1774
1771 1772 1773 1774 1775 1776 1777 1778 1779 1780
France's Louis XV dies of smallpox at Versailles May 10 at age 64 after a reign of nearly 59 years, mourned by his final mistress, Mme. du Barry, now 31, who bravely kissed his hands May 3 when she first noticed the pustules on them. His grandson, now 19, will rule until 1792 as Louis XVI with his wife, Marie Antoinette, as queen. Cardinal de la Roche Aymon, grand almoner of France, has forced the dying king to dictate a lettre de cachet ordering that the comtesse du Barry be sent as a prisoner of state to the ancient Abbaye de Pont aux Dames, where she will remain for nearly a year, winning the friendship of the nuns and even of the stern abbess.
Politician Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland (of Foxley), dies at Kensington, outside London, July 1 at age 68, having used his cabinet positions during the Seven Years' War to line his own pocket (a petition of the livery of the City of London against the minister 5 years ago referred to him as "the public defaulter of unaccounted millions," but proceedings against him in the Court of Exchequer were stayed by a royal warrant.
France's new king Louis XVI appoints economist Jacques Turgot secretary of the navy in July and makes him controller general of finances August 24, with virtually all the powers of a prime minister (see 1761). Turgot sees a desperate need for major reforms, he urges the king September 13 to restore free circulation of grain, but he proceeds cautiously lest he antagonize the privileged classes, limiting his immediate actions to reducing government expenditures by eliminating useless positions and abolishing financial assistance to courtiers; as a "friend of the philosophers" who does not attend Mass he is suspected of favoring Protestants (see 1776).
The Treaty of Kuchuk-Kaainardji signed July 16 ends a six-year Russo-Turkish war. Moldavia and Wallachia return to Ottoman control, Russia acquires control of much of the northern Black Sea coast, and the Crimea gains independence.
Russian forces suppress a year-long Cossack revolt in September.
British East India Company forces go to war with Afghan Rohilla tribesmen (see 1773). Parliament exonerates Robert Clive, Baron Clive of Plassey, of charges brought 7 years ago that he mishandled the East India Company's affairs, but Clive commits suicide at his house in London November 22 at age 49 (see 1775).
News of last year's "Boston Tea Party" reaches London in January via John Hancock's ship Hayley. Parliament acts on the advice of Britain's military governor for North America General Thomas Gage and passes the Coercive Acts (Massachusetts colonists call them the Intolerable Acts) to bring the Americans to heel. George III gives assent March 31 to the Boston Port Bill, and Boston Harbor is closed June 1 until the East India Company shall have been reimbursed for its tea and British authorities feel that trade can be resumed and duties collected (see 1773). The colonists thwart London's efforts to starve Boston into submission: Marblehead sends in codfish, Charleston sends rice, Baltimore sends bread and rye whiskey. Colonel Israel Putnam, 56, of Connecticut joins with citizens of Windham to drive a flock of 258 sheep to Boston.
New York's colonial governor William Tryon sails for England in April, having been recalled to answer charges that he had a personal interest in 40,000 acres of land involved in a dispute arising out of land purchases from Mohawk tribespeople. He will return to New York in June of next year (see 1776).
The British ship London docks at New York April 22, and the Sons of Liberty prepare to follow the example set at Boston 4 months earlier, but while they are making themselves up as Mohawks an impatient crowd on the pier boards the vessel and heaves her cargo of tea into the Hudson. Colonists at York, Maine, and Annapolis, Maryland, conduct "tea parties" like the one at Boston.
Virginia's colonial governor John Murray, 4th earl of Dunmore, removes the powder from Williamsburg's magazine in April in hopes of forestalling rebel violence, but his action incites so much antagonism that he pays for the powder out of his own pocket. The Virginia House of Burgesses votes May 24 to set June 1 aside as a day of fasting and prayer in sympathy with Boston (see 1773), Governor Dunmore dissolves the House May 26 (he did the same thing last year), and the Burgesses meet May 27 at Williamsburg's Raleigh Tavern in an unofficial session that adopts a resolution calling for an annual intercolonial congress (copies are sent to other colonial legislatures).
"Observations on the Act of Parliament, Commonly Called the Boston Port Bill; with Thoughts on Civil Society and Standing Armies" by lawyer Josiah Quincy, now 30, is published as a pamphlet in May. "Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament" by Philadelphia lawyer James Wilson, 32, is published following Quincy's pamphlet.
British authorities in Massachusetts declare martial law June 2.
A new Quartering Act passed by Parliament June 2 updates the 1765 act and differs from other Coercive Acts in that it applies not only to Massachusetts but to all the colonies; it requires colonists to house British troops in their own homes where barracks, barns, or public inns are not available.
The Quebec Act passed by Parliament June 22 extends the colony of Quebec south to the Ohio River and west to the Mississippi (see 1763). Former governor General Guy Tarleton returned to England 4 years ago to persuade Lord North that his policy in Canada would help the British obtain French support in their conflict with the colonies to the south. The new act grants permission for Catholics in the colony to hold public office, legitimizes French civil (but not criminal) law, includes French-speaking settlements, recognizes the legitimacy of the French language and the Roman Catholic faith, gives the Church power to enforce collection of tithes, stipulates that an appointed council (rather than an elected assembly) is to advise the royal governor, and ignores the western land claims of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia.
"On the Rise and Progress of the Differences between Great Britain and Her American Colonies" by Benjamin Franklin is a series of articles that appear in the London Public Advertiser. Franklin works with his physician friend John Fothergill, now 62, to devise a plan for British reconciliation with the colonies, but he no longer believes any reconciliation to be possible.
New York lawyer Gouverneur Morris, 22, writes May 10 to his friend Thomas Penn at London: "It is needless to premise, that the lower orders of mankind are more easily led by specious appearances, than those of a more exalted station . . . Men by nature are free as the air. When they enter into society, there is, there must be, an implied compact . . . that a part of this freedom shall be given up for the security of the remainder. But what part? The answer is plain. The least part, considering the circumstances of the society, which constitute what may be called its political necessity. And what does this political necessity require in the present instance? Not that Britain should lay imposts upon us for the support of government, nor for its defence. Not that she should regulate our internal police. These things affect us only. She can have no right to interfere. To these things we ourselves are competent." "A Friendly Address to All Reasonable Americans" is published anonymously at New York, where it has been written by King's College president Myles Cooper, a Loyalist. (Boston lawyer John Adams estimates that one third of American colonists remain loyal to the British crown, one third are eager for independence, and the other third are undecided, waiting to see what will develop).
"Summary View of the Rights of Americans . . ." by Thomas Jefferson is published as a pamphlet at Williamsburg and at London.
The First Continental Congress assembles at Philadelphia's Carpenters Hall September 5 with all colonies represented except Georgia. Samuel Adams of Boston has proposed the congress; his friend John Hancock has put up money to buy the habitually disheveled Adams proper shoes, a decent suit of clothes, and a new wig; and he rides up to the Philadelphia State House after what by some accounts has been his first horseback ride. He and his cousin John are impressed by the intelligence and manner of aristocratic planters who serve as delegates from the Southern colonies but have come to discuss means of effecting a reconciliation with the mother country. "We are not revolutionaries," says the delegate from South Carolina, but some 6,000 redcoats are camped on Boston Common and a convention in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, has adopted the so-called Suffolk Resolves drawn up by Dr. Joseph Warren of Boston to protest Parliament's coercive acts; these resolves are laid before the delegates September 17 and approved. The Continental Congress adopts a Declaration of Rights and Grievances October 14; Patrick Henry says, "I am no longer a Virginian; I am an American"; but George Washington writes that no thinking man in all of North America desires independence.
"Free Thoughts on the Proceedings of the Continental Congress" by "Westchester farmer" Samuel Seabury, 45, is published as a pamphlet attacking the Congress. Born at Groton, Connecticut, Loyalist Seabury is a Protestant Episcopal clergyman who graduated from Yale in 1748.
King's College student Alexander Hamilton interrupts his studies at New York to join in the public debate about British rule of the colonies and publishes the first of several pamphlets that he will write in behalf of the patriot cause (see 1777).
The Association adopted October 20 by the Continental Congress is an agreement to import nothing from Britain after December 1 and to export nothing to Britain, Ireland, or the British West Indies after September 10, 1775, unless the British redress grievances against the crown. All colonies except Georgia and New York will ratify the Association within 6 months. The minutemen are established October 26 as a Massachusetts militia force to resist British rule (see 1775)
Colonial Indian agent Sir William Johnson gives a long speech in response to Iroquois complaints about trade and white encroachments but is suddenly taken ill and dies July 11 at age 59. After the death of his first wife, Katherine (née Weisenburg), he took the niece of a Mohawk chief as his housekeeper and had three children by her; he had another eight children by a woman known in English as Molly Brant, older sister of the Iroquois Nation chief Thayendenegea, known as Joseph Brant. Now 32, Brant followed Sir William into battle at age 13 and became almost a son to him; an expert interpreter, he now becomes secretary to Sir William's Irish-born successor, Guy Johnson, 34, who may be Sir William's nephew and who will give Brant a captain's commission next year before sending him to England to ascertain whether or not the British will help the Mohawk recover their lands. Sir William bequeaths his estate to his "prudent & faithfull Housekeeper" Mary (Kaonwatsi-tsiaienni), 38, and the eight children that she has borne him since 1759, the year his first wife died. Molly and her family have helped Johnson manage the Six Nations and hold them to the British cause against the French. She will be a staunch Loyalist in the next 7 years, keeping the Iroquois on the side of the British.
The Battle of Point Pleasant October 10 ends in defeat for Shawnee braves who have attacked frontiersmen at the juncture of the Ohio and Great Kanawha Rivers in western Virginia. The natives yield hunting rights in Kentucky, under terms of the Treaty of Camp Charlotte and agree to permit transportation on the Ohio to go unmolested.
Virginia's colonial governor John Murray, 4th earl of Dunmore, declares martial law in November and calls upon slaves to desert their masters and join his "Royal Ethiopian" regiment, promising them freedom in return for their support (see 1775).
Dahomey's king Tegebesu dies after a 42-year reign in which slave trading has increased to enrich himself and his family. He is succeeded by Kpengla, who will reign until 1789.
The Connecticut and Rhode Island colonies prohibit further importation of slaves.
Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush joins with James Pemberton to form an antislavery society.
The Fairfax Resolves signed by George Washington December 1 bar importation of slaves and threaten to stop all colonial exports to Britain.
The Journal of John Woolman is published 2 years after the death of American social reformer John Woolman, who took up the Quaker ministry in 1743 at age 23 and opened a Mount Holly, New Jersey, tailor shop to support himself. Woolman has traveled throughout the colonies, spreading the Quaker doctrine from North Carolina to New Hampshire and calling for the end of slavery as an institution incompatible with religion. He kept the journal beginning at age 35 in 1756, worked to stop the sale of liquor to the Indians, ate no sugar because it was produced by slave labor, and wore clothing made from undyed materials because textile workers were sometimes injured by fabric dyes.
Pioneer James Harrod makes the first English settlement west of the Alleghenies. He leads 32 other men in canoes from Pennsylvania down the Ohio River, up the Kentucky River, and into the high fertile bluegrass country plateau where they build Fort Harrod (see Boonesborough, 1775).
Explorer James Cook discovers New Caledonia in the South Pacific and goes on to chart and name the New Hebrides, some 80 islands between New Caledonia and Fiji (see 1606; 1980; Cook, 1773; Cook, 1775).
A meager harvest in France increases the hunger that has oppressed the country since the poor harvest of last year. Controller-general Jacques Turgot reintroduces the free trade in grain that was abolished in 1766 (see 1768), but the rivers freeze, grain cannot be moved by barge, and the price of a four-pound loaf of bread rises in just a few months from 11 sous to 14 sous. A four-pound loaf has sold for as much as 16 sous in earlier years, but where in the past high prices were blamed on the weather, now the government is blamed (see 1776).
French controller-general Jacques Turgot abolishes the Six Guilds of Paris, telling labor that it must not try to restrict jobs. The Six Guilds have maintained wage levels by limiting the number of artisans, but Turgot says that work is the "inalienable right of humanity," and he forbids workers to "form any association or assembly among themselves under any pretext whatever." His economist friend and personal secretary Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours is appointed inspector general of commerce.
Economist and physiocrat leader François Quesnay dies at Versailles December 10 at age 80.
Steam engine inventor James Watt goes into partnership with engineer Matthew Boulton, now 46, to found the Boulton & Watt Foundry at Birmingham (see 1769). Watt granted two-thirds ownership in his original patent to ironworks owner John Roebuck, now 56, who had financed his experiments, but Roebuck filed for bankruptcy last year after losing his fortune in unprofitable mining ventures, Boulton has acquired Roebuck's interest in the patent, his own foundry operations have been limited at times by water shortages that kept his water-wheels from turning, but it will be 18 years before the enterprise shows a profit (see 1776).
English ironmaster John Wilkinson, 46, patents a precision cannon borer that will permit commercial development of the Watt steam engine, leveraging the power of animal and human muscle to revolutionize the world. Wilkinson's borer permits accurate boring of cylinders (see steam flour mill, 1780).
Bridgewater, Massachusetts, blacksmith John Ames uses bar iron to fabricate shovel blades that will replace the hand-hewn shovels and imported English shovels now used in America. Violating British law that forbids manufacturing in the colonies, he uses an 80-pound water-powered trip hammer to shape his shovels, sells them in competition with wooden shovels, and employs his neighbors, most of them farmers, to help him in the months between October and May. Heating the iron in a fire, pounding it into shape, reheating, reshaping, and testing the weight, balance, and durability of the shovel requires the work of 20 people (see 1803).
Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen, calling the gas "dephlogisticated air." He heats red oxide of mercury in a glass tube and obtains a gas in which a candle burns more brightly than in the air. Air "spoilt" by mice is refreshed by the presence of green plants, says Priestley (see 1767; 1779). Priestley also prepares pure ammonia (NH3) for the first time (see Berthollet, 1785).
Swedish chemist Karl Wilhelm Scheele, 32, discovers chlorine and manganese (see Hjelm, 1782).
French mineralogist René-Just Haüy, 31, confirms the 1669 findings of the late Nicolaus Steno, showing that the angles between corresponding faces in quartz crystals are not only the same but also that the known interfacial angles can be accounted for if the crystal is made up of minute building blocks. Haüy has accidentally broken a piece of calcite, examined the fragments, and found that they cleaved along straight planes that met at constant angles. When he broke more pieces he discovered that the fragments were consistently rhombohedral, whatever the original shape of the pieces.
Naturalist-mathematician Charles-Marie de La Condamine dies at his native Paris February 4 at age 73.
The New Book of Anatomy (Kaitai-shinshu) by physician Genpaku Sugita, 41, introduces western ideas to Japanese medicine, but practitioners have used Chinese herbal treatments for centuries and are not about to change.
Use of ergot as a means of inducing labor in childbirth is reported for the first time in medical literature (see politics [Peter the Great], 1722). Midwives have long employed the claviceps purpura (clubheaded purple) fungus that grows on rye and other stored grains to produce strong and unremitting cervical contractions (see 1808).
The Essex Street Chapel opened April 14 in a London auction room by Cheshire-born clergyman Theophilus Lindsey, 50, is England's first Unitarian church (although John Milton, John Locke, and Sir Isaac Newton all believed in Unitarianism). Lindsey has left a comfortable life with his parish at Catterick because he felt that the Bible taught worship of God alone and could therefore not continue offering worship to Christ and the Holy Spirit. His first congregation includes Benjamin Franklin, scientist Joseph Priestley, and moral philosopher Richard Price (see Boston, 1787).
Pope Clement XIV dies at Rome September 22 at age 69 after a 5-year reign in which he has suppressed the Jesuit order (see 1775).
English religious mystic Ann Lee, 38, arrives in America with eight followers and settles on a tract of land northeast of Albany in the New York colony and introduces "Shakerism" into America. A member of the Shaking Quaker sect that will be known officially as the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, "Mother" Lee is an illiterate factory worker who abandoned her Manchester blacksmith husband after losing four children in quick succession. She is given to hysterics, convulsions, and hallucinations, denounces sex as a "filthy gratification," calls a consummated marriage "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell," preaches celibacy, and establishes a communal society where men and women are segregated (see 1784).
Norwich-born London printer Luke Hansard, 22, begins printing the House of Commons journals (see 1771). Former member of Parliament John Wilkes, now 47, has exploited the judicial privileges of the city to prevent the arrest of printers who report parliamentary debates and this year is reelected for Middlesex, having pledged himself to the radical program. Hansard's family will continue publication of parliamentary proceedings after his death in 1828, and official reports of such proceedings will be called Hansards for more than 2 centuries.
Nonfiction: Letters to His Son by the late Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th earl of Chesterfield, are published (against his wishes) by his widow a year after the earl's death at age 79. Chesterfield was married at age 39 to Melousina von Schlumberg, an illegitimate daughter of the late George I who was herself nearly 40 and had as her only attraction the fact that she was possessed of £50,000 plus an annual income of £3,000 (they lived from the start in adjoining houses and Chesterfield celebrated his marriage by taking as his mistress Lady Frances Shirley, a great beauty). The earl's illegitimate son Philip, born of an intimacy with Elizabeth du Bouchet while he was serving as ambassador to The Hague, died in 1668 at age 36, leaving an unattractive widow of whose existence (and humble origin) his father had been blissfully unaware until the young man's death. His witty and cynical letters helped his son fill diplomatic posts and a seat in Parliament obtained for him by Lord Chesterfield: "Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well"; "Take care of the pence; for the pounds will take care of themselves"; "Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least"; "An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult"; "A seeming ignorance is often a most necessary part of worldly knowledge"; "You had better refuse a favor gracefully than grant it clumsily"; "Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket; and do not pull it out and strike it, merely to show that you have one"; "Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote"; "Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough"; "History is only a confused heap of facts" (2/5/1750).
Fiction: The Sorrows of Young Werther (Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which contains a love story that has been inspired by the author's affair with Charlotte Buff, 21.
Painting: Artiochus et Stratonice by French painter Jacques Louis David, 26; Vase of Flowers with a Bust of Flora by Anne Vallayer-Coster. Boston painter John Singleton Copley emigrates to Europe following a decline in his portrait commissions, partly for reasons of his Loyalist sympathies. Copley will settle permanently at London after a year's vacation in Italy.
Theater: Gotz von Berlichengen with the Iron Hand (Gotz von Berlichengen mit der Eisernen Hand) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 4/12 at Berlin; Clavigo by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 8/23 at Hamburg; Eloge de La Fontaine by Sebastien Chamfort; The Inflexible Captive by English playwright Hannah More, 29, who has come to London from her native Bristol and joined the "Blue Stocking" set of Elizabeth Montagu. Betrothed 7 years ago, her fiancé kept her dangling for 6 years and then settled £200 per year on her and took his leave.
Playwright-poet Oliver Goldsmith dies at London April 4 at age 45, never having married.
Theatrical activities throughout the American colonies are abolished in October by resolution of the Continental Congress, whose members recommend closing all places of amusement.
Opera: Iphigenia in Aulis 4/19 at the Paris Opéra, with music by C. W. Gluck.
Parliament passes two acts stipulating 1) that discharged persons shall be set at liberty in open court without discharge fees and 2) that justices shall be required to see to the health of prisoners. The Commons has acted at the urging of English philanthropist and prison reformer John Howard, 47, who will later complain that the new laws were not "strictly obeyed" and will press for further reforms (see 1778).
Architect Jacques-François Blondel dies at Paris January 9 at age 68, having created the first art school in which architecture is taught.
Explorer James Cook nearly dies of blowfish poisoning in September after dining with his two naturalists aboard H.M.S. Resolution (see Kämpfer, 1727).
American colonists increase their consumption of coffee to protest British taxes on tea in the wake of last year's Boston Tea Party.
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