1781 1782 1783 1784 1785 1786 1787 1788 1789 1790
Contents: political eventshuman rights, social justice commerce energy technology science medicine literature art theater, film music crime architecture, real estate agriculture |
Parliament votes February 24 to abandon further prosecution of the war against Britain's American colonies, the northern Dutch province of Friesland votes February 26 to instruct its delegates in the States-General to recognize John Adams as minister from the United States, the British prime minister Lord North resigns in the House of Commons March 20, a new government headed by Charles Watson-Wentworth, second marquis of Rockingham, comes to power with a mandate to make peace, he sends M.P. Thomas Grenville, 27, to Paris with instructions to open peace talks with Benjamin Franklin (see Treaty of Paris, 1783), and the Province of Holland recognizes American independence March 28. Rockingham dies at London July 1 at age 52 and is buried in York Minster; William Fitzmaurice Petty, 45, 2nd earl of Shelburne, heads a new coalition ministry, serving as first lord of the treasury and first minister while his longtime Whig critic Charles James Fox sits in his cabinet.
Admiral de Grasse takes the Caribbean islands of Montserrat and Saint Kitts in January He sets out from Martinique April 8 with 35 ships and 150 merchantmen, but Admiral Rodney intercepts his fleet and forestalls a union between French and Spanish naval forces for an assault on Jamaica. Rodney restores British control of the Caribbean April 12 by defeating a French fleet under de Grasse in the Battle of the Saintes, fought in the strait between Guadeloupe and Dominica (see 1781). De Grasse is taken prisoner but will return to France next year, publish a memoir justifying his action, and win acquittal from a court martial in 1784.
General Robert Monckton dies at London May 21 at age 55.
Spanish forces complete their conquest of Florida from the British.
British forces evacuate Savannah in July and Charleston in December but will continue to occupy New York until November of next year.
The Order of the Purple Heart established by General Washington August 7 honors soldiers who have distinguished themselves in battle (Washington's authorization will not be found until the early 1930s, after which the medal will be awarded to those who have sustained wounds).
General Charles Lee dies of pneumonia at a Philadelphia tavern October 2 at age 51, having been suspended from the army for his criticism of General Washington, whom he has continued to call a "puffed up charlatan" and other things. Washington, members of the Continental Congress, and other dignitaries nevertheless attend his funeral.
Spanish forces in the viceroyalty of Peru suppress a 2-year revolt in the Audencia of Cuzco (see 1781; San Martin, 1820).
Britain repeals Poyning's Law of 1494, which required approval by the English privy council of any law passed by the Irish parliament. Repeal of the law crowns a campaign by Dublin-born politician Henry Grattan, now 37, who has gained support for his cause from the Irish Volunteers, a militia organized to defend Ireland against a possible French invasion. Grattan's rival Henry Flood says that Grattan has not gone far enough in his reforms; now 50 and no match for Grattan as orator, Flood nevertheless obtains passage of a bill requiring the English parliament to renounce all claims to control Irish legislation.
Britain's Royal George sinks without warning August 29 while being repaired at Portsmouth. The flagship of Admiral Richard Kempenfelt, 64, she goes down off Spithead with 800 men, including the admiral. Lloyd's members subscribe £6,000 to a Patriotic Fund set up for the widows and orphans.
French and Spanish forces laying siege to Gibraltar take Minorca from the British, whose governor general James Murray is court-martialed back in England, acquitted, and made a general, but Lord Richard Howe, now 66, relieves Gibraltar in the fall, commanding his 33 ill-equipped and ill-manned ships with such skill that he outmaneuvers the 46 French and Spanish ships of the line.
Siam's mentally unstable king Taksin is deposed and executed at Thon Buri April 6 at age 47 after a 15-year reign in which his ministers have reunited the country and extended its influence into Cambodia, Laos, and the Malay states. Minor officials have rebelled against his efforts to force Buddhist monks and other subjects to accept his religious notions; Taksin has recalled his chief general Phraphutthayotfa Chulalok, 45, from campaigning in Cambodia, and the general is elevated to the throne. The new king moves his capital across the Chao Phraya River to Bangkok and will reign until 1809, ending Siam's long conflict with Burma in 1793, re-establishing royal control over local potentates, gaining part of Cambodia by dividing that country with Vietnam (see 1605; 1796), and beginning the Chakri dynasty that will rule Siam until 1932.
Orphaned Vietnamese prince Nguyen Anh tries to regain control of the south but the effort ends in disaster (see 1777). Now 20, he meets the Roman Catholic missionary Pierre-Joseph-Georges Pigneau de Béhaine, 40, on the French-held island of Kah Kut, near Phu Quoc, and the bishop befriends him (see 1787).
The Burmese prince Bowdawpaya, 41, makes himself king by overthrowing his grandnephew Maung Maung and having him executed. A son of the late Alaungpaya, who died in 1760, Bodawpaya will reign until 1819 (see 1784).
The first Anglo-Maratha War in India ends in May with the signing of the Treaty of Salbai after 7 years of conflict; Britain retains Salsette Island near Bombay (Mumbai) but agrees to abandon Raghunath (but see 1802). The 2-year-old Mysore War goes on. Mysore's Haidar Ali dies suddenly at age 60; his son Tipu Sahib, 31, is crowned sultan; and he continues hostilities against the British, whose governor general Warren Hastings will be accused of having confiscated the treasure and part of the lands of the begum of Oudh. Mother of the late Chait Singh, rajah of Benares, she employs 50 barbers and 4,000 gardeners (see 1784).
The mestizo Communero rebel leader José Antonio Galán is hanged in New Granada January 30 after trying to organize a second march on Bogotá (see 1781).
An American militia force under the command of Captain David Williamson murders 96 Delaware and other tribespeople March 8 at Gnadenhütten Village near what later will be New Philadelphia, Ohio. The tribespeople have been converted by Moravian Brethren and remained neutral in the American Revolution, but other tribesmen have raided frontier settlements, Williamson has sought revenge, he and 90 volunteers have feigned friendship and disarmed the natives, they slaughter the villagers in cold blood, and the only survivors are two boys who lose their scalps but escape to tell what happened.
The Virginia legislature authorizes manumission of slaves as the "peculiar institution" begins to die out in some parts of the South (see 1778). Some 10,000 Virginia slaves will be freed in the next 8 years, largely because they are old, ill, or too costly for their masters to maintain (but see 1803).
Austria abolishes serfdom throughout the empire (see 1780).
British and French fur interests continue to battle each other in Canada: French forces plunder the Hudson's Bay Company's 8-year-old factory (trading post) Cumberland House, destroy it, and take seaman-explorer Samuel Hearne prisoner.
Merchant Aaron Lopez drowns May 27 at age 50 when he stops to water his carriage horse on Scott's Pond at Smithfield outside Providence, Rhode Island, and the horse bolts into deeper water. Once the richest man in Newport, Lopez moved to Leicester, Massachusetts, at the outbreak of hostilities with Britain in 1775, lost nearly all of his vessels in the Revolutionary War (Rhode Island provided more privately armed vessels to the cause than did any other colony), and had been en route to Rhode Island for a visit.
The 741-ton East India Company merchant ship Grosvenor leaves India June 13 with 140 passengers and crew bound for England; the three-masted square-rigger founders August 4 on the southeastern coast of Africa, and although most of those on board survive the ship's disaster her castaways quickly find themselves surrounded by hostile natives. Captain John Coxon calculates that the nearest Dutch or Portuguese settlement is 250 miles away (it is actually closer to 650 miles), his party sets out along the coast without a knife or any other effective tool, the group includes seven women, five children, and quite a few sick or injured men, six reach the Dutch settlement of Swellendam November 29 after 118 days of hard traveling, rescuers bring in more survivors, but they do not include Captain Coxon or a pregnant woman who was close to term when they set out; 106 men, women, and children perish.
James Watt patents a double-acting rotary steam engine (see 1781). Its piston pushes as well as pulls, but a new method is needed to connect the piston rigidly to the beam (see 1784).
Inventor Richard Arkwright's cotton mills produce so much wealth that he has a net worth of some £200 million and employs 5,000 workers. Now 49, the world's first great industrialist travels about with elegantly dressed trumpeters mounted on gray horses and a company of javelin men, but he will begin next year to devote 2 hours each day to the study of spelling and grammar in an effort to surmount his humble origins.
Inventor Jacques de Vaucanson dies at Paris November 21 at age 73, having devised a large number of robotic devices and machine tools.
Physico-Chemical Memoirs on the Influence of Light (Mémoires physicochimique sur l'influence de la lumière) by Swiss botanist and naturalist Jean Senebier, 40, foreshadows the concept of photosynthesis (see 1783; Ingenhousz, 1779).
Swedish chemist Peter Jacob Hjelm, 36, discovers the element molybdenum and becomes master of assaying for the Royal Mint at Stockholm. He is credited with having isolated manganese last year (and observing that pig iron made from ore containing that mineral often produced better-quality steel) and is not aware of Scheele's work in 1774 on manganese or his 1778 work to isolate molybdenum.
Chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele prepares hydrogen cyanide from the pigment Prussian blue (a solution of it in water will be called Prussic acid). Colorless, highly volatile, and deadly poisonous, it will find wide use along with its compounds in case hardening iron and steel, concentration of ores, electroplating, fumigation, and a variety of other chemical processes.
Mathematician Daniel Bernoulli dies at Basel March 17 at age 82; chemist Andreas S. Marggraf at his native Berlin August 7 at age 73.
Physician Sir John Pringle dies at London January 10 at age 74, having founded modern military medicine by applying to the administration of hospitals and army camps his principle that ordinary putrefactive processes produce disease.
German theologian-zoologist Johann Melchior Goeze finds a hair-like parasite in the intestine of a badger and calls it der Haarrundwurm (the hair-round worm). It will soon be called the hookworm (see 1619; Froelich, 1789).
London surgeon John Hunter tells medical students, "Some Physiologists will have it that the Stomach is a Mill; others that it is a fermenting Vat; others again that it is a Stew Pan; but in my view of the matter it is neither a Mill, a fermenting Vat, nor a Stew Pan—but a Stomach, gentlemen, a Stomach." Now 54, the Scottish-born scientist set up his own anatomy school at London in 1764, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society 4 years later, and in 1776 was appointed surgeon to George III.
A smallpox epidemic on America's Great Plains ends after 3 years of devastation that has killed one third to one half of all the crop-raising tribespeople on the banks of the Missouri River.
Nonfiction: Letters from an American Farmer by French-born farmer-author J. Hector St. John (Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur), 47, who settled in New York's Orange County 13 years ago. "Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men," he writes (see Theater [Zangwill play], 1909). When he returns home next year after serving as French consul to three states, de Crèvecoeur will find that an Indian raid has burnt his house, left his wife dead, and his children missing (he will recover the children); Notes on Virginia by former Virginia governor Thomas Jefferson, whose plan for public education in Virginia speaks of a "natural aristocracy" as opposed to the degenerate, blood-based aristocracy of Europe; A History of the Corruption of Christianity by English clergyman-chemist Joseph Priestley.
Fiction: Les Liaisons dangereuses by French novelist Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos, 41, who creates a sensation with his epistolary novel about seduction; Cecilia by Fanny Burney.
Painting: Fètes for the Grand Duke Paul of Russia by Francesco Guardi; Colonel George K. C. Grenadier Guards by Sir Joshua Reynolds; The Nightmare by Swiss painter Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli), 41, who fuses Gothic elements of romanticism with classicism in his reclining figure with its supernatural presences and mood of terror. Richard Wilson dies at Lianberis, Caernarvonshire, May 12 at age 67.
Sculpture: Monument to Pope Clement XIV by Venetian sculptor Antonio Canova, 25.
Theater: The Robber (Die Räuber) by German surgeon-playwright Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, 22, 1/13 at Mannheim's Naturaltheater. Schiller had the play printed last year at his own expense, has left his regiment at Stuttgart without leave to attend a performance at Mannheim, and is arrested by the duke of Württemberg, who appointed him physician to the regiment; condemned to write nothing but medical treatises, Schiller leaves Württemberg and will spend 9 years (the Wanderjahre) at Mannheim, Weimar, and Jena; The Minor (Nedorosl) by Russian playwright Denis Fonvizen 9/24 at St. Petersburg; Sarah Siddons returns to London's Drury Lane Theatre in October as Isabella in David Garrick's adaptation of Thomas Southerne's 1694 play The Fatal Marriage, scores an immediate success, and will be hailed as the queen of the London stage for the next 30 years (see 1775; 1803).
Poet-librettist Pietro Metastasio dies at Vienna April 12 at age 84.
Opera: The Abduction From the Seraglio (Die Entführung aus dem Serail) 7/16 at Vienna, with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Catarina Cavalieri creates the role of Constanze); Orlando Paladillo in August at Vienna's Eszterháza Castle, with music by Joseph Haydn.
First performances: Symphony No. 77 in B flat major by Joseph Haydn at Esterhéza Castle; Serenade No. 10 in B flat major (Gran Partita) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 8/4 for Mozart's wedding to soprano Constanze Weber, 19, at St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna.
Composer Johann Christian Bach dies at London January 1 at age 46 and is buried in St. Pancras.
London's Newgate Prison is completed to replace an earlier prison burnt down in the Gordon riots of 1780. Architect George Dance, 41, has made the new prison almost windowless (windows are not his forte) and the structure is his masterpiece. Prison reformer John Howard visits the newly rebuilt facility and finds inmates who have been locked up for 7 years awaiting trial. Despite the laws passed by Parliament in 1774, jailers charge fees before permitting debtors, felons, and others to be released, and Howard urges that jailers be paid salaries.
Salem's Pierce Nichols House is completed in Federal Street for East India merchant Jerathmeel Pierce by local architect Samuel McIntire, 25.
Architect Jacques Ange Gabriel dies at Paris January 4 at age 83; John Wood the Younger at Batheston, Somerset, June 18 at age 54.
Jethro Tull's seed-planting drill of 1701 is improved with gears for its distributing mechanism.
"The indifferent state of agriculture among us does not proceed from a want of knowledge merely," says Thomas Jefferson in Notes on Virginia, which he has written at the request of the French government. "It is from our having such quantities of land to waste as we please. In Europe the object is to make the most of their land, labor being abundant; here it is to make the most of our labor, land being abundant."
1781 1782 1783 1784 1785 1786 1787 1788 1789 1790
