Recap: Major events of 1760-1769
A quick review before the 1770s are posted later this week.
On 4/4/2025, I’ll be posting the decade of the 1770s from Timeline 1700-1900. Today’s post is a quick review of the major events and trends of the 1760s, as a review for paid subscribers (thank you!) and a teaser for free subscribers.
Major events & trends of 1760-1769
Seven Years’ War ends with a reshaping of the world map. Catherine the Great begins a 34-year reign that makes Russia one of Europe’s major powers.
North America: Spain begins settling the west coast. Britain becomes the major power in the east coast, but in hopes of pacifying Native Americans, Britain forbids colonists to settle west of the Appalachians.
Economics: To raise money for defense of its American territory, Britain imposes taxes and regulations on the colonists, who increasingly resist taxation without representation.
Science & Technology: Scientists expand from making breakthroughs in physics to investigating earthquakes, diagnosing disease, and sailing to the ends of the Earth using the new marine chronometer. Improvements in textile-manufacturing machinery launch the Industrial Revolution.
Philosophy: Rousseau sets out the influential theory of the “social contract”. Rousseau’s writings mark the beginning of the end of the Enlightenment.
Education: Rousseau proposes that children learn from nature rather than books, and be allowed to discover morality by themselves rather than having religion drilled into them.
Nonfiction: An Enlightenment thinker tackles crime and punishment.
Esthetics: Influential writers analyze the art of the Greeks and Romans, helping spur the Neoclassical movement.
Visual Arts: Rococo fades, Neoclassicism gains ground, and more hints of Romanticism appear.
Literature: The earliest Gothic novel appears, alongside conventional sentimental novels. A fad begins for archaic and folk poetry.
Music: Gluck reforms opera by introducing simpler stories and decreasing the number of virtuoso arias.
In this decade, paid subscribers read about Catherine's conquests, the Sugar & Stamp & Quartering & Declaratory & Townshend Acts, chest percussion, the first Industrial Revolution, the Adams style, thousand-year-old (not!) Gaelic poems, and much more, fleshed out with excerpts from fiction and nonfiction, and illustrations such as these.
Coming soon
On 4/4/2025, the decade of the 1770s brings the American Revolution, the theory of laissez-faire economics, Sturm und Drang, Mozart and Haydn, and much more.
But first, on April 1-3: three more posts on US immigration and citizenship, in the series that starts here.