Events and ideas: 1700-1800

* EVENTS

1700 England and France dominate African slave trade to America

1738 Wesley founds Methodism

1748 Utilitarian philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham born

1752 American statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin develops lightning rod (right)

1756 Major powers conflict as worldwide Seven Years War begins

1771 Captain Cook sails to the Pacific on the Endeavour (right)

1773 American revolutionaries resist British taxation at Boston Tea Party

1776 Declaration of Independence adopted by 13 American states on July 4

1783 Treaty of Paris. Britain accepts American independence

1789 Parisian mob storms the Bastille as French revolution begins (above)

1792 Thomas Paine publishes The Rights of Man

1793 Execution of French king, Louis XVI (right)

1796 Physician Edward Jenner develops smallpox vaccine

1799 Napoleon Bonaparte assumes power as First Consul of France

* IDEAS

1714 Polish physicist Gabriel Fahrenheit develops mercury thermometer

1755 Samuel Johnson publishes the first English dictionary

1776 Adam Smith examines laissez-faire economics in Wealth of Nations

1778 Deaths of Enlightenment thinkers Jean Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire

1781 German philosopher Immanuel Kant publishes Critique of Pure Reason

1786 Mozart's La Nozze di Figaro opens to lukewarm reviews

1788 Edward Gibbon completes Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

1789 Antoine Lavoisie publishes Elementary Treatise on Chemistry

1792 Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Women