yawiki.org entry for 18th century

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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.

    18th century
            1700s
            1710s
            1720s
            1730s
            1740s
            1750s
            1760s
            1770s
            1780s
            1790s
        Significant people
        Inventions, discoveries, introductions
        Decades and years

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1700s

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.

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1710s

1715: Louis XIV died leaving France deep in debt.

1718: City of New Orleans founded by the French in North America

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1720s

1720: The South Sea Bubble

1721: Robert Walpole becomes 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 conquer Iran, ending the Safavid dynasty.

1722: Kangxi Emperor of China dies.

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1730s

1733-38: War of the Polish Succession

1735-99: The Qianlong Emperor of China oversees a huge expansion in territory.

1736: Nadir Shah assumes title of Shah of Persia and founds the Afsharid dynasty. Rules until his death in 1747.

1739: Nadir Shah defeats the Mughals and sacks Delhi.

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1740s

1740: Frederick the Great crowned King of Prussia.

1740-48: War of the Austrian Succession

1741: Russians begin settling the Aleutian Islands.

1745: Second Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland begins.

1747: Ahmed Shah Durrani founds the Durrani Empire in modern day Afghanistan.

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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 signals the beginning of British rule in India.

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1760s

1760: George III becomes King of Britain.

1762-96: Reign of Catherine the Great of Russia.

1766-99: Anglo-Mysore Wars

1767: Burmese conquer the Ayutthaya kingdom.

1768: Gurkhas conquer Nepal.

1768-1774: Russo-Turkish War

1769: Spanish missionaries establish the first of 21 missions in California.

1769-73: The Bengal famine of 1770 kills one third of the Indian population.

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1770s

1772-1795: The Partitions of Poland end the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and erase 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

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1780s

1785-95: Northwest Indian War between the United States and Native Americans

1787: Freed slaves from London found Freetown in present-day Sierra Leone.

1788: First European settlement established in Australia at Sydney.

1789: George Washington elected President of the United States. Serves until 1797.

1789-99: The French Revolution

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1790s

1791 Jewish Emancipation in France.

1791-1804: The Haitian Revolution

1792-1815: The Great French War starts 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 grants the Mississippi Territory to the US.

1796: British eject Dutch from Ceylon.

1797: Napoleon's invasion and partition of the Republic of Venice ends over 1,000 years of independence for the Serene Republic.

1798-1800: Quasi-War between the United States and France.

1799: Napoleon stages a coup d'état and becomes dictator of France.

1799: Dutch East India Company is dissolved.

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Significant people

Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Italian mathematician and linguist

Ahmad Shah Abdali, Afghan King

Ueda Akinari, Japanese writer

Jean le Rond d'Alembert, French mathematician, physicist, and encyclopedist

Queen Anne, British monarch

Marie Antoinette, Austrian-born French Queen

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

Catherine the Great, Russian Tsaritsa

Cao Xueqin, Chinese writer

Alexis Clairault, French mathematician

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 composer

Alexander Hamilton, American statesman

Joseph Haydn, Austrian composer

William Hogarth, English painter and engraver

David Hume, Scottish philosopher

Thomas Jefferson, American statesman

Samuel Johnson, British writer and literary critic

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

Louis XV of France, French monarch

Louis XVI of France, French monarch

James Madison, American statesman

Maria Theresa of Austria, Austrian Empress

Michikinikwa, Miami tribe chief and war leader

Honoré Mirabeau French writer and politician

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Austrian composer

Nadir Shah, Persian King

Thomas Paine, British intellectual

Pius VI, Roman Pope

François-André Danican Philidor, French composer and chess master

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

Alexander Suvorov, Russian military leader

Jonathan Swift, Anglo-Irish satirist

Toussaint L'Ouverture, Haitian revolutionary leader

Tupac Amaru II, Peruvian revolutionary

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

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

See Founding Fathers of the United States

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Inventions, discoveries, introductions

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 Benjaman 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 James 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

1799: Rosetta stone discovered by Napoleon's troops.

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Decades and years

mi:Rautau 18

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