1776 Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations
Events
- 1770–1771: Famine in Czech lands kills hundreds of thousands.
- 1771: The Plague Riot in Moscow.
- 1771: The Kalmyk Khanate dissolves as the territory becomes colonized by Russians. More than a hundred thousand Kalmyks migrate back to Qing Dzungaria.
- 1772: Gustav III of Sweden stages a coup d’état, becoming almost an absolute monarch.
- 1772–1779: Maratha Empire fights Britain and Raghunathrao‘s forces during the First Anglo-Maratha War.
- 1772–1795: The Partitions of Poland end the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and erase Poland from the map for 123 years.
- 1773–1775: Pugachev’s Rebellion, the largest peasant revolt in Russian history.
- 1773: East India Company starts operations in Bengal to smuggle opium into China.
- 1775: Russia imposes a reduction in autonomy on the Zaporizhian Cossacks of Ukraine.
- 1775–1782: First Anglo-Maratha War.
- 1775–1783: American Revolutionary War.
- 1776: Several kongsi republics are founded by Chinese settlers in the island of Borneo. They are some of the first democracies in Asia.
- 1776–1777: A Spanish-Portuguese War occurs over land in the South American frontiers.
- 1776: Illuminati founded by Adam Weishaupt.
- 1776: The United States Declaration of Independence is adopted by the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.
- 1776: Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations.
- 1778: James Cook becomes the first European to land on the Hawaiian Islands.
- 1778: Franco-American alliance signed.
- 1778: Spain acquires its first permanent holding in Africa from the Portuguese, which is administered by the newly-established La Plata Viceroyalty.
- 1778: Vietnam is reunified for the first time in 200 years by the Tay Son brothers. The Tây Sơn dynasty has been established, terminating the Lê dynasty.
- 1779–1879: Xhosa Wars between British and Boer settlers and the Xhosas in the South African Republic.
- 1779–1783: Britain loses several islands and colonial outposts all over the world to the combined Franco-Spanish navy.
- 1779: Iran enters yet another period of conflict and civil war after the prosperous reign of Karim Khan Zand.
Inventions, discoveries, and introductions
- 1774: Joseph Priestley discovers “dephlogisticated air”, oxygen
- 1775: Joseph Priestley’s first synthesis of “phlogisticated nitrous air”, nitrous oxide, “laughing gas”
- 1776: First improved steam engines installed by James Watt
- 1776: Steamboat invented by Claude de Jouffroy
- 1777: Circular saw invented by Samuel Miller
- 1779: Photosynthesis was first discovered by Jan Ingenhousz
Literary and philosophical achievements
- 1774: The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe first published
- 1776: Ugetsu Monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain) by Ueda Akinari
- 1776: The Wealth of Nations, foundation of the modern theory of economy, was published by Adam Smith
- 1776–1789: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was published by Edward Gibbon
- 1779: Amazing Grace published by John Newton
- 1779–1782: Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets by Samuel Johnson
