A Blupete Biography Page


Dates & Events During Malthus' Life
Thomas Robert Malthus

1766
§ Malthus is born.
1769
§ At around this time, Blackstone brings out his Commentaries on the Law of England.
1770
§ The members of the "Long Parliament" take their seats, it sat for 15 years, until 1785.
1774
§ American Taxation.
1781
§ October 19th, British troops under Cornwallis surrender at Yorktown.
1783
§ December 13th, penal laws against Roman Catholics repealed.
§ British evacuate New York.
1784
§ Pitt defeats Fox and North at the polls.
§ At age 18, Malthus comes up to Cambridge (Jesus College).
1785
§ The Big Bang of the Industrial Revolution occurs in England when, for first time, steam engines are used to power spinning machinery.
1788
§ Impeachment of Warren Hastings.
1790
§ Burke writes Reflections on the French Revolution.
1792
§ Paine's reply, The Rights of Man.
§ September massacres in Paris.
1793
§ In January Louis XVI is beheaded.
§ Godwin's Political Justice appears.
§ The trials of the "Reform-martyrs," Muir and Palmer who were subsequently transported to Botany Bay; this was part of the larger government effort to prosecute editors, nonconformists and radicals who were arguing for Parliamentary reform.
1794
§ A simple device for separating cotton lint from seeds is patented by Whitney.
§ Thomas Holcroft, Horne Tooke, Thomas Hardy, John Thelwall and others are brought to trial on the charge of high treason, and acquitted amid excitement.
1796
§ Malthus writes his first essay, it was one against Pitt's administration.
§ Jenner discovers vaccination.
1797
§ Burke dies.
§ In January, with Bonaparte having successfully invaded Italy and Spain, Britain withdrew her ships from the Mediterranean which became a "French Lake" from January 1797 to May 1798.
§ By a parliamentary statute of Britain the torture of suspects and criminals was abolished.
§ Navel mutinies between April and June, at Spithead and the Nore.
1798
§ Malthus brings out his Essay on the Principle of Population.
§ Nelson re-enters the Mediterranean in May, 1798, and destroys Napoleon's fleet; in August he destroys the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile.
1801
§ Great Britain and Ireland come together under one legislative body.
1802
§ The Treaty of Amiens is signed and the war between France and England is ended leaving France supreme in Western Europe, and England supreme on the oceans of the world.
1803
§ Malthus brings out the second edition of his Essay.
§ War continues: the peace of Amiens comes to an end.
§ Brunel and his production line for turning out rigging blocks.
§ Louisiana Purchase.
1804
§ Malthus marries.
§ War between Britain and Bonaparte-dominated Spain breaks out on December 12th, 1804.
§ Napoleon becomes emperor of France.
1805
§ Malthus appointed professor of Political Economy in the East India College at Haileybury.
§ In 1805, Trevithick adapts the Watt engine to a vehicle, and the locomotive comes into being. By the middle of the century a network of railways had spread all over Europe.
§ At Austerlitz Napoleon lays low the combined armies of Russia and Austria and the "Third Coalition" is no more.
§ Nelson's victory at Trafalgar (21st October, 1805).
1806
§ Pitt dies; Fox takes over.
§ In 1806 England abolishes the slave-trade (in 1833 slavery itself).
1807
§ Hazlitt brings out his Reply to Malthus.
§ British Orders-in-Council prohibit trade.
§ Fulton's first steam boat.
1808
§ In support of a Spanish rising, in July, Arthur Wellesley (later to become known as the Duke of Wellington) leads the first small British force of 9000 men into the Peninsula of Spain; a gate into the hostile fortress of Napoleonic Europe.
1810
§ George III ill; his son, the Duke of Wales (1762-1830) takes over as the Prince Regent; in 1820 on his father's death, he becomes George IV.
1811
§ Malthus makes the acquaintance of David Ricardo.
§ Austen's Sense and Sensibility.
§ The English Parliament passes an anti-slave trade bill and the 1811 Felony Act becomes law, bringing slave trade to an end.
1812
§ May, Prime Minister Perceval, assassinated.
§ Liverpool becomes the English Prime Minister.
§ On 18 June, 1812, President Madison and the American Congress declares war on Britain.
§ Byron Donkin builds (tin plate having been invented in 1810) the first canning factory in England, his principle orders coming form the Royal Navy for canned soups and meats used in the war against America.
1813
§ It was during the winter that the news came of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow and his struggle to retain hold of central Europe.
§ In England 13 "Luddites" are hung at the York Assizes.
1814
§ April, Paris is captured and Bonaparte abdicates; the Bourbons are restored.
1815
§ Ricardo's An Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent.
§ June 18th, 1815, the Battle of Waterloo.
§ In a further chapter in the history of the "Corn Laws" (they had been around in one form or another since the Middle Ages) the British parliament passed the Act of 1815 which imposed, - much to the satisfaction of British farmland owners - a ban on all corn imports, this with a view to getting the home prices up.
1817
§ Civil wars (Simon Bolivar and the Latin American revolution) sweep over the Spanish New World in waves from 1812 to the early 1820s; driven by both the political theories of Rousseau and the disruptions of civil order in Spain on account of Bonaparte and the resulting peninsular wars.
§ Ricardo's, Principles of Political Economy & Taxation, wherein Ricardo was to give his systematic theory of rent, property, wages, and money.
§ Habeas Corpus is suspended as the war against the Radical Press in England heats up; Cobbett flees to America.
1818
§ Unrest in England, with the Northern and Midland radicals causing sporadic violence and attacks on mills.
§ Queen Charlotte dies on 17 November.
1819
§ May 24th, 1819, Queen Victoria is born.
§ "Peterloo:" On August 16th, 1819, "an orderly and unarmed crowd of about 60,000 men, women and children" assemble in support of universal suffrage, in St. Peter's Fields, Manchester. They were there to hear the speaker, Radical Hunt. The magistrates, in a move to arrest the speaker, ordered the cavalry in: "eleven persons, including two women, were killed or died of their injuries; over a hundred were wounded by sabres and several hundred more injured by horse-hoofs or crushed in the stampede."
§ Keats, "Hyperion"; Shelley, "Promethus Unbound."
1820
§ Thistlewood's planned insurrection in February of 1820; hung May 1st.
§ George III dies, George IV (1762-1830) takes the throne, due to his father's derangement he had been the Prince Regent since 1810.
§ A Factory Bill prohibiting children under the age of nine to work in cotton mills is passed in 1819; this is the first of a series of parliamentary bills which were to be passed over the next forty years in a process of law reform which was first prompted by the writings of the legal philosopher, Jeremy Bentham.
§ In June, Caroline (George IV's estranged wife) returns to England and the Caroline Crisis ensues; it "swallowed up every other topic from June to November."
§ During February of 1820, England issues gold ingots ("Ricardos"), freely exchangeable with its paper money. By the following year (1821) England was fully on the gold exchange: "The effect of this move was to increase immensely worldwide confidence in the British economy and the expansion of international trade;" the price of gold rose, new and intensive interest in surveying and in mining followed.
§ Epidemics of cholera and yellow fever break out in such places as New York City.
1821
§ Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.
1822
§ Shelley dies.
§ Castlereagh, the British Foreign Secretary, the pressures of government being apparently too much for him, in August of 1822 committed suicide by slitting his throat. Castlereagh had done more than any other diplomat to bring about Napoleon's fall and to establish peace in Europe, but unfortunately he "had identified himself in his last years with the anti-Jacobin domestic policy in its final stage of decay." His death "was hailed by most of his poor fellow-countrymen with revengeful glee, which found voice in the horrible cheers that greeted his coffin as it passed into Westminster Abbey."
1824
§ Byron dies.
§ New industries were envisioned: railway, gas, steamship, iron, and coal; companies were being organized for them all, most legitimate,- not all. London was now experiencing a bull market which ran from summer 1824 to autumn 1825. Speculators elbowed in with dreams for sale; a credit crunch and, in turn, an economic disaster followed.
1825
§ The first railway opens in the northern part of England, between Stockton and Darlinton; Stephenson's "Rocket," with a thirteen ton train, gets up a speed of 44 miles per hour.
1827
§ On 27th March, 1827, Darwin gives a short talk to the Plinian Society, and communicates two discoveries which he has made: First, "that the ova of the Flustra posses organs of motion; and the second, that the small black globular body hitherto mistaken for the young Fucus Lorius [a seaweed], is in reality the ovum of the pontobdella muricata [a leech that infests skates]. At the request of the society he promised to draw up an account of the facts and to lay it, together with specimens, before the Society next evening."
§ April, 1827, Liverpool has a stroke and Canning becomes Prime Minister, who in turn died in August of 1827; after which Wellington took over.
§ The first allied peace keeping mission, with Admiral Sir Edward Codrington in charge, sailed into Navrino Bay, Turkey, and, on the 20th of October 1827 the Battle of Navrino insued, which, while lasting only four hours, took the lives of 8,000 Turks and Egyptians; the allies lost only 178 men; this was to be the last of the great sea battles between the square sailed fighting ships.
1828
§ In London an exhibition specifically devoted to machinery is held.
§ After a new style election campaign, General Jackson becomes the President of the United States; his clear popular mandate ends "the old indirect, oligarchical system forever."
1829
§ Sir Robert Peel's police make their appearance in London; before this time public tranquillity was maintained by the military forces. With "Peelers" there now existed an efficient civilian force, of non-partisan character, and armed only with staves.
1830
§ George IV dies and William IV, the popular sailor king takes the throne.
§ General election in Britain; the Duke's government is swept way and Earl Charles Grey (1764-1845) comes in; it was his task to frighten, persuade and cajole the King, the Lords and the borough-owners into giving up their power; he had only to point to the European continent.
§ Wm. Cobbett and Richard Carlile put on trial for articles in the Press. Cobbett at his trial in July is acquitted.
1832
§ Darwin sails on the Beagle.
§ The Great Reform Bill.
1834
§ Slavery was finally made unlawful throughout all of the British territories. "Twenty millions sterling were paid in compensation to the slave-owners ... On the First of August, 1834, all slaves in the British Empire were to become free."
§ Malthus dies at a place just outside of Bath.

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2011 (2019)
Peter Landry