1781 1782 1783 1784 1785 1786 1787 1788 1789 1790
Parliament votes February 24 to abandon further prosecution of the war against Britain's American colonies; Congress proclaims victory in the American War of Independence April 19, but a mutiny of unpaid soldiers at Philadelphia has forced Congress to meet at Princeton, New Jersey, where the College of New Jersey's Nassau Hall has been repaired sufficiently since 1777 to accommodate George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and other dignitaries for 4 months. Some 4,435 Americans have died in battle, 6,188 have been wounded, and thousands more have died of disease and exposure. The British have lost at least as many.
Lord Shelburne resigns March 27; Whig leader Charles James Fox takes over in alliance with Lord North.
The North Carolina General Assembly votes April 19 to have a Fourth of July Independence Day celebration, but Moravians of the Waschovia settlement are the only citizens who respond to a proclamation by the governor making the celebration official.
Patriot James Otis is struck by a bolt of lightning and killed at Andover, Massachusetts, May 23 at age 58.
The Treaty of Paris signed in a ceremony at the Hôtel d'York in the Rue Jacob September 3 begins, "His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the . . . United States . . . to be free, sovereign, and independent states." Britain cedes to the Americans all lands westward to the Mississippi, vast territories that include what later will be Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia, granting full rights to the Newfoundland fishery; she cedes Florida to Spain (see 1763) and regains her West Indian possessions, including Grenada, Montserrat, and St. Vincent. France regains St. Lucia, Tobago, Senegal, Gorée, and her East Indian possessions. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and New York-born diplomat John Jay, 37, sign for the Americans.
The Continental Army disbands November 2, but the last British troops do not leave New York until November 25 (New Yorkers will observe Evacuation Day [as it will be called] on November 25 every year for nearly 140 years. General Guy Carleton leads his forces onto ships at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, and American forces march south from the Bronx within the hour, crossing a bridge over Spuyten Duyvil Creek from McGowan's Pass and proceeding down the Bowery through Chatham and Pearl streets to the Battery under the command of Generals Washington and Clinton. Lieutenant Governor Pierre Van Cortlandt, 62, accompanies General Washington on his triumphant entry into the city (his son Philip, 34, is made responsible for breaking up and selling confiscated Loyalist holdings in the city and surrounding counties). The new American flag is run up at the Battery to replace the Union Jack, and celebrations continue for 10 days. The last British troopship leaves for England from Staten Island December 5.
Congress meets November 26 at Annapolis, Maryland; George Washington resigns as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army December 23, bidding a tearful farewell to his troops in a speech at New York's Fraunces Tavern (see restaurants, 1763).
Sweden recognizes the new American republic; Denmark, Spain, and Russia soon follow suit, but Prussia's Friedrich II (the Great) says the United States is too large and will soon fall apart.
The Spanish siege of Gibraltar ends February 6 after 3½ years of hostilities in which the British defenders have used red-hot lead to repel enemy battering ships.
Russia's Catherine the Great annexes the Crimea, conquered by her favorite Grigori Potemkin from the Ottoman Turks; she expels the Turks and offers a large grant of land to the Mennonites, promising them religious freedom and exemption from military service (see 1568; 1771; Sevastopol, 1784). Catherine guarantees Georgia's territorial integrity under terms of the Treaty of Georgievsk signed July 24 with Erekle II of Kartalinia-Kakhetia (eastern Georgia). He renounces dependence on Persia or any other power and agrees to give Russia prerogatives in the conduct of his country's foreign affairs, Russia guarantees the continuation of the Bagratid dynasty (but see 1800).
Bahrain is established as an independent Persian Gulf emirate under the control of the al-Khalifa family. Occupying 268 square miles (695 square kilometers), including some islands in the Gulf, it has been ruled at times by Persia but the al-Khalifas will rule the tiny Islamic country into the 21st century even after Shiite Muslims become a majority (the family is Sunni) (see Britain, 1861).
General Sir Eyre Coote dies at Madras April 18 at age 56. Britain's House of Lords rejects a bill to reform the colonial administration of India and criticizes the American peace settlement. Prime Minister Fox resigns December 13, and a new government takes office headed by William Pitt (the Younger), 24, who will hold power until 1801.
Some 16,000 American prisoners of war have died in British prison ships anchored in New York's East River.
English Quakers form an association "for the relief of and liberation of the negro slaves in the West Indies, and for the discouragement of the slave trade on the coast of Africa."
Maryland forbids further importation of slaves.
Italian naval hero Alejandro Malaspina embarks in March for a second voyage to the Philippines as second-in-command aboard the frigate Asunción. Now 28, he went around the Cape of Good Hope to the Philippines in 1779 aboard the frigate Astrea, will not return until July of next year, and will gain prominence as an explorer (see 1789).
A postwar economic recession begins in the United States, whose foreign debts have reached $6.4 million to France, $1.3 million to Holland, and $174,000 to Spain.
British Orders in Council limit imports from America to naval stores and a few other commodities. Fighting against the Americans has left Britain £40 million in debt.
The Continental Congress issues script certificates that entitle former Continental Army soldiers and officers to tracts of land west of the Appalachians, the acreages varying according to rank and length of service. Many sell the certificates to those who want land (and to land speculators). The phrase "not worth a Continental" is heard as inflation reduces the value of paper currency issued by the Continental Congress to finance the Revolution. Corn sells for $80 per bushel, shoes for $100 per pair, and George Washington, the richest man in America, says that he needs a wagonload of money to buy a wagonload of supplies.
The $5 million William Penn estate in Pennsylvania is broken up, as are other large estates held by former Loyalists (Tories), including New York's 192,000-acre Philipse manor. New York's De Lancey manor is sold to 275 individuals, a 40,000-acre North Carolina estate is divided into farms averaging 200 acres each, but most of the land goes to speculators and men who are already substantial property owners.
Philadelphia political leader William Bingham prepares to buy 2 million acres of Maine timberland on the upper Penobscot River for 12½¢ per acre. Bingham was a cofounder of the Bank of North America 2 years ago and is a member of its board.
The North West Company is organized by Canadian fur traders in competition with the 113-year-old Hudson's Bay Company (see Seven Oaks Massacre, 1816).
The 600,000 tons of shipping employed in Anglo-American trade are almost entirely British, but Salem merchant Elias Hasket Derby, now 44, has learned the value of fast ships in the Revolution, has improved the art of shipbuilding, and outsails the Royal Navy in his 309-ton Grand Turk. He will soon send her to the East Indies and China (see 1784). Derby's father, Richard, has turned his affairs over to Elias and dies at Salem November 9 at age 71.
The Montgolfier brothers give the first public demonstration of an ascension balloon June 5 at Annonay, France. Joseph Michel Montgolfier, 43, and his brother Jacques Etienne, 38, are the sons of a local paper maker; while playing with inverted paper bags over an open fire they found that the bags rose to the ceiling. They went on to experiment with other materials, and in mid-December of last year succeeded in launching a silk bag that reached an altitude of 250 meters. They have inflated their new linen balloon with hot air, and it makes a 10-minute ascent, traveling two kilometers at an altitude of between 1,600 and 2,000 meters. The Montgolfiers send up a sheep, a duck, and a cockerel to test the effects of the air at higher altitudes, and the demonstration at Versailles persuades Louis XVI to permit a trial human flight: Pilâtre de Rozier and the marquis d'Arlandes fly above Paris November 21, reaching an altitude of about 100 meters, remaining aloft for 25 minutes, and traveling nine kilometers (see Jeffries, 1785; Charles's hydrogen balloon, 1787).
English ironmaster Henry Cort, 43, invents a process for puddling iron that revolutionizes wrought-iron production. He will patent the process next year and will also patent the reverberatory furnace that makes his purifying process possible.
Tungsten (wolfram) is produced in metallic form by Spanish chemist Fausto d'Elhuyer, 28, and his brother Juan José, who isolate an acid from wolframite and heat it with carbon.
A crude electric cell constructed by Italian anatomist (Luigi) Aloisio Galvani, 49, at Bologna employs two different metals and the natural fluids from a dissected frog. Galvani decides that the electric current produced by the cell must derive from the fluids in the frog (see Volta, 1800).
Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler dies at St. Petersburg September 18 at age 76; mathematician, physicist, and Encyclopédie co-editor Jean le Rond d'Alembert of Bladder disease at his native Paris October 29 at age 65.
Harvard College adds a medical school whose initial faculty is comprised of Aaron Dexter, John Warren, and Benjamin Waterhouse, 29, the latter having studied at London, Edinburgh, and Leyden.
English physician Thomas Cawley makes the first recorded diagnosis of diabetes mellitus. He shows the presence of sugar in a patient's urine (see 1788; Willis, 1674; Brunner, 1683).
Jerusalem by Moses Mendelssohn advocates Judaism as the religion of rationalism.
Webster's Spelling Book by Connecticut-born Yale graduate Noah Webster, 25, is published under the title Grammatical Institute of the English Language. Determined that American spelling and pronunciation shall not be bound by British traditions, Webster standardizes American orthography and helps make pronunciation more uniform. His "Blue-Backed Speller" will have sales of more than 65 million copies in the next 34 years and will continue to sell through much of the next century, but absent any federal copyright law the book will be widely pirated until after 1790 (see dictionary, 1806; 1828).
Nonfiction: The History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (three volumes) by Adam Ferguson.
Poetry: The Village by English clergyman-poet George Crabbe, 28, employs heroic couplets in a reply to Oliver Goldsmith's sentimental 1770 poem The Deserted Village.
Painting: The Duchess of Devonshire by Thomas Gainsborough; Lady Hamilton as a Bacchanite by George Romney; St. Bernardino of Siena and The Count of Floridablanca and Goya by Francisco de Goya; The Grief of Andromache by Jacques Louis David, who gains admission to the Académie Royale. Painters Adélaïde Labille-Guíard (née Labille), 33, and Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun are admitted to membership in the Académie May 31 (the Académie has a rule against allowing more than four female members at any one time). Labille-Guiard first exhibited her work 9 years ago at the Académie de San Luc in Paris with support from Mme. du Barry; she has taken a number of female pupils, is building a network of female artists, and although she separated from her husband, Louis Nicolas Guíard, in 1779 after 10 years of marriage, she continues to sign her work "Labille f[emme] Guíard" (see 1785).
Sculpture: The Cold Girl by Jean-Antoine Houdon, whose marble bust is so realistic it moves a critic to say, "M. Houdon lacks only the means to make his portraits speak, since, as for likeness, he lacks nothing."
Theater: Nathan the Wise (Nathan der Weise) by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 4/14 at Berlin; Fiesco, or The Conspiracy of Genoa (Die Verschworüng der Fiesko zu Getza) by Friedrich von Schiller 7/20 at Bonn; A Bold Stroke for a Husband by Hannah Cowley at London's Haymarket Theatre; actor John P. Kemble makes his London debut 9/30 at the Drury Lane Theatre in the role of Hamlet (see 1781; 1785).
Prague's Estates Theater opens.
Mezzo-soprano castrato Caffarelli (Gaetano Marjorano) dies at Naples January 31 at age 72; composer Johann Adolf Hasse at Venice December 16 at age 84, having written 61 operas.
First performances: Symphony No. 35 in D major (Haffner) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 3/3 at Vienna's Burgtheater. The Holy Roman Emperor Josef II gives Mozart 25 ducats to show his appreciation; Concerto-Rondo for Pianoforte and Orchestra in D major by W. A. Mozart 3/11 at Vienna; Symphony No. 36 in C major (Linz) by W. A. Mozart 11/4 at the palace of Count Thun at Linz.
Landscape gardener Lancelot "Capability" Brown dies at London February 6 at age 67.
A February earthquake in the southern part of Italy kills an estimated 30,000.
Iceland's Skaptar volcano erupts beginning June 8, spilling lava over a wide area near the country's southern coast and creatng a sulfurous blue haze that spreads over much of Europe by the end of July. By March of next year more than three cubic miles of lava will have been deposited over the Icelandic countryside and 20 percent of the country's population will have died.
Japan suffers her worst famine since 1732 following the eruption of Mount Asama (see 1784; 1833; riots, 1787).
Waterford Crystal has its beginnings in a factory opened at the Irish port by entrepreneurs George and William Penrose, who have invested £10,000 and employ 50 to 70 people under the direction of their fellow Quaker John Hill from Stourbridge, England. The glassware they produce has a clarity of color unmatched by anything made in England; it will find markets in Spain, the West Indies, Newfoundland, New England, and New York, but the factory will survive for less than a century before excessive taxes and lack of capital force it to close (see 1947).
1781 1782 1783 1784 1785 1786 1787 1788 1789 1790
