1739
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Persia's Nadir Shah defeats a Mughal army February 24 in the Battle of Karnal 70 miles north of Delhi (see 1738). The Mughal emperor Mohammad Shah, now 36, has mounted an army of 15,000 to oppose Nadir's 55,000 (both armies include many noncombatants). The shah is besieged in his own camp, Nadir takes Delhi March 20, sacks the city, massacres its inhabitants, and shatters the Mughal Empire. Nadir leaves Delhi May 5, carrying off so much plunder that he is able to suspend taxation for 3 years. Afghans sweep down from the northwest frontier, and Marathas come east from the great central Daccan plateau to threaten the fertile lands of Bengal. India's suahdors and nabobs establish independent states, some of these go to war with each other, and this chaos opens the way to foreign domination of the subcontinent (see 1746).
The subedar of Bengal Suja-ud-Din dies after a 14-year reign in which he has supported scholarship, art, and culture. His son Sarafraj succeeds him but will reign only briefly (see 1740).
Ottoman forces approach Belgrade in September; the Holy Roman Emperor Karl VI signs the Treaty of Belgrade September 18, deserting his Russian ally and ending a 3-year war with Constantinople. Austria yields Belgrade and northern Serbia along with Little Wallachia to the Turks (see 1718); Russia makes a separate peace, retaining Azov but agreeing to raze the town's forts and to build no fleet on the Black Sea or Sea of Azov, making her dependent on Ottoman shipping for commerce on the Black Sea (see Serbia, 1817).
The War of Jenkin's Ear between Britain and Spain begins in October as British naval squadrons receive orders to intercept Spanish galleons. English mariner Robert Jenkin picked a barroom brawl with a Spanish customs guard at Havana in 1731, he suffered a bad cut to the ear, a local surgeon amputated it, Jenkin has kept the sun-dried ear in his sea chest, and a member of Parliament has waved it in the House of Commons, demanding revenge for alleged mistreatment of British smugglers and pirates. The 11-year-old Caracas Company (Compañia Guipuzcoana) uses its private army to defend the Venezuelan coast against British attack. Georgia colony founder George E. Oglethorpe, now 42, returned to the colony last year and sets about defending it against the Spaniards. The Admiralty sends Admiral Edward Vernon, 55, to the Caribbean, and he captures Portobelo November 22 with a force of only six ships (see 1716; 1741).
The Cato Conspiracy at Stono, South Carolina, takes the lives of 44 blacks and 30 whites as slaves near Charleston (Charlestown) arm themselves by robbing a store and set out for Florida, gathering recruits and murdering whites on the way. A hastily assembled force of white men crushes the rebellion.
"Woman Not Inferior to Man" (pamphlet) by "Sophia, a Person of Quality" is published in England. Says its anonymous author, "It is a very great absurdity to argue that learning is useless to women, because, forsooth, they have no share in public offices . . . Why is learning useless to us? Because we have no share in public offices. And why have we no share in public offices? Because we have no learning."
French explorers Pierre and Paul Mallet reach the headwaters of the Arkansas River and see the Rocky Mountains for the first time.
Voyageur Pierre G. de Varennes, sieur de la Vérendrye, explores the banks of Lake Winnipegosis, a 2,075-square-mile body of water that he has discovered west of Lake Winnipeg (see 1734). More than 150 miles long and up to 32 miles wide, the island-strewn lake has a maximum depth of 38 feet and gets its name from Cree words meaning "little muddy water" (see Black Hills, 1742).
Treatise on Human Nature by Scottish philosopher David Hume, 28, challenges the prevailing monetary doctrines of mercantilism, notably the doctrine that a nation can continually increase her stock of gold and silver, and her prosperity, through surpluses in her balance of payments. Hume questions whether action by government is necessary or even helpful to the maintenance of a nation's money supply (see Adam Smith, 1776).
Persia's Nadir Shah seizes the Peacock Throne and the Koh-i-noor diamond in the sack of Delhi. The 109-carat diamond has been a treasure of the Mughal emperors, the East India Company will acquire it when it conquers the Punjab, and the company will present it to Queen Victoria in 1850.
German-born glass maker Caspar Wistar brings workers to the New Jersey colony and starts a factory.
John Wesley begins preaching in the fields at Bristol and buys a deserted gun factory outside London for his prayer meetings (see 1738; 1740).
Former colonial agent and Yale College benefactor Jeremiah Dummer dies at Plaistow, Essex, May 19 at age 57.
Nonfiction: Treatise on Human Nature by David Hume shatters the connection between reason and the empirical world, pioneering modern empiricism. If a rock is dropped, says Hume, it is not reason that tells us the rock will fall but rather custom and experience. Truths, like mathematical axioms, are true by definition, but to believe that any observed effect follows any cause by force of reason is folly (see Reid, 1764); Metaphysica by Berlin-born philosopher Alexander (Gottlieb) Baumgarten, 25, who 2 years ago was appointed extraordinary professor at Halle.
Fiction: Joe Miller's Jests; or, The Wit's Vademecum is published at London by John Mottley, who has assembled jokes attributed to the late actor and comedian Joseph Miller, who died in mid-August of last year at age 54.
Painting: Le Déjeuner by French painter François Boucher, 36, who has studied at Rome and become the most fashionable painter of his day.
Theater: The Man of the World (L'uomo di mondo) by Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni, 32, in March at Venice's Teatro San Samuele.
Opera: Les Fêtes d'Hébé 5/21 at the Paris Opéra, with music by Jean Philippe Rameau.
English highwayman Richard "Dick" Turpin is convicted of horse-stealing at the York assizes and hanged at Knavesmire, near York, April 7 at age 33 after a notorious career that has made him a legend in his own time.
Potato crops fail in Ireland. The effect is not calamitous since the tubers do not comprise the bulk of most people's diets as they will a century hence, but Irish cotters (tenant farmers) are becoming increasingly dependent on potatoes for food while raising cereal grains and cattle for the export market that provides them with rent money. Cotters select potatoes for high-yield varieties, thus inadvertently narrowing the genetic base of their plants, breeding potatoes with little or no resistance to the fungus disease Phytophthora infestans (see 1822).
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