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18th century
Mirror of English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| 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.
European 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.
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Events
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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
Image:Frederick II of Prussia Coloured drawing.png
Frederick II the Great, King of Prussia
- 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: Cape Frontier 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
- François Boucher, French painter
- William Blake, British writer and artist
- Edmund Burke, British statesman and philosopher
- Robert Burns, Scottish poet
- Catherine the Great, Russian Tsaritsa
- 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
- Domenico Scarlatti, Italian composer.
- Friedrich Schiller, German writer
- John Small (Hambledon cricketer), 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
- 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
- William Pitt, British Prime Minister
See Founding Fathers of the United States
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Inventions, discoveries, introductions
- Main articles: Timeline of invention#18th century and Timeline of scientific discoveries#1700s
- Industrial Revolution begins
- The Encyclopédie by the Encyclopedists
- The English Dictionary by Samuel Johnson
- Economics by Adam Smith
- Rosetta stone discovered by Napoleon's troops.
- Vitus Bering discovered Alaska.
- James Cook mapped the boundaries of the Pacific Ocean and discovered many Pacific Islands.
- Wahhabism by Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab
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