buy African natives who can be sold to West Indian sugar planters (see 1733).
Royal Crown Derby porcelain has its beginnings in a factory opened at Derby, England (year approximate). French Huguenot potter André Planché has been at Derby since 1740.
Coalport porcelain has its beginnings in Shropshire (year approximate). Landowner Edward Browne has had a chinaworks on his property, which contains both clay and coal. The works will be moved to Coalport in 1814, become famous for its "Indian-tree" patterned plates, and move in 1926 to Stoke-on-Trent (see Spode, 1800).
Ices and ice creams are sold all year round at Paris by Buisson, successor to Procope, whose competitors follow suit after having sold glace only in summer (see 1670).
France's population will increase from 22 million to 27 million in the next half century, Italy's from 15.5 million to 18 million, and Spain will have a similar increase, but the total population of Europe will grow from 140 million to 188 million as births consistently exceed deaths rather than alternately falling behind deaths as in previous centuries, and as more children survive beyond age 10.
London has 11 percent of England's population, while Paris has only 2 percent of France's population.
The world's population reaches 750 million.
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