1763
1761 1762 1763 1764 1765 1766 1767 1768 1769 1770
The Treaty of Paris signed February 10 ends Europe's Seven Years' War. Mme. de Pompadour has been vested with virtually all the powers of a prime minister and sees France regain territories in Africa and India, plus the sugar-rich islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique in the West Indies, while losing to Britain her territories in Canada, plus Grenada in the West Indies and Senegal in West Africa.
The Treaty of Hubertusburg signed at a castle in Saxony February 15 makes peace between Austria and Prussia. The latter retains possession of Silesia, emerges as the leading German power, and promises in return to support the archduke Josef as Holy Roman Empire (see 1765). The treaty restores Saxony to her prewar limits.
The Treaty of Paris recognizes the Mississippi River as the boundary between the British colonies and the Louisiana territory, ceded last year by France to Spain. All of New France east of the Mississippi is ceded to the British except for New Orleans and its environs (see 1800). The French retain only the little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon near Newfoundland and fishing rights in Newfoundland; the treaty leaves Britain in control of everything else in North America from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and from Hudson's Bay to the Gulf of Mexico.
Spain cedes Florida to Britain and regains all of Britain's conquests in Cuba, including Havana (see 1762). Spain also recovers the Philippines, but she loses Minorca.
Britain's prime minister Lord Bute resigns in April (journalist John Wilkes, now 37, has supported a campaign by Richard Grenville, 52, 1st Earl Temple, to discredit Bute's ministry). A new Tory ministry headed by George Grenville, 51, younger brother of Earl Temple and brother-in-law of William Pitt, takes office with the younger Grenville as first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer, but Earl Temple has no use for the new ministry and encourages Wilkes to publish an article in the North Briton April 23 containing libelous suggestions about Bute's relations with the mother of George III and saying that some statements in a speech by the king were false. A general warrant is issued at the behest of the secretary of state for the northern department George Montagu Dunk, 46, 2nd earl of Halifax, and 48 persons are seized in a search for evidence; Wilkes himself is arrested on a charge of sedition and confined to the Tower of London, but he is released a week later with popular approval after a ruling by the lord chief justice Charles Pratt, 49, of the Court of Common Pleas, who says that Wilkes's arrest was a breach of parliamentary privilege and issues a writ of habeas corpus. Wilkes and others file suit for trespass against Halifax, and they will be awarded damages, establishing the illegality of general warrants that do not name the persons to be arrested, and the principle of punitive damages (the government will be held liable for a huge sum in the area of £100,000). But John Montagu, 4th earl of Sandwich, reads a scurrilous essay by Wilkes to the House of Lords in November, his article of April 23 draws condemnation in the House of Commons as a seditious libel, Wilkes is wounded in a duel during the Christmas recess, and he steals off to visit his daughter in Paris rather than face charges (see 1764).
Russian troops invade Lithuania in September.
Poland's Augustus III dies at Dresden October 5 at age 66 after a 30-year reign. He has returned to Saxony following conclusion of the Treaty of Hubertsburg in February; his crown is offered to Prince Adam Kazimierz Czartoryski, 28, who refuses it; and Augustus will be succeeded next year by Czartoryski's cousin Stanislaw Poniatowski, 31, a favorite of the Russian czarina, Catherine, whose influence will gain him election to the throne. The new king will reign until 1795 as Stanislaw II Augustus while Czartoryski becomes a patron of the arts.
Ottawa chief Pontiac, 43, leads tribesmen of the American northwest in an uprising intended to drive British settlers back east across the Alleghenies. Unlike the French, who were friendly to the tribes, the British have treated them with nothing but contempt, barring them from entry into forts, cheating them in trade, and settling on their lands. Pontiac last year enlisted the Chippewa, Sac, and all but a few of the other trans-Appalachian tribes into a confederacy; he attempts a surprise attack on Fort Detroit May 7, but the British have learned of his plan and reinforced the 35-man garrison, whose commander, Major Henry Gladwin, repels Pontiac's attack. The tribesmen take eight other British forts, committing atrocities that provoke a British retaliation with comparable atrocities (soldiers at Fort Pitt give Delaware and Shawnee tribesmen two smallpox-infected blankets and an infected handkerchief June 24); a 500-man British force marches 250 miles from Fort Niagara under the command of Swiss-born mercenary Colonel Henry Bouquet to bolster the defenses of Fort Pitt and Fort Ligonier, whose garrisons hold out against attacks (see 1764).
A British royal proclamation issued October 7 declares that New France is to become the colony of Quebec, with a royal governor empowered to convene an assembly, and although the colony's 70,000 French inhabitants become British subjects, they are Roman Catholic and are therefore not entitled to vote or to sit in the assembly. Military leader James Murray, 42, is appointed governor, but his sympathies are with the French. He ignores the demands of the 500 or so British Protestants who want an assembly, and he will be replaced in 1766 by the Irish-born General Guy Carleton, now 39 (both men fought with the late General James Wolfe in 1759; see Quebec Act, 1774).
General Thomas Gage, now 42, is appointed commander in chief of all British forces in North America. His headquarters are at New York, and his position makes him the most important and influential public official in the colonies, responsible for more than 50 garrisons extending from Newfoundland to Florida and from Bermuda to the Mississippi (see Coercive Acts, 1774).
English philanthropist Granville Sharp, 28, finds a slave beaten and left to die in the streets of London by a Barbados lawyer. Sharp nurses the man back to health and protests when the lawyer then kidnaps the slave and ships him off to the West Indies to be sold. The case produces a public outcry (see 1772).
The British crown grants an Englishman several thousand acres of Florida land to create a working colony; he chooses a site south of St. Augustine and calls it New Smyrna after his wife's birthplace, will bring in some 1,500 Italians, Greeks, and Minorcans to work for 8 years as indentured servants on the promise of receiving 50 acres of land each, but a ship carrying African slaves to clear the land will be lost at sea, the project will fail, and the survivors—most of them Minorcans—will move to St. Augustine (see 1783).
The door opened by the French and Indian Wars to westward movement of British colonists closes October 7 under terms of the decree issued by George III through George Grenville (see 1748). It declares territory between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi River to be Indian territory, closing it to settlement until the Native Americans can be subdued. Sixty percent of American colonists are British, and the king decrees that they must remain east of the sources of rivers that flow into the Atlantic, but it is a decree that will be honored in the breach. Angry frontiersmen flout western land claims made by the seaboard colonies and the "sea to sea" grants of their original charters (see 1769).
St. Louis has its origin in a Mississippi trading post selected by French fur trader Pierre Laclède Liguest, who has taken a party into Illinois country and will name the post after France's patron saint Louis IX (see 1764).
Of 14,000 hogsheads of molasses brought into New England this year, only 2,500 are from British sources; smugglers account for the remainder (see 1764; Molasses Act, 1733).
Of the Exportation and Importation of Grains by Paris-born watchmaker-turned-economist Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, 23, shows the influence of physiocrat François Quesnay, whom du Pont has met and whose ideas he has found extremely persuasive (see 1758).
Barings Brothers has its beginnings in the commercial banking house John & Francis Baring & Company, founded at London by John Baring, 33, and his brother Francis, 23, whose Bremen-born father, Johan, started a small woollen factory in 1717 at Larkbear, near Honiton, and died in 1748 at age 51. The firm will be renamed Baring Brothers & Company in 1806 and will play a major role in British and American history (see Louisiana Purchase, 1803), continuing until nearly the end of the 20th century as members of the Baring family assume important posts in colonial government.
The British Mariner's Guide by astronomer Nevil Maskelyne will be used by navigators for centuries to help determine longitude (see 1762). The book is essentially an English translation of tables by the late Nuremberg astronomer and mapmaker Johann Tobias Mayer, who died of a virulent fever at Göttingen in February of last year at age 39, having developed lunar tables that help navigators determine longitude at sea (Mayer's method of determining longitude by lunar distances, and his formula for correcting errors in longitude due to atmospheric refraction, will not be published until 1770); Maskelyne has employed lunar distances to calculate longitude, but his method takes hours and can be used only in fair weather by navigators with special training (see Cook, 1768; Bowditch, 1802).
A paper produced in February by François Fresneau describes the use of turpentine as a solvent for rubber (see 1751). It is the first scientific research paper on natural rubber, and an accompanying letter explains how dipping fabrics in a solution of rubber and turpentine can make them waterproof, but the substance continues to defy efforts to find practical uses for it besides erasing pencil marks (see Hancock, 1820).
"Essay towards solving a problem in the doctrine of chances" (essay) by the late English theologian and mathematician Thomas Bayes marks the first effort to study the idea of statistical inference and estimate the probability of an event from the frequency of its previous occurrences.
Tablets bearing the inscription "Rei publicae Pompeianorum" turn up in excavations at a site near the Bay of Naples where systematic digging has been conducted since 1748 (see Herculaneum, 1709). Little has been known of the city that was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. and the discovery stimulates interest in archaeology.
Plant Families (Familles des plantes) by botanist Michel Adanson describes a natural system for classifying and naming plants based on their physicial characteristics, but Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus is sharply critical of the system and it will be superseded by the Linnaean system of 1737.
A letter to the Royal Society from English clergyman Edward Stone, 61, gives the first indication that salicylic acid as contained in the bark of willow trees may be "very efficacious in curing aguish [rheumatic] and intermitting disorders [bouts of fever]." Stone has tested the remedy for 5 years (see Gerhardt, 1853; Bayer Aspirin, 1899).
Prussia's Friedrich II (the Great) issues his country's first general school law. It has been drafted by politicians and educators who include Johann Julius Hecker of 1747 Realschule fame.
A French acquaintance asks journalist John Wilkes how far Britain's liberty of the press extends. "I cannot tell," Wilkes replies, "but I am trying to find out."
Nonfiction: Treatise on Tolerance by Voltaire; The History of England from the Accession of James I to That of the Brunswick Line (first of eight volumes) by English historian Catharine Macaulay (née Sawbridge), 32, who condemns Oliver Cromwell as a tyrant but champions the parliamentary cause and hails parliamentarian John Hampden as the true exemplar of republican ideals.
"Great abilities are not requisite for an historian, for in historical composition all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent," says Doctor Johnson July 6 (as quoted by his biographer, Scotsman James Boswell, 23, whom he meets for the first time).
"Sir, a woman preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all," says Doctor Johnson July 31.
Novelist Abbé Prévost dies of apoplexy at his Chantilly home November 25 at age 66.
Poetry: Song to David by Christopher Smart: "And now the matchless deed's achiev'd,/ Determined, dared, and done"; "Epistle to William Hogarth" by Charles Churchill, who has quarreled with the painter and creates a scandal by eloping even though he is still legally married.
Hedvig Nordenflycht dies at her home near Stockholm June 29 age 44. The first Swedish feminist, she has used poetry purely to express her inner feelings without restraint. Nordenflycht fell in love late in life with Johan Fischerström, nearly 20 years her junior, but he could not reciprocate her feelings.
Painting: The Election of the Doge of Venice by Venetian painter Francesco Guardi, 49, who has evolved a style of his own after years of following the photographic style of Canaletto; The Paralytic Cared for by His Children by Jean Baptiste Greuze; The Bruiser by William Hogarth is a satiric reply to two of his detractors, journalist-politician John Wilkes and poet Charles Churchill, who have publicly maligned him, in part for his criticism of William Pitt; Death of Wolfe by English painter George Romney, 28.
Playwright Pierre de Marivaux dies at Paris February 12 at age 75.
Alsatian-born London harpsichord manufacturer Jacob Kirkman (originally Kirchmann, or Kirkmann), 53, receives a royal warrant as harpsichord maker to the queen. Trained as a cabinetmaker, he went to England in his twenties to work for a Flemish harpsichord maker and has developed a reputation for lavishly marquetried pieces with three sets of strings operated by either one of two keyboards.
Spanish matador Francisco Romero dies at age 63 (approximate) after a 30-year career in which he has reputedly been the first to kill a bull face to face. He is said to have invented the muleta, a red cape used in conjunction with the sword in dispatching the animal after leading it through the most spectacular passes of the fight, leading it to lower its head so that the sword may be thrust between its shoulders.
La Madeleine is completed at Paris.
Touro Synagogue is completed on Touro Street at Newport in the Rhode Island colony for the town's congregation of Sephardic Jews who include merchant Aaron Lopez (see Curaçao, 1732). Its sand floor commemorates the exodus of Jews from Egypt.
Josiah Wedgwood at Burslam perfects a vitrified "cream-color ware" that is not true porcelain but gives Britain a hard tableware far more durable than earthenware if not as handsome as the porcelain produced at Sèvres or Dresden (see 1762). Queen Charlotte orders a complete dinner set of the new china and asks that it be named for her (it will be sold as Queensware beginning in 1765; see 1769).
"Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat," says Samuel Johnson. "For my part, I mind my belly very studiously and very carefully, for I look upon it that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else."
New York's Fraunces Tavern has its beginnings in the Queen's Head Tavern named in honor of George III's wife, Charlotte. Jamaican-born entrepreneur Samuel Fraunces has taken over the house at the corner of Broad and Pearl streets, built in 1719 by colonist Stephen de Lancey, and turned it into a public house (see Washington, 1783).
Prussia's Friedrich II (the Great) estimates that the Seven Years' War produced 853,000 casualties among his troops and that it directly killed 33,000 civilians, but war-related famine in 15 of the last 23 years has reduced the population of Europe far more drastically than has war itself.
1761 1762 1763 1764 1765 1766 1767 1768 1769 1770
