1772
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1771 1772 1773 1774 1775 1776 1777 1778 1779 1780
Poland loses one third her territory and half her population as she is partitioned August 5 among Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Russia acquires White Russia and all the territory to the Dvina and the Dnieper. Austria takes Red Russia, Galicia, and western Podolia with Lemberg and part of Kraków. Prussia acquires Polish Prussia except for Danzig and Thorn (see 1793; 1831).
Danish noblemen conspire against their dictator Johann Friedrich, graf von Struensee, who has held absolute power for 10 months and had an affair with the young queen Caroline Matilda. Former foreign minister Count J. H. E. von Bernstorff has died on his Holstein estates February 18 at age 59; Struensee is overthrown, condemned to death, tortured, and beheaded at Copenhagen April 28 at age 34.
Sweden's Gustav III restores absolute monarchy by an August 19 coup d'état that ends the power of the council and takes away the riksdag's authority to initiate legislation. He will abolish torture, improve Sweden's poor laws, encourage trade, and proclaim religious toleration and liberty of the press, but his enlightened despotism will turn to reaction beginning in the summer of 1789.
Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Durrani dies at Toba Maruf in mid-October at age 50 (approximate) after a 25-year reign in which he has founded the state of Afghanistan and built an empire that extends from the Amu Darya to the Indian Ocean and from Koorasan into Kashmir, the Punjab, and Sind, but he has lost control of the Punjab to the Sikhs.
The young Maratha peshwa (chief minister) Madhav Rao I dies, and the Maratha state becomes a confederacy of five chiefs under the nominal leadership of the peshwa Baji Rao II at Poona, and although the chiefs will unite at times against outsiders, they will generally quarrel among themselves (see 1775).
Oxfordshire-born East India Company official Warren Hastings, 40, begins a 13-year term as governor of Bengal that will be marked by reforms that will include a simplification of Indian coinage and government control of salt and opium production. While en route to the Indian subcontinent he has begun an adulterous relationship with a beautiful 21-year-old German baroness whom he will eventually marry (but not until 1795). Hastings files charges of embezzlement against the country's two chief financial ministers, but the official charged with conducting the case, one Nand Kumar (Nucomar), fails to gain a conviction, will himself be charged with corruption, bring charges of corruption against Hastings, and in 1775 be tried and executed on an earlier charge of forgery (see Regulating Act, 1773).
British forces from India move up into the Himalayan realm of Bhutan, whose affairs are in disorder (see 1720). The British will remain until next year (see 1864).
The Royal Marriage Act passed by Parliament requires the king's consent to the union of any member of Britain's royal family and makes an unsanctioned marriage invalid (see 1785).
Rhode Island colonists set fire July 9 to the armed British revenue ship H.M.S. Gaspée that has been stationed in Narragansett Bay to prevent smuggling. An arrogant Royal Navy lieutenant has been lured close to shore by the Hannah. He has run the Gaspée aground on a sandbar, news of her plight has reached Providence, drummers have gone through the streets to announce the situation and call for volunteers. Slave trader John Brown has supplied eight longboats; prominent Rhode Islanders quickly man the oars; Bristol privateer Simeon Potter, now 52, brings a ninth boat to the scene. Lieutenant William Dudingston commanding the Gaspée opens fire; the colonists return fire and board the ship; Dudingston is slightly wounded in the skirmish that follows; Gaspée's crew is put ashore, and their ship is destroyed.
Boston patriot Samuel Adams, now 50, and local physician Joseph Warren, 31, organize a Committee of Correspondence November 2; similar committees spring up throughout the colonies, relaying the anti-British polemics of Adams and others.
The Massachusetts Spy publishes in two installments The Adulateur, an anonymous drama lampooning the colonial royal governor Thomas Hutchinson. Its author will prove to be Mercy Otis Warren, 43.
Benjamin Franklin at London inveighs against using sugar produced by West Indian slaves: "Can sweetening our tea, &c. with sugar, be a circumstance of such absolute necessity? Can the petty pleasure thence arising to the taste, compensate for so much misery produced among our fellow creatures, and such a constant butchery of the human species by this pestilential detestable traffic in the bodies and souls of men?"
The Sommersett case marks a turning point in British toleration of slavery. One of 10,000 black slaves in Britain, James Somersett has escaped from his master and been apprehended; Britain's Lord Chief Justice William Murray, 67, Baron Mansfield, rules after some hesitation June 22 that "as soon as any slave sets foot in England he becomes free" (see 1763). The ruling will not be enforced, and British aristocrats will continue for years to import and trade in Africans for use as household slaves (see 1787).
Explorer James Cook sails for the Pacific in July on a second expedition, this time aboard the small ship H.M.S. Resolution with the consort vessel H.M.S. Adventure (see 1771). He is now equipped with a copy of John Harrison's 1761 chronometer to determine his longitude (see 1773).
An Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the National Debt by moral philosopher Richard Price will help lead to the reestablishment of a sinking fund to wipe out Britain's national debt.
Pioneer canal builder James Brindley dies at Turnhurst September 30 at age 56.
Edinburgh physician Daniel Rutherford, 23, distinguishes nitrogen as a gas separate from carbon dioxide (see Davy, 1800; Wöhler, 1828).
Digressions Académiques by French chemist Baron Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau, 35, sets forth original ideas about "phlogiston" (see Stahl, 1700) and crystallization.
The worst epidemic of puerperal (childbed) fever ever seen kills women all over Europe (see White, 1773).
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. The Society's board of governors holds its first meeting July 24, opts to acquire a five-acre site on the west side of Broadway, opposite Pearl Street, and will build its first facility in Pearl Street, where a cornerstone will be laid September 3, 1773 (see 1776).
Theologian-philosopher-mystic-scientist Emanuel Swedenborg dies at London March 29 at age 84.
The brilliant gaon of Vilna Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, 52, issues the first herem against hasidic Jewry and has its books publicly burnt (see 1760; 1781).
The French Encyclopédie appears in its 22nd and final folio volume (a supplement to Bougainville's Voyages). Editor-in-chief Denis Diderot is sick and exhausted, having written more than 2,000 articles and employed hundreds of other contributors plus 1,000 draftsmen, etchers, printers, and bookbinders. Six more supplements will appear in 1776 and 1777.
Poetry: The Rising Glory of America by College of New Jersey (Princeton) seniors Philip (Morin) Freneau, 20, and Hugh (Henry) Breckinridge, whose work is published as a commencement poem; "The Progress of Dulness" by Connecticut-born Yale graduate John Trumbull, 22, satirizes college education.
Painting: The Adoration of the Name of God by Spanish painter Francisco (José) Goya (y Lucientes), 26; The Members of the Royal Academy by Johann Zoffany; Rachel Weeping by Philadelphia painter Charles Willson Peale, 31.
Theater: Emilia Calotti by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 3/13 at Brunswick's Hoftheater; The Fashionable Lover by Richard Cumberland at London.
First performances: Symphony No. 48 in C major (Maria Theresa) by Joseph Haydn at Vienna; Symphony No. 21 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at Salzburg; Divertimento for Strings in D major and two other divertimenti by W. A. Mozart at Salzburg.
Venice's Palazzo Grassi is completed for the Grassi family of Bologna. Designed by the late Giorgio Massari, who died 6 years ago at age 80, the trapeze-shaped palace was begun in 1748, has an inner court, and is the last of the great pieces of secular architecture in the Venetian Republic that is now approaching its end.
Fire destroys Japan's capital of Edo as it did in 1657 (see 1923).
English agriculturist Thomas William Coke, 20, begins a reform of agriculture and animal husbandry in northwest Norfolk. He will help persuade farmers there to switch from rye to wheat; he will breed Southdown sheep, Devon cattle, and improved Suffolk pigs, but farmers in Gloucestershire, Hertfordshire, and some other counties will not be persuaded to change their ways (see 1760; 1780).
Virginia colony lawyer Thomas Jefferson, now 29, notes July 31 that he has eaten Irish potatoes from his garden.
The brandy and sherry firm Osborne y Compania founded by English export agent Thomas Osborne Mann at Cadiz will continue into the 21st century (the British consul has permitted Mann to store his wines in the cellar of his home).
Joseph Priestley demonstrates a small carbonating apparatus to the College of Physicians at London (see 1767; Torbern, 1770). He suggests that the pump can be used to impregnate water with what he calls "fixed air," a proposal that will be made next year by Antoine Lavoisier at Paris. Manchester apothecary Thomas Henry will use an apparatus based on Priestley's to produce carbonated water, a product he will sell in 12-gallon barrels (see Schweppe, 1790; Silliman, 1807).
Prussia's Friedrich II (the Great) issues a manifesto September 13: "It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects . . . My people must drink beer. His Majesty was brought up on beer and so were his ancestors and his officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be depended on to endure hardship or to beat his enemies in case of the occurrence of another war" (see 1775).
1771 1772 1773 1774 1775 1776 1777 1778 1779 1780
Houghton Mifflin Guide to Science & Technology:
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In the year 1772
Astronomy
A "law" proposed by Johann Titius that the distances of the planets to the Sun are proportional to the terms of the series that begins with 3 and doubles each term is publicized by Johann Elert Bode. It becomes known as the Titius-Bode law or, commonly, Bode's law. See also 1766 Astronomy; 1800 Astronomy.
Joseph-Louis Lagrange calculates that each orbit contains five stable points, now called Lagrangian points, in which a body of smaller mass than the orbiting body can travel. See also 1995 Astronomy.
ChemistryLavoisier begins his experiments on combustion, proving that diamond can be burned and that the ash is carbon dioxide. He uses a large lens to focus the Sun's rays on the diamond to burn it. He also establishes that when sulfur or phosphorus burns, its gain in weight is due to its combination with atmospheric air. See also 1774 Chemistry.
Karl Wilhelm Scheele discovers oxygen, which he calls "fire air," but the discovery is not published until 1777, after Priestley's publication of his independent discovery of oxygen in 1774. See also 1774 Chemistry.
Priestley's Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air gives instructions for making seltzer water from carbon dioxide and water.
Digressions academiques ("academic digressions") by Baron Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau [b. Dijon, France, January 4, 1737, d. Paris, January 2, 1816], published by the French Academy, contains the first demonstration that metals gain weight on calcination (the chemical change that occurs when some metals are heated below the melting point). See also 1774 Chemistry.
Priestley discovers that the volume of air decreases when an electric spark passes through it, but he does not determine why this happens. See also 1774 Chemistry.
Daniel Rutherford [b. Edinburgh, Scotland, November 3, 1749, d. Edinburgh, November 15, 1819], Joseph Priestley, Karl Wilhelm Scheele, and Henry Cavendish all discover nitrogen (N) independently, with Rutherford generally credited as the first discoverer.
CommunicationEuler's Lettres à une princesse d'Allemagne ("letters to a German princess"), addressed to the niece of Frederick the Great, deals with mechanics, optics, acoustics, and astronomy at a popular level. The book is successful with the general public, being translated into seven languages.
The Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and collaborators is completed in 17 volumes of text, finished in 1765, and 11 volumes of illustrations; a 5-volume supplement is issued between 1776 and 1780. See also 1771 Communication.
ConstructionJean-Rodolphe Perronet [b. Suresnes, France, October 25, 1708, d. Paris, February 27, 1794], director of the Ecole des Pont et Chaussées ("school of bridges and highways"), builds the Pont de Neuilly of the Seine below Paris. It is later (1827) copied by Thomas Telford in a bridge over the river Severn at Clouster, England. See also 1825 Construction.
Earth scienceJames Cook's voyage (1772-75) to the South Pacific proves the nonexistence of any large southern continent by mapping the previously unexplored coasts of Australia. Since Antiquity scholars had incorrectly believed that the Southern Hemisphere contains a continent the size of Eurasia. See also 20 ce Earth science; 1820 Earth science.
Denis Diderot's Supplément aux voyages de Bougainville ("supplement to Bougainville's voyages") hints at the possibility of continental drift. See also 1771 Earth science; 1912 Earth science.
Nevil Maskelyne suggests to the Royal Society an experiment for measuring Earth's density. See also 1774 Earth science.
EnergyJohn Smeaton builds an atmospheric steam engine that is two to three times more efficient than the Newcomen engines because of better machined cylinder walls. This results in a better seal between piston and cylinder walls. See also 1712 Energy.
Medicine & healthAnatomist Antonio Scarpa [b. Motta, (Italy), June 13, 1747, d. Bonasco, Italy, October 31, 1832] discovers the labyrinth of the ear; that is, the semicircular canals, vestibule, and cochlea.
PhysicsJohan Carl Wilcke calculates the latent heat of ice (the amount of heat absorbed when ice turns into water). See also 1761 Physics.
Essai de cristallographie ("essay on crystallography") by Jean Romé de Lisle [b. 1736, d. 1790] describes the process of crystallization and identifies 110 crystal forms.
ToolsFrench captain Nicholas Marion du Fresne and his crew are the second European group to land on Tasmania. They encounter and kill several Tasmanians. As Tasmania is settled, starting in 1803, the Europeans learn that Tasmanians have only stone and simple wood tools that are not ground or hafted, no domestic animals, no bone tools, no sewn clothing, no spear throwers, and no boomerangs. Tasmanians do not fish or eat fish even though they live on an island. Although this lack of technology makes it appear that Tasmanians colonized the island before the Neolithic Revolution, archaeological evidence shows that Tasmanians had abandoned bone technology and fishing about 3500 years bp. See also 1886 Anthropology.
King George III of England has to intervene to get the British Board of Longitude to give John Harrison the second half of the prize money he won for devising the marine chronometer. See also 1765 Tools.
Diaries, Journals, and Letters
- Thomas Hutchinson: The Hutchinson Letters. Letters from the last royal governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company (1771-1774) to the secretary of the British foreign secretary, urging repression of colonial liberties. Benjamin Franklin discovers and publishes these letters against Hutchinson's instructions, resulting in a scandal that would remove Franklin from his position as deputy postmaster general and generate great hatred for Hutchinson in the colonies.
Essays and Philosophy
- Samuel Adams: The Rights of the Colonists. A report from the Committee of Correspondence, this document, believed to be mainly the work of Adams, keeps the idea of independence from England in the public mind. Basing his arguments on the natural rights of man, Adams demonstrates the depth of his education and reading.
- Benjamin Franklin: The Sommersett Case and the Slave Trade. Having come to believe that slavery is inherently evil and after freeing his two slaves during the 1760s, Franklin produces his first writing against the institution of slavery.
Poetry, Fiction, and Drama
- James Allen (1739-1808): "The Poem Which the Committee of the Town of Boston Had Voted Unanimously to Be Published." The son of a wealthy Boston merchant, Allen composes this poem as a memorial to the Boston Massacre and for publication in a pamphlet on the same subject by James Warren. While the work is initially celebrated, rumors of Allen's Loyalist leanings result in citywide censoring of the poem. The controversy does little to devalue the author's witty satire.
- John Trumbull: "The Progress of Dulness." The author's most popular work is a verse satire published in three parts and completed in 1773. Trumbull mocks Yale's educational system as well as its techniques for instructing ministers. The main characters, Tom Brainless, Dick Hairbrain, and Harriet Simper, typify the horrific, if humorous, results of Yale pedagogy.
Sermons and Religious Writing
- Samson Occom (1732-1792): "A Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian Who Was Executed at New Haven." The first publication in America by a Native American is a sermon warning of the evils of alcohol, based on an incident in which an Indian killed a white man while drunk. Occom also condemns racial intolerance, which he says corrupts the minds of both whites and Indians.
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This article is about the year 1772.
| Millennium: | 2nd millennium |
|---|---|
| Centuries: | 17th century – 18th century – 19th century |
| Decades: | 1740s 1750s 1760s – 1770s – 1780s 1790s 1800s |
| Years: | 1769 1770 1771 – 1772 – 1773 1774 1775 |
| 1772 by topic: | |
| Arts and Sciences | |
| Archaeology – Architecture – Art – Literature (Poetry) – Music – Science | |
| Countries | |
| Canada – Great Britain – | |
| Lists of leaders | |
| Colonial governors – State leaders | |
| Birth and death categories | |
| Births – Deaths | |
| Establishments and disestablishments categories | |
| Establishments – Disestablishments | |
| Works category | |
| Works | |
| Gregorian calendar | 1772 MDCCLXXII |
| Ab urbe condita | 2525 |
| Armenian calendar | 1221 ԹՎ ՌՄԻԱ |
| Assyrian calendar | 6522 |
| Bahá'í calendar | -72–-71 |
| Bengali calendar | 1179 |
| Berber calendar | 2722 |
| British Regnal year | 12 Geo. 3 – 13 Geo. 3 |
| Buddhist calendar | 2316 |
| Burmese calendar | 1134 |
| Byzantine calendar | 7280–7281 |
| Chinese calendar | 辛卯年十一月廿七日 (4408/4468-11-27) — to —
壬辰年十二月初八日(4409/4469-12-8) |
| Coptic calendar | 1488–1489 |
| Ethiopian calendar | 1764–1765 |
| Hebrew calendar | 5532–5533 |
| Hindu calendars | |
| - Vikram Samvat | 1828–1829 |
| - Shaka Samvat | 1694–1695 |
| - Kali Yuga | 4873–4874 |
| Holocene calendar | 11772 |
| Iranian calendar | 1150–1151 |
| Islamic calendar | 1185–1186 |
| Japanese calendar | Meiwa 9An'ei 1 (安永元年) |
| Julian calendar | Gregorian minus 11 days |
| Korean calendar | 4105 |
| Minguo calendar | 140 before ROC 民前140年 |
| Thai solar calendar | 2315 |
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Year 1772 (MDCCLXXII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Sunday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar.
Events
January–June
- January 17 – Johann Friedrich Struensee and Queen Caroline Matilda are arrested, leading to his execution and her banishment from Denmark.
- February 12 – The Virginia Assembly amends an act to describe the punishments for the practice of gouging.[1]
- February 17 – The first partition of Poland is agreed to by Russia and Prussia, later including Austria.
- May – The Watauga Association is formed in East Tennessee.
- June 9 – The British vessel Gaspee is burned off of Rhode Island.
- June 22 – Lord Mansfield delivers the decision that leads to the end of slavery in England.
July–December
- August 5 – The First Partition of Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth begins.
- August 12 – The volcano Mount Papandayan in West Java erupts and partially collapses, the debris avalanche killing several thousands.[2]
- August 21 – The coup d'état by King Gustav III is completed by adopting a new Constitution, ending half a century of parliamentary rule in Sweden and making him an enlightened despot.
- September 1 – Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa is founded in San Luis Obispo, California.
- November 2 – American Revolutionary War: Samuel Adams and Joseph Warren form the first Committee of Correspondence.
Births
- March 10 – Friedrich von Schlegel, German poet (d. 1829)
- April 7 – Charles Fourier, French philosopher (d. 1837)
- April 18 – David Ricardo, British economist (d. 1823)
- May 2 – Novalis, German poet (d. 1801)
- May 20 – William Congreve, British rocket pioneer (d. 1828)
- May 22 – Ram Mohan Roy, Hindu religious and social reformer (d. 1833)
- July 11 – John Rodgers, American naval officer (d. 1838)
- August 2 – Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Condé (d. 1804)
- August 15 – Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, German inventor (d. 1838)
- August 24 – King William I of the Netherlands (d. 1843)
- October 21 – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet and philosopher, (d. 1834)
- October 25 – Geraud Duroc, French general (d. 1813)
- November 18 – Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, German prince (d. 1806)
- date unknown – Tuanku Imam Bonjol, Indonesian religious and military leader (d. 1864)
Deaths
- February 8 – Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, Princess of Wales (b. 1719)
- February 18 – Johann Hartwig Ernst, Count von Bernstorff, Danish statesman (b. 1712)
- March 21 – Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, French cartographer (b. 1703)
- March 22 – John Canton, English physicist (b. 1718)
- March 26 – Charles Pinot Duclos, French writer (b. 1704)
- March 29 – Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish philosopher and mathematician (b. 1688)
- May 1 – Gottfried Achenwall, German statistician (b. 1719)
- May 22 – Durastante Natalucci, Italian historian (b. 1687)
- June 15 – Louis Claude Daquin, French composer (b. 1694)
- June 18 – Johann Ulrich von Cramer, German judge and philosopher (b. 1706)
- June 18 – Gerard van Swieten, Dutch-born physician (b. 1700)
- August 31 – William Borlase, English naturalist (b. 1695)
- September 30 – James Brindley, British canal builder (b. 1716)
- October 7 – John Woolman, American Quaker preacher and abolitionist (b. 1720)
- October 8 – Jean Joseph de Mondonville, French violinist and composer (b. 1711)
- November 10 – Pedro Antonio Joaquim Correa da Serra Garção, Portuguese poet (b. 1724)
- November 19 – William Nelson, American colonial governor of Virginia (b. 1711)
- December 7 – Martín Sarmiento, Spanish writer and scholar (b. 1695)
- date unknown – Madhavrao Peshwa, ruler of India (b. 1745)
References
- ^ William Walter Hening. "Hening's Statutes at Large". http://vagenweb.org/hening/vol08-25.htm. Retrieved 9 April 2011.
- ^ "Papandayan". Global Volcanism Program. Smithsonian Institution. http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0603-10=. Retrieved 2010-09-09.
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People's Chronology. Copyright © 2005 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Houghton Mifflin Guide to Science & Technology
History of Science and Technology, edited by Bryan Bunch and Alexander Hellemans. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
