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The Virginia House of Burgesses appoints a Provincial Committee of Correspondence March 12 to keep Virginia in touch with the other colonies. The Boston Gazette publishes The Defeat, an anonymous drama by propagandist Mercy Otis Warren that continues the theme begun last year in The Adulateur.
The Tea Act passed by Parliament May 10 lightens duties on tea imported into Britain to give relief to the East India Company, whose warehouses on the Thames contain 7 years' supply and are running up storage charges. The legislation raises a furor in the American colonies by permitting tea to be shipped at full duty to the colonies and sold directly to retailers, eliminating colonial middlemen and undercutting their prices. "There never was a good war or a bad peace," writes Benjamin Franklin September 11 in a letter from London to Josiah Quincy, but the anger of many colonists is not easily assuaged, and Sons of Liberty gangs organized by agitator Samuel Adams riot in the streets, tarring and feathering some crown officials.
"Two Letters on the Tea Tax" by John Dickinson is published in November.
The East India Company ships Beaver, Dartmouth, and Eleanor arrive at Boston in November with 114 chests of Chinese tea, whose price is lower than that of tea smuggled into the city in violation of the Tea Act. More tea arrives on later ships.
The "Boston Tea Party" December 16 demonstrates against the new English tea orders. Samuel Adams has organized the action with support from John Hancock, whose smuggling of contraband tea has been made unprofitable by the new measures (see commerce, 1768). Adams speaks from the pulpit of the Old South Church, preys upon fears of further taxation, and gives a prearranged signal to the Sons of Liberty by saying, "There is nothing more we can do for our country." Led by Lendall Pitts, scion of a Boston merchant family, men who include silversmith Paul Revere disguise themselves as Mohawks, board the East India Company ship Dartmouth at Griffen's Wharf, and throw 342 chests of Chinese tea from the London firm of Davison and Newman into Boston Harbor (the tea is valued at more than £9,650). Tea is left to rot on the docks at Charleston, while New York and Philadelphia send tea-laden ships back to England, but men of "sense and property" such as George Washington deplore the "Boston Tea Party."
Prussian general Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz dies of paralysis at Ohlau August 27 at age 52.
Denmark cedes the duchy of Oldenburg to Russia.
Egypt's Ali Bey sustains wounds in a skirmish with Ottoman rebels and dies May 8 after 12 years of increasingly autocratic rule (see Napoleon, 1798).
Wahhabi fundamentalists in Arabia annex Riyadh (see religion, 1744; 1788).
The Ottoman sultan Mustapha III dies December 25 at age 57 after a 16-year reign. His 48-year-old brother inherits the throne and will reign until 1789 as Abdul Hamid.
Parliament passes a Regulating Act in May in an effort to bring the East India Company under government control (see Hastings, 1772). The company has become far more than a commercial enterprise and according to Whig leader Edmund Burke, now 44, it is "in reality a delegation of the whole power and sovereignty of this nation sent into the East." The Mughal emperor Shah Alam has ceded Allahabad and Kora to the warlike Marathas in return for their support, and the British governor of Bengal Warren Hastings cedes Allahabad and Kora to Oudh's Shuja-ud-Dawlah under terms of the (first) Treaty of Benaras, promising him military support in return for monetary compensation (see Rohilla War, 1774).
Yale president Ezra Stiles, 46, and Congregational theologian Samuel Hopkins, 52, urge that freed blacks be resettled in West Africa.
Explorer James Cook crosses the Antarctic Circle January 12, becoming the first to do so (see 1772). He goes beyond 70° South and dispels any notion that a Terra Australis exists south of New Holland (Australia) and New Zealand. He proceeds on his expedition and soon charts Tonga and Easter Island (see 1774; Weddell, 1823).
Daniel Boone leads a party of settlers to the western Virginia country that will be called Kentucky (see 1767). Indians attack the company, killing Boone's son along with another youth, and the frightened pioneers scurry back east of the Appalachians (see Harrod, 1774; Wilderness Road, 1775).
Louisville, Kentucky, has its beginnings in a town site laid out by Virginia surveyor George Rogers Clark, 21, who 2 years ago ventured down the Ohio River alone in a canoe. The town will be settled in 1779, and the Virginia Legislature will name it Louisville in 1780 to honor France's Louis XVI.
Parliament passes Burke's Act to permit the import of foreign wheat at a nominal duty when the home price reaches a certain level. The act will remain in effect long enough to establish regular imports of foreign grain, depending on the abundance of domestic harvests, and imports will for a short while exceed exports (see 1791).
Scottish physician John Hunter, 45, begins lectures in medicine at London, where he has practiced since 1763. A brilliant surgeon and investigator, Hunter performs experiments in comparative physiology, morphology, and pathologic anatomy; describes phlebitis, pyemia, and shock; and saves thousands of limbs by establishing that aneurysms can be treated by a single proximal ligature (thread or wire) instead of by amputation. But like so many of his contemporaries, Hunter makes no distinction between the venereal diseases gonorrhea and syphilis.
Baron Guyton de Morveau in France uses chlorine and hydrochloric acid gas as a disinfectant (see 1772; Lister, 1865).
The Holy Roman Emperor Josef II expels Jesuits from the empire and Pope Clement XIV dissolves the Society of Jesus founded in 1534. The papal brief Dominus acpedempta issued June 9 (but dated July 21) terminates the 11,000 remaining Jesuits. Diplomat-clergyman Cardinal François-Joachim de Pierre de Bernis, 56, has encouraged the pope to take the action.
Dissolution of the Jesuit order disrupts education in Catholic Europe; Pope Clement XIV's brief closes 266 colleges, 103 seminaries, and 88 residences.
Immigrant student Alexander Hamilton, 18, enters New York's King's College (later Columbia), having been sent to school in New Jersey last year from his native Nevis in the Caribbean. Born out of wedlock, Hamilton lost his mother 5 years ago, spent 4 years working in a general store, but has so impressed relatives and friends with his intellect that they have financed his education (see politics, 1774).
Nonfiction: Social System (Système social) by Paul-Henri Dietrich, baron d'Holbach, who is illogical, inconsistent, and expresses no original ideas by framing morality and politics within a utilitarian construct in which duty becomes prudent self-interest.
Poetry: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, by Phillis Wheatley, Negro, Servant to Mr. John Wheatley of Boston, in New England is published at London (no American edition will appear until 1784). Brought to Boston from her native Senegal when she was 7 or 8 and purchased as a slave at Boston, Wheatley is now about 20. She was frail and asthmatic as a child, and her owners, defying the law and local custom, began to teach her to read. She was reading Scripture and English classics by age 12 and last year was given her freedom. John Wheatley finances her voyage to London, where she is presented to society.
Painting: The Graces Decorating Hymen by Sir Joshua Reynolds; The Old Man and Death and Iron Forge by Joseph Wright, who travels to Naples and sketches an eruption of Vesuvius that he witnesses; The Broken Pitcher by Jean Baptiste Greuze; Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mifflin (Sarah Morris) by John Singleton Copley.
Theater: She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith 3/18 at London's Theatre Royal in Covent Garden: "This is Liberty-Hall, gentlemen. You may do just as you please here"; "Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no fibs"; Gotz von Berlichengen by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
First performances: Symphony No. 23 in D major, No. 24 in B flat major, No. 25 in G minor, No. 26 in E flat major, No. 28 in C major, and No. 29 in A major by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who now is concertmaster to the court of Archbishop Hieronymous von Colloredo at Salzburg.
Architect Luigi Vanvitelli dies at Caserta March 31 at age 72 as the baroque palace he designed for the late Carlos II nears completion after 21 years of construction, with nearly 1,200 rooms, an aqueduct and waterfall, elaborate fountains, and an English garden.
An earthquake destroys most of the Central American city that has been the capital of the Spanish captain-generalcy of Guatemala for more than 230 years. The Spaniards abandon the ruins at Antigua and move the seat of power to Guatemala City.
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