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New York's Battle of Golden Hill January 19 and 20 brings the first bloodshed between British troops and American colonists. The Sons of Liberty have put up a series of Liberty poles with pennants bearing slogans, the redcoats have torn them down, and when they tear down the fourth pole on the common west of Golden Hill two Sons of Liberty seize two soldiers. The soldiers resist, more citizens arrive with clubs, the officer in charge orders his men back to quarters, but a second skirmish occurs the following day.
Britain's Grafton ministry resigns in January (Lord Grafton has been vilified for his womanizing and obsession with horseracing). A new Tory ministry headed by Frederick North, 8th Lord North, 38, takes office February 10 and will rule until early 1782 with Lord North serving as first lord of the treasury in addition to his duties as prime minister.
The Boston "Massacre" March 5 leaves three dead, two mortally wounded, and six injured following a disturbance between colonists and British troops. A mob of colonists has gone to the Customs House and thrown snowballs, some of them containing stones; one British soldier fell, accidentally firing his musket, his companions thought that they had been fired upon and opened fire on the mob, and agitator Samuel Adams rushes to his silversmith friend Paul Revere, 35, with the request that Revere produce an etching that will stir passions against those responsible for the "massacre." As acting governor of the British North American Province of Massachusetts Bay, Thomas Hutchinson further antagonizes colonists by administering the full measure of law (see Stamp Act, 1765); local lawyers John Adams, now 35, and Josiah Quincy, 26, defend the British captain and his men, who fired on the Americans; a jury finds the defendants guilty only on minor charges and none is jailed, but agitators use the incident to arouse colonial rancor against British troops. Hutchinson will be appointed royal governor next year and hold the position until 1774 (see "Boston Tea Party," 1773).
Parliament repeals the Townshend Revenue Act of 1767 in a bill passed April 12. Prime Minister North has used his influence to have the act repealed.
The British secretary of state for the colonies appoints Scottish peer John Murray, 38, 4th earl of Dunmore, governor of the New York colony (see 1771).
North Carolina Regulators numbering about 150 break into a superior court at Hillsborough in September (see 1768). Armed with sticks and switches, they force the judge the leave the bench, attack a lawyer and administer a beating, drag an assistant attorney general through the streets, and commit further acts of violence (see 1771).
Former Virginia lieutenant governor Robert Dinwiddie dies at Clifton, Bristol, July 27 at age 77, having lived in virtual retirement since early in 1758; former prime minister George Grenville dies at London November 13 at age 58.
Marie Antoinette marries the tall, boorish, 15-year-old French dauphin Louis Auguste at Versailles May 16. The Austrian empress Maria Theresa succeeds in uniting the Hapsburg and Bourbon families through the arranged marriage of her youngest daughter, but the French court derides the adolescent, poorly educated 14-year-old princess as "the Austrian" and finds her ill-prepared to be the wife of Louis XV's grandson, who pays little attention to her (see 1774).
The Battle of Chesme July 6 and 7 ends in defeat for an Ottoman fleet on the Aegean Sea as war continues between the Turks and Russia. A Russian fleet has come to the Anatolian coast from the Baltic under the command of Aleksei Orlov and British officers with the intention of destroying Turkish ships and fomenting rebellion among the Greeks in the Peloponnesus (the Morea), the Russians fail to coordinate their operations with those of the rebel Greeks, and Orlov lacks the ground forces needed to force the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, but he does succeed in burning the Ottoman fleet (see Crimea, 1771).
Bengal's puppet nabob Saif-ud-Doula dies in a smallpox epidemic at Murshidad after a 4-year reign and is succeeded by another son of the late Mir Jafar, who is placed on the throne by British East India Company at age 17 and will reign until his death in 1793 as Mubarak-ud-Doula (see Warren Hastings, 1772).
Gaspar de Portolá returns to San Diego in January after an exhausting march in which he has founded a presidio and mission at Carmel (see 1769); he leaves for Baja California June 9 and will be selected in 1776 as governor of Puebla.
James Cook crosses the Tasman Sea, reaches the southeast coast of New Holland (Australia) April 19, makes a landing, and takes possession of the island continent in the name of George III (see 1769; Tasman, 1643). Inhabited for more than 25,000 years, Australia has a population of more than 250,000; the great variety of plants obtained by his naturalists leads Cook to name his landfall Botany Bay (see 1788; Cook, 1771).
The treatise "Dialogues on the Grain Trade" ("Dialogues sur le commerce des blés") by economist Ferdinando Galiani emphasizes the need to regulate commerce. Now 41, Galiani served at Paris as secretary to the Neapolitan ambassador from 1759 until last year, and he opposes the physiocrats, who favor complete freedom of commerce.
English weaver-mechanic James Hargreaves, 50, of Nottingham receives a patent July 12 on a hand-powered spinning jenny that automates part of the textile industry (see Arkwright, 1769). Hargreaves devised the machine several years ago while living near Blackburn, Lancashire, when he saw his young daughter Jenny accidentally overturn a horizontal spinning wheel, whose spindle continued to revolve in an upright position. Figuring that more than one spindle could be turned in this way, he fashioned a machine that enabled a worker to spin several threads at once, but when he started to sell the machines to support his large family he aroused the wrath of hand spinners, who feared being put out of work, broke into his house, destroyed a number of his jennies, and caused him to relocate to Nottingham (see Crompton, 1779; commerce [Luddites], 1779).
The Black Death strikes Russia and the Balkans in epidemic form.
A Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry by Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush, 24, is the first text of its kind to be published in America. After graduating at age 14 from the College of New Jersey at Princeton, Rush studied for 6 years in the office of a Philadelphia physician, spent two years at the University of Edinburgh, received his M.D. 2 years ago, and immediately began a practice of his own, becoming at the same time a professor of chemistry at the College of Philadelphia (later part of the University of Pennsylvania). A firm believer in bloodletting as a cure for almost anything, Rush teaches that the human body contains about 25 pints of blood (it actually holds about 12).
The Society of the Hospital of the City of New York and its board of governors are created under terms of a charter granted June 13 by George III (see 1776).
Anatomist Bernard Siegfried Albinus dies at Leyden September 9 at age 73, having held the chair of anatomy, surgery, and medicine at the University of Leyden since 1721.
Lithuanian philosopher Solomon Maimon (Salomon ben Joshua), 19, antagonizes fellow Jews with his More nevukhim, an Orthodox commentary on the 1190 Maimonides book Guide of the Perplexed.
Evangelist George Whitefield dies at Newburyport, Massachusetts, September 30 at age 55, having played a major role in the Great Awakening of religious life in the colonies.
"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him," writes Voltaire November 10.
The Massachusetts Spy begins publication at Boston. Local printer-journalist Isaiah Thomas, 21, soon buys out his partner (and former master) Zechariah Fowle, makes his Whig newspaper a voice for the colonists against the British, and will publish it until 1802; it will continue until 1904.
Nonfiction: Système de la nature by philosopher Paul-Henri Dietrich, baron d'Holbach, now 47, makes the first blunt denial of any divine purpose or master plan in nature, ridiculing religion and adopting an atheistic, deterministic materialism.
Mathematician-writer Diego de Torres Villaroel dies at his native Salamanca June 19 at age 76 (approximate), having written 15 volumes of poetry as well as his Vida of 1743.
Poetry: Faust by German poet-playwright-law student Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 21, is completed in its first part (see Fiction, 1587); The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith is an outcry against the changes in England: "Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,/ Where health and plenty cheer'd the labouring swain,/ Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,/ And parting summer's lingering blooms delay'd."
Poet Mark Akenside dies at London June 23 at age 48, having become physician to the queen; Thomas Chatterton poisons himself at his native Bristol August 24 at age 17 in despair at his lack of recognition (his work immediately gains popularity).
Painting: Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley, who depicts the local silversmith; Vortigern and Rowena by Angelica Kauffmann, who was secretly married in 1767 to the adventurer "Count Van Horn" (the revelation of his bigamy has led to her public humiliation); Allegory of the Visual Arts and Allegory of Music by French painter Anne Vallayer-Coster, 26, who wins unanimous acceptance as a member of the Académie Royale. Giambattista Tiepelo dies at Madrid March 17 at age 74; François Boucher at Paris May 30 at age 66; ukiyoe painter Harunobu Suzuki at age 52.
Theater: The Two Friends, or the Merchant of Lyons (Les Deux Amis, ou le Negociant de Lyons) by Pierre de Beaumarchais 1/13 at the Comédie- Française, Paris.
Violinist-composer Giuseppe Tartini dies at Padua February 26 at age 77. His Livorno-born pupil Pietro Nardini, 47, has lived with him during his final illness and becomes music director to the duke of Tuscany, having been solo violinist at the court at Stuttgart from 1753 to 1767.
Ballerina Marie Camargo dies at Paris April 20 at age 60; soprano Francesca Cuzzoni in poverty at Bologna at age 72 (approximate).
Yardley opens at London to purvey luxury soaps scented with lavender from nearby fields. The company will grow to have worldwide sales of lavender and violet fragrances and cosmetics that will gain acceptance with the royal family and remain British until the late 1990s.
French colonial administrator Pierre Poivre, 51, breaks the Dutch monopoly in spices. A British cannonball took his right arm when it captured his ship in 1745; now governor of Mauritius, Poivre dispatches "messengers" on a clandestine trading voyage for the purpose of stealing nutmegs. Poivre's men carry off 400 nutmeg plants, 10,000 nutmeg seeds ready to germinate, 70 clove plants, and a chest of clove seeds, some of them already sprouting. The Dutch have regularly soaked nutmegs in milk of lime, a procedure that does not affect their taste but prevents them from germinating. The seeds and plants flourish on Mauritius, and plantings take root also on the Pacific islands of Réunion and Seychelles and in French Guiana on the northeastern coast of South America (see 1818; British, 1780).
England grows enough potatoes for public sale of the tubers for the first time.
Famine-stricken Prussians at Kolberg receive a wagon-load of potatoes sent by Friedrich II (the Great) but refuse to eat them (see 1744; Parmentier, 1771).
Explorer James Cook explores the eastern coast of New Holland (Australia) and reports that the "land naturly produces hardly anything fit for a man to eat and the Natives know Nothing of Cultivation."
English potter Josiah Spode, 37, opens a factory dedicated to perfecting earthenware. He uses the finer, whiter clays from Cornwall, will soon combine the clays with calcined animal bones to produce bone china, and in 1784 will pioneer in transfer printing and underglaze-blue, taken from hand-engraved copper plates, on earthenware, a technique known to the Chinese since the 14th century. Spode will be the first to add enamel decorations over the glaze on his wares, but he will die a pauper in 1797 (see 1800).
The kipfel roll invented by Viennese bakers in 1683 arrives at Paris with Marie Antoinette. French bakers will add yeast to the puff pastry dough, roll it, cut it into a triangle, shape the triangle into a crescent, add extra layers, and turn the kipfel into the flaky croissant that will become a traditional French breakfast treat.
Swedish chemist Tobern Olof Bergman, 35, discovers a way to make carbonic acid gas in commercial quantities (see Priestley, 1767; 1772).
Britain's 13 American colonies have an estimated population of 2.2 million, up from 1.6 million in 1760.
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