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British Agricultural Revolution
The local supply of food was a key component of societal stability in Western Europe. As serfdom had come to an end in the region, landlords and inventors sought new ways to promote agricultural productivity. Political movements such as the Enclosure methods began in the 1770s and new farming tools, such as Jethro Hull's seed drill were introduced in 1701. This continued with the advent of new crops being introduced, such as Townsend's turnips and Robert Bakewell's advances in domestication. -
Peak of Transatlantic Slave Trade
Beginning in the 16th-century, European powers began transporting massive ships of Africans to the New World as slave labor. By 1725, 90% of Jamaica consisted of African slaves. This grotesque trade network peaked in the mid-18th-century, with up to 20,000 slave being transported to the New World annually. This fueled Brazilian sugar plantations and plantations in North America, establishing a slave-based global economy for goods, which would continue well into the 19th-century. -
Illegitimacy Explosion
Changing societal expectations led to a transformation of the family unit in the 18th-century. A lack of community controls and loosened religious morals led to a sharp increase in out-of-wedlock births between 1750 and 1850. There was also an increase in "foundling homes". This were essentially orphanages, primarily used by working or middle class Europeans, to send unwanted or unsupportable children. Driven by a lack of financial capability to raise the child, some saw this as infanticide. -
Growth of Cottage Industry
Due to changing economic conditions, population increases, and a larger family unit, the putting-out system emerged. Families would work from home on a craft or business and were contracted by merchants to make the goods they were meant to sell. This was a key aspect of pre-Industrial Europe's economy, with Hargreaves' Spinning Jenny boosting this growth with its invention in 1764. Families would use the raw materials provided by merchants to make goods such as clothing and processed foods. -
Enclosure (Inclosure) Act
In feudal and Medieval England, many farms and manors were organized in open fields, with common ownership of the harvest by those who reaped it. As the English Agricultural Revolution progressed, Parliament sought ways to increase farming productivity and give power to landlords. The Enclosure Act allowed each owner to consolidate their land and decide what crops to plant. However, this took common rights away from the working class that tended to the fields, such as pasturage and game. -
The Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith
Smiths "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" was one of the most significant works during the Enlightenment and crucial to developing modern European economic theory. It was critique of British economic theory, stating that Mercantile policies and trading monopolies should be abolished in favor of a free market. A focus on innovation and invention fostered by social Revolutions inspired him to design a market of free enterprise based upon the "invisible hand". -
America declares independence from Great Britain
During the 18th-century, Britain sought to assert their colonial dominance through a greater physical and economic presence in the New World during the 18th-century. Following territorial conflicts such as the Seven Years' War, Britain began engaging in Mercantilist policies with their American colonies, ending a period of Salutary Neglect. This included taxes imposed on colonists without Parliamentary representation, sparking the American Revolution and the colonies declaring independence. -
French Revolution Begins
Fostered by international conflicts such as the American Revolution and the Seven Years' War, the French Revolution that sought to overthrow the oppressive regime in place. These wars had been costly to the French people, as many of the taxes have been levied upon lower classes, primarily the Third Estate. The revolutionary ideas embraced during the American Revolution were also an inspiration. In the first year, the Estates General was removed and progressive liberties were put in place. -
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft
Inspired by the Republican revolutionary attitudes seen during her time in France during the Revolution, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote "A Vindication of the Rights of Man". However, despite having similar goals of liberation, her work was embraced by revolutionaries, but she was not. Rousseau's legacy in France led intellectual circles to exclude women, many male philosophers believing to belong in the domestic sphere. Wollstonecraft countered this in her 1792 book, promoting women's education. -
First Successful Smallpox Vaccine
Edward Jenner was an English physician inspired by the Western inoculation methods used by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Throughout the 18th-Century, England was ravaged by smallpox epidemics, with the illness killing over 400,000 Europeans succumbing to the illness during the century. In 1796, Jenner performed his first successful test of his vaccine on 8-year-old James Phipps by scraping the pus from a cowpox blister from a milk maid and inoculating James with it.
