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18th century

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: General history

   Millennium: 1st millennium - 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium
   Centuries:         17th century - 18th century - 19th century
     Decades: 1700s 1710s 1720s 1730s 1740s 1750s 1760s 1770s 1780s 1790s

   As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to
   the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800 in the Gregorian
   calendar.

   Some history scholars will sometimes specifically refer to the 18th
   century as 1715- 1789, denoting the period of time between the death of
   Louis XIV of France and the start of the French Revolution, or even
   1688-1789, denoting the period of time between the Glorious Revolution
   in England and the start of the French Revolution. British historians
   such as Frank O'Gorman sometimes refer to the "Long Eighteenth Century"
   running from the Revolution of 1688 to the Great Reform Act of 1832.
   The storming of the Bastille, July 14, 1789, an iconic event of the
   French Revolution.
   Enlarge
   The storming of the Bastille, July 14, 1789, an iconic event of the
   French Revolution.

Events

1700s

   Union flag of The Kingdom of Great Britain
   Enlarge
   Union flag of The Kingdom of Great Britain
     * 1701- 1714: War of the Spanish Succession
     * 1703: Saint Petersburg founded by Peter the Great. Russian capital
       until 1918.
     * 1707: Act of Union passed merging the Scottish and the English
       Parliaments, thus establishing The Kingdom of Great Britain.
     * 1707: After Aurangzeb's death, the Mughal Empire enters a long
       decline.

1710s

     * 1715: Louis XIV died leaving France deep in debt.
     * 1718: City of New Orleans founded by the French in North America

1720s

     * 1720: The South Sea Bubble
     * 1721: Robert Walpole became the first Prime Minister of Great
       Britain ( de facto).
     * 1721: Treaty of Nystad signed, ending the Great Northern War.
     * 1722- 23: Russo-Persian War
     * 1722: Afghans conquered Iran, ending the Safavid dynasty.
     * 1722: Kangxi Emperor of China died.

1730s

   Qianlong Emperor
   Enlarge
   Qianlong Emperor
     * 1733- 38: War of the Polish Succession
     * 1735- 99: The Qianlong Emperor of China oversaw a huge expansion in
       territory.
     * 1736: Nadir Shah assumed title of Shah of Persia and founded the
       Afsharid dynasty. Ruled until his death in 1747.
     * 1739: Nadir Shah defeated the Mughals and sacked Delhi.

1740s

     * 1740: Frederick the Great crowned King of Prussia.
     * 1740- 48: War of the Austrian Succession
     * 1741: Russians began settling the Aleutian Islands.
     * 1745: Second Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland began.
     * 1747: Ahmed Shah Durrani founded the Durrani Empire in modern day
       Afghanistan.

1750s

     * 1750: Peak of the Little Ice Age
     * 1755: The Lisbon earthquake
     * 1756- 63: Seven Years' War fought among European powers in various
       theaters around the world.
     * 1757: Battle of Plassey signaled the beginning of British rule in
       India.

1760s

   Frederick II the Great, King of Prussia
   Enlarge
   Frederick II the Great, King of Prussia
     * 1760: George III became King of Britain.
     * 1762- 96: Reign of Catherine the Great of Russia.
     * 1766- 99: Anglo-Mysore Wars
     * 1767: Burmese conquered the Ayutthaya kingdom.
     * 1768: Gurkhas conquered Nepal.
     * 1768- 1774: Russo-Turkish War
     * 1769: Spanish missionaries established the first of 21 missions in
       California.
     * 1769- 73: The Bengal famine of 1770 killed one third of the Indian
       population.

1770s

     * 1772- 1795: The Partitions of Poland ended the Polish-Lithuanian
       Commonwealth and erased Poland from the map for 123 years.
     * 1775- 1782: First Anglo-Maratha War
     * 1775- 1783: American Revolutionary War
     * 1779- 1879: Xhosa Wars between British and Boer settlers and the
       Xhosas in South Africa

1780s

     * 1785- 95: Northwest Indian War between the United States and Native
       Americans
     * 1787: Freed slaves from London founded Freetown in present-day
       Sierra Leone.
     * 1788: First European settlement established in Australia at Sydney.
     * 1789: George Washington elected President of the United States.
       Served until 1797.
     * 1789- 99: The French Revolution

1790s

     * 1791- 1804: The Haitian Revolution
     * 1792- 1815: The Great French War started as the French
       Revolutionary Wars which lead into the Napoleonic Wars.
     * 1792: New York Stock & Exchange Board founded.
     * 1793: Upper Canada bans slavery.
     * 1795: Pinckney's Treaty between the United States and Spain granted
       the Mississippi Territory to the US.
     * 1796: British ejected Dutch from Ceylon.
     * 1797: Napoleon's invasion and partition of the Republic of Venice
       ended over 1,000 years of independence for the Serene Republic.
     * 1798- 1800: Quasi-War between the United States and France.
     * 1799: Napoleon staged a coup d'état and became dictator of France.
     * 1799: Dutch East India Company is dissolved.

Significant people

   Johann Sebastian Bach
   Enlarge
   Johann Sebastian Bach
     * Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Italian mathematician
     * Ahmad Shah Abdali, Afghan King
     * Ueda Akinari, Japanese writer
     * Jean le Rond d'Alembert, French mathematician, physicist and
       encyclopedist
     * Queen Anne, British monarch
     * Aurangzeb, Mughal Emperor
     * Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer
     * George Berkeley, Irish empiricist philosopher
     * Pierre Beaumarchais, French writer
     * Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher and reformer
     * Daniel Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician and physicist
     * William Blake, English artist and poet
     * François Boucher, French painter
     * Edmund Burke, British statesman and philosopher
     * Robert Burns, Scottish poet
     * Giacomo Casanova, Venetian adventurer, writer and womanizer
     * Catherine the Great, Russian Tsaritsa
     * Cao Xueqin, Chinese writer
     * Alexis Clairault, French mathematician

   Carl Friedrich Gauss
   Enlarge
   Carl Friedrich Gauss
     * James Cook, British navigator
     * François Couperin, French composer
     * Denis Diderot, French writer and philosopher
     * Eugenio Espejo, Ecuadorian scientist
     * Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician
     * Jean-Honoré Fragonard, French painter
     * Benjamin Franklin, American scientist and statesman
     * Frederick the Great, Prussian monarch
     * Thomas Gainsborough, English painter
     * Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician, physicist and
       astronomer
     * King George III, British monarch
     * Christoph Willibald Gluck, German composer
     * Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer
     * George Frideric Handel, German-English composer
     * Alexander Hamilton, American statesman
     * Joseph Haydn, Austrian composer
     * Eliza Haywood, English writer

   Samuel Johnson
   Enlarge
   Samuel Johnson
     * William Hogarth, English painter and engraver
     * David Hume, Scottish philosopher
     * Thomas Jefferson, American statesman
     * Edward Jenner, English inventor of vaccination
     * Jiang Tingxi, Chinese artist and scholar
     * Samuel Johnson, British writer and literary critic
     * Joseph II, Austrian Emperor
     * Kangxi Emperor, China
     * Immanuel Kant, German philosopher
     * Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, French writer
     * Joseph Louis Lagrange, Italian-French mathematician and physicist
     * Pierre Simon Laplace, French physicist and mathematician
     * John Law, Scottish economist
     * Mikhail Lomonosov, Russian scientist
     * Antoine Lavoisier, French chemist
     * Adrien-Marie Legendre, French mathematician
     * Alphonsus Liguori, Italian bishop, founder of Redemptorists, Saint
     * Carolus Linnaeus (Carl von Linné), Swedish biologist

   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
   Enlarge
   Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
     * Louis XV of France, French monarch
     * Louis XVI of France, French monarch
     * James Madison, American statesman
     * Maria Theresa of Austria, Austrian Empress
     * Marie Antoinette, Austrian-born French Queen
     * Michikinikwa, Miami tribe chief and war leader
     * Honoré Mirabeau French writer and politician
     * Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, French thinker
     * Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian composer
     * Nadir Shah, Persian King
     * Thomas Paine, British intellectual
     * Peter I of Russia (Peter the Great), Russian Tsar
     * Pius VI, Roman Pope
     * François-André Danican Philidor, French composer and chess master

   Voltaire
   Enlarge
   Voltaire
     * Marquis of Pombal, Portuguese Prime Minister
     * Alexander Pope, British poet
     * Qianlong Emperor, China
     * Francis II Rákóczi, prince of Hungary and Transylvania,
       Revolutionary leader
     * Jean-Philippe Rameau, French composer
     * Bartolomeo Rastrelli, Italian-born Russian architect
     * Sir Joshua Reynolds, British painter
     * Maximilien Robespierre, French revolutionary leader and dictator
     * Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French writer and philosopher
     * Marquis de Sade, French writer and philosopher
     * Domenico Scarlatti, Italian composer.
     * Friedrich Schiller, German writer
     * John Small, English cricketer
     * Adam Smith, Scottish economist and philosopher
     * Laurence Sterne, British writer
     * Edward "Lumpy" Stevens, English cricketer

   George Washington
   Enlarge
   George Washington
     * Alexander Suvorov, Russian military leader
     * Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish scientist, thinker and mystic
     * Jonathan Swift, Anglo-Irish satirist
     * Toussaint L'Ouverture, Haitian revolutionary leader
     * Túpac Amaru II, Peruvian revolutionary
     * Kitagawa Utamaro, Japanese printmaker and painter
     * Antonio Vivaldi, Italian composer
     * Voltaire, French writer and philosopher
     * Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab, Arab islamic theologian and founder of
       Wahhabism
     * Robert Walpole, British Prime Minister
     * George Washington, American general and first President of USA
     * James Watt, Scottish scientist and inventor
     * Antoine Watteau, French painter
     * John Wesley, British churchman, founder of Methodism
     * Mary Wollstonecraft, British writer and feminist
     * William Pitt, British Prime Minister
     * Yuan Mei, Chinese poet, scholar and artist
     * Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, German religious writer and bishop

   See Founding Fathers of the United States

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

   The Spinning Jenny Enlarge
   The Spinning Jenny
     * 1709: The first piano was built by Bartolomeo Cristofori
     * c. 1710: Steam Engine invented by Thomas Newcomen
     * 1717: The diving bell was successfully tested by Edmond Halley,
       sustainable to a depth of 55 ft.
     * c. 1730: The sextant navigational tool was developed by John Hadley
       in England, and Thomas Godfrey in America
     * 1736: Europeans discovered rubber - the discovery was made by
       Charles-Marie de la Condamine while on expedition in South America.
       It was named in 1770 by Joseph Priestly
     * c. 1740: Modern steel was developed by Benjamin Huntsman
     * 1741: Vitus Bering discovered Alaska
     * 1745: The Leyden jar invented by Ewald von Kleist was the first
       electrical capacitor
     * 1751 - 1785: The French Encyclopédie
     * 1755: The English Dictionary by Samuel Johnson
     * 1764: The Spinning Jenny created by James Hargreaves brought on the
       Industrial Revolution
     * 1761: The problem of Longitude was finally resolved by the fouth
       chronometer of John Harrison
     * 1768 - 1779: James Cook mapped the boundaries of the Pacific Ocean
       and discovered many Pacific Islands
     * 1776: The Wealth of Nations, foundation of the modern theory of
       economy, was published by Adam Smith
     * 1779: Photosynthesis was first discovered by Jan Ingenhouse of the
       Netherlands
     * 1798: Edward Jenner publishes a treatise about smallpox vaccination
     * 1799: Rosetta stone discovered by Napoleon's troops.

Decades and years

   1690s 1690 1691 1692 1693 1694 1695 1696 1697 1698 1699
   1700s 1700 1701 1702 1703 1704 1705 1706 1707 1708 1709
   1710s 1710 1711 1712 1713 1714 1715 1716 1717 1718 1719
   1720s 1720 1721 1722 1723 1724 1725 1726 1727 1728 1729
   1730s 1730 1731 1732 1733 1734 1735 1736 1737 1738 1739
   1740s 1740 1741 1742 1743 1744 1745 1746 1747 1748 1749
   1750s 1750 1751 1752 1753 1754 1755 1756 1757 1758 1759
   1760s 1760 1761 1762 1763 1764 1765 1766 1767 1768 1769
   1770s 1770 1771 1772 1773 1774 1775 1776 1777 1778 1779
   1780s 1780 1781 1782 1783 1784 1785 1786 1787 1788 1789
   1790s 1790 1791 1792 1793 1794 1795 1796 1797 1798 1799
   1800s 1800 1801 1802 1803 1804 1805 1806 1807 1808 1809
   Millennium Century
   4th BC: 40th BC 39th BC 38th BC 37th BC 36th BC 35th BC 34th BC 33rd BC
   32nd BC 31st BC
   3rd BC: 30th BC 29th BC 28th BC 27th BC 26th BC 25th BC 24th BC 23rd BC
   22nd BC 21st BC
   2nd BC: 20th BC 19th BC 18th BC 17th BC 16th BC 15th BC 14th BC 13th BC
   12th BC 11th BC
   1st BC: 10th BC 9th BC 8th BC 7th BC 6th BC 5th BC 4th BC 3rd BC 2nd BC
   1st BC
   1st:   1st   2nd   3rd   4th   5th   6th   7th   8th   9th 10th
   2nd: 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th 16th 17th 18th 19th 20th
   3rd: 21st 22nd 23rd 24th 25th 26th 27th 28th 29th 30th
   4th: 31st 32nd 33rd 34th 35th 36th 37th 38th 39th 40th
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18th_century"
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   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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