England and Scotland (already united since April 1603) join Ireland

The Great Game, or the complex of operations (military, political, economic, diplomatic, and espionage) managed by London across the entire Central Asian landscape. It involved Britain’s obsession with losing its hegemony over the Mediterranean should the Russians gain access to the Bosphorus, coupled with fears of Russia’s threat to India.

Joachim Murat married Maria Carolina Bonaparte, Napoleon’s sister. As a member of the family, he received the title of Prince Imperial. He became King of Naples in 1808.

Prussia. Annual revenue amounts to 9 million pounds sterling today.

China. The British East India Company had been flooding China with opium for years as payment for Chinese goods, opium that was smoked by the Chinese, often mixed with tobacco. In 1800, the Qing Emperor took action and banned the import and production of opium, but it was too late. In 1813, prohibition extended to opium consumption. Then, in 1839, Lin Zexu, the High Commissioner for Drugs, wrote to the British Crown to ask for understanding, but the opium trade was too lucrative, and among other things, it brought back to England tons of silver used by the Chinese to pay for opium (silver that had previously been used by the English to pay for silk, tea, and porcelain). This would culminate in the Opium War, with the first English ships setting sail in 1840, and would end with the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. A Second Opium War would follow from 1856 to 1860, after which the whole of China would become a land of commercial conquest for foreign powers.

Mass production of chickens and eggs begins. Within two centuries, the global chicken population will increase to 52 billion by 2000.

The monk Sambredan the Navigator arrives in Iceland and establishes the first permanent settlement of the modern era.

England. James Watt’s powerful patent has finally expired, and Richard Trevithick is able to capitalize on it by building and patenting a double-acting high-pressure engine. The following year, the first vehicles are built, amid widespread opposition from the public and local authorities, as the steam engine is too frightening for horses.

Life expectancy (world average) at birth is 28 years. No region in the world has a life expectancy above 35 years.

There are 1000 million (one billion) people in the world

Engels Pause. This is a pause in the continuous Malthusian cycles of increasing income and population, followed by crises and drastic reductions in both. After the Engels Pause, the Malthusian cycles end, and a long, multi-century period of continuous global growth in income and population begins.

The charter of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie – VOC) was not renewed. By 1783, the coin-backed accounts at the Bank of Amsterdam had collapsed from 17 million guilders in 1780 to just 300,000 guilders in 1783. This marked the end of the Dutch guilder as the world’s reserve currency. In 1796, the VOC was nationalized, and in 1799, its charter was not renewed. Most of the VOC’s Asian possessions were ceded to the British after the Napoleonic Wars, and the English East India Company took over the VOC’s infrastructure. The VOC transformed financial capitalism forever: it introduced limited liability for its shareholders, which allowed the company to finance large-scale operations. Limited liability was necessary because the company’s collapse would have destroyed even the company’s largest investors, much less small investors. While this innovation forever changed capitalism, there were ways in which the VOC failed to transform itself, which ultimately led to its downfall. The company’s capital remained virtually unchanged throughout its 200-year existence, hovering around 6.4 million guilders (about $2.3 million). Instead of issuing new shares to raise additional capital, the company relied on reinvested capital. The VOC’s dividend policy left little capital to reinvest, so the company turned to debt. The company first issued debt securities in 1630, bringing the debt-to-equity ratio to two. The ratio remained at two until 1730, rising to about four in the 1760s, then increased dramatically in the 1780s to about eighteen, ultimately driving the company into bankruptcy and leading to its nationalization and disappearance.

The Rosetta Stone is rediscovered. During the Egyptian campaign, a group of Napoleonic soldiers discovered a black basalt stele bearing ancient inscriptions near the town of Rosetta. According to the Greek text, the stele was engraved in the second century BC. The “Rosetta Stone” was studied for twenty years, until French Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion made a sensational discovery: the two Egyptian inscriptions—hieroglyphic and demotic—on the stone corresponded to the same spoken language. The artifact helped solve the enigma of hieroglyphics, a form of writing that had been extinct for over two thousand years. Knowing demotic, Champollion was able to decipher the characters, offering scholars an extraordinary key to understanding the language and culture of ancient Egypt.

Lazzaro Spallanzani, naturalist and Jesuit, discoverer, among other things, of the regeneration of the salamander’s tail, dies

“The Coup de Brumaire”: Napoleon Bonaparte becomes master of France, the Republic born from the French Revolution is over, the era of the Napoleonic Empire begins.

Great Britain. Annual revenues increased from 23 million pounds to 35 million pounds today, by far the highest in Europe.

Carl Friedrich Gauss brings to full fruition the acceptance of non-Euclidean geometries, where the postulate of parallel lines does not hold.

Pierre Simon de Laplace publishes the five-volume treatise “Traite de mecanique celeste.” It is essentially a modern version of Newton’s Principia Mathematica.

Southern Italy. Cardinal Fabrizio Dionigi Ruffo, Duke of Baranello and Bagnara, leading a group of peasant insurgents, marches on Naples and overthrows Napoleon’s Parthenopean Republic. This was made possible by the Austro-Russian military intervention in Northern Italy to defeat the French, and by Napoleon’s absence, who was occupied in Egypt.

Lazzaro Spallanzani (Scandiano, January 12, 1729 – Pavia, February 11, 1799) died in Pavia. He was an Italian Jesuit and biologist, considered the “scientific father” of artificial insemination. He is best remembered for having disproved the theory of spontaneous generation with an experiment that was later taken up and perfected by Louis Pasteur.

Napoleon establishes the Neapolitan Republic in Italy.

Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt: it marks the beginning of the great Western interest in Egyptian antiquities.

During this period Giacomo Leopardi wrote To Silvia, The Infinite, To the Moon, Saturday in the Village, etc.

Irish rebellion, encouraged by France; another French landing attempt in Ireland is also repelled by the English

The French fleet is completely destroyed by the English fleet of Admiral Nelson in Aboukir Bay, off Alexandria, Egypt; in total, 1,700 French and 700 English victims; hundreds of sailors perish in the gigantic conflagration of the French flagship’s Santa Barbara gun alone (heard 50 km away); the battle will bring several nations to the English side and thus marks a turning point; Napoleon will leave Egypt the following year.

The French mathematician Jean-Baptiste Fourier, following Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, discovered the equations for heat conduction.

Napoleon’s troops reach Rome

Jenner introduces the smallpox vaccine

Henry Cavendish determines the mass of the Earth: 6.6E24Kg

The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus published “An Essay on the Principle of Population,” in which he discovered and explained an oscillation (he called it “vibration”) between periods of high income and a small population, and, conversely, periods of low income and a large population. These oscillations characterized the entire Middle Ages, from 1200 to 1800. Then, the first Industrial Revolution, capitalism, progress, nation states that listened to the will of the people, and the consciousness of the people, changed everything, and began a centuries-long period of monotonous growth in both income and population.

Gauss and soon after Legendre, discovered an experimental connection between prime numbers and logarithms: the prime numbers between 1 and N are roughly N/logN

Napoleon wanted Fourier, an enthusiastic supporter of the Revolution, among the legion of scientists and artists accompanying the troops invading Egypt. During the journey, Napoleon dictated each morning the topic on which his intellectuals would entertain him that evening.

Napoleon establishes the Roman Republic in Italy.

Napoleon establishes the Ligurian Republic in Italy.

John Adams is president of the United States

England. Thomas Paine launches the idea of levying an inheritance tax on landowners to finance a basic income for the less wealthy.

Napoleon surrenders Venice to Austria. He will take it back eight years later.

Treaty of Campo Formio. Venice is ceded by Napoleon Bonaparte to Austria.

Venice. Bonaparte peremptorily ordered the government to dissolve itself and hand over power to a democratic junta, protected by French arms. The Doge urged them to accept his will. At the last meeting of the Great Council, it hastily voted for its own extinction. 4,000 soldiers entered St. Mark’s Square and methodically plundered the city: the Mint, the Arsenal, the fleet, the archives, and the art treasures. Finally, Napoleon handed Venice over to Austria with the Treaty of Campo Formio on October 17th.

End of the Most Serene Republic of Venice, born in 697: exactly eleven centuries earlier.

Modena changed owners and governments five times in a few weeks, between the Austrians and the French.

Napoleon, to avenge the deaths of Verona, entered Venice with his army; it was the first time in its history that the city was occupied.

In Verona, the population attacks the French garrison and massacres the wounded hospitalized. These are the so-called Veronese Easters. The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis (by Ugo Foscolo) remain a powerful moral and literary testimony to Italian hatred of France and Napoleon.

Napoleon signs the Treaty of Tolentino with the Holy See in which the latter recognizes the annexation of Avignon and Emilia to France

Napoleon’s failed attempt to invade Ireland

Scientist-adventurer Count von Rumford discovers the thermohaline circulation, the planet-wide ocean current that winds from the North Atlantic to the center of the Pacific (it takes 1,500 years each way).

young student from the American South, Alia Whitney, invents the automatic cotton gin, which will change the face of the American South. It will allow a single worker to gin up to 500 pounds of cotton a day, compared to a previous limit of 0.5 pounds.

Caspar Wessel, independently of Jean Robert Argand, John Warren and Carl Fiedrich Gauss, invented the complex plane to represent complex numbers.

Friedrich Gauss provided the first proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra during his doctoral dissertation; a towering figure in mathematics, he left an indelible mark on every field to which he applied himself.

Modena. First public parade of the Italian flag in Italy, with Modena priest Don Antonio Rovatti leading the procession, Don Rovatti having designed the flag. It had been proclaimed the official Italian flag a few days earlier in Reggio Emilia.

Napoleon established the Cispadane Republic in Italy (Modena, Reggio, Ferrara) and then the Cisalpine Republic (Lombardy), which later absorbed the Cispadane Republic. The Cispadane Republic adopted the tricolor as its flag, which had been adopted the previous year by a military confederation of Emilian cities.

Great Britain. Annual revenue currently stands at 23 million pounds, the highest in Europe. But taxes will rise further in a couple of years.

Modena. The Italian tricolor is flown for the first time in Piazza Grande (now renamed Piazza della Rivoluzione).

In the Ducal Archives of Reggio Emilia, the congress decided to establish a government; the chosen flag was a horizontal tricolor, with red, white, and green stripes. At the center, an emblem composed of a quiver, rising on war trophies, with four arrows inside, symbolizing the four original provinces (Modena, Reggio Emilia, Ferrara, and Bologna), within a laurel wreath. The Italian tricolor was officially born. The same tricolor had already been chosen as the state flag by the Italian Legion, at a meeting in Modena from October 16 to 18, 1796. The first public parade of the tricolor would take place in Modena, on February 12, 1797, with the Modenese priest Don Antonio Rovatti, who had designed the flag, leading the procession.

Modena. At the Congress in Via Farini (then called Rua Grande, since Farini had not yet led the Piedmontese army!), it was decided to unite Modena with the Cisalpine Republic (which would later become the Italian Republic in 1802). The Modena area became the Department of Panaro.

congress was held in Modena with representatives of the provinces of Modena and Reggio Emilia, and the former papal legations of Ferrara, Bologna, and Romagna, uniting the four cities in what became known as the Cispadane Confederation. The green, white, and red tricolor flag with vertical stripes was also adopted, which would later be officially adopted as the Italian flag shortly thereafter in Reggio. The first public parade of the tricolor flag took place in Modena on February 12, 1797, with the Modenese priest Don Antonio Rovatti, who designed the flag, leading the procession.

Modena. Napoleon Bonaparte returned to Modena, welcomed triumphantly. A few days later, Modena’s union with the Cisalpine Republic was decided (which would later become the Italian Republic in 1802).

Gauss wrote in his notebook: “Vicemus GEGAN.” It is one of many cryptic phrases never understood. The failure to publish his discoveries has been blamed by some for delaying the development of mathematics by half a century.

Edward Jenner discovers vaccination. During the 19th and 20th centuries, it will save the lives of approximately 700 million people.

Carpi subjected to Modena

Napoleon Bonaparte’s first Italian campaign In Emilia (Reggio, Modena, Bologna, Ferrara) he established the Cispadane Republic and was the first to adopt the tricolour

Scientific geology begins with Hutton’s Theory of the Earth

Nicolas-Jacques Conte developed some techniques to control the proportion between clay and graphite in the manufacture of pencils; the classification consists of a scale from 1 (hard) to 4 (soft); subsequently the English developed a scale that goes from B (black, i.e. soft) to H (hard, i.e. hard); the two scales will unify in the current scale which goes like this: (+hard) 9H … 2H, H, F, HB, B, 2B, … 9B (+soft)

France. Power passes from the Committee of Public Safety to the Directory (1795), and then to the First Consul (November 1799), then to the Emperor (December 1804).

Bologna. Luigi Zamboni organizes an uprising among the people of Bologna against the absolutist domination of the Church, enlisting students from the University of Bologna to join the cause, including Giovanni Battista De Rolandis, Antonio Succi, Camillo Tomesani, Antonio Forni, Angelo Sassoli, Tomaso Bambozzi, Pietro Gavasetti, Giovanni Osbel, Giovanni Calori, and others. They are not all students; some are already graduates, others are men of the street, all opposed to the absolutist and anti-democratic government of the Papal States, completely controlled by the prelates of the Holy Office. De Rolandis (an expert swordsman) and Zamboni take the lead. They write manifestos, and with the help of Zamboni’s mother and aunt, Brigida and Barbara Borghi, they make tricolor cockades in the French style, replacing the blue with green. The uprising, which took place during the night between November 13 and 14, 1794, failed, and the two students were discovered and captured in Covigliaio and imprisoned in the Torrone prison, along with nineteen other people. Luigi Zamboni was found dead on August 18, 1795, in a cell nicknamed “Hell.” De Rolandis was hanged on April 23, 1796, after cruel torture.

Robespierre and his followers were executed: the same guillotine that had claimed thousands of victims among Robespierre’s enemies in the previous months.

Antoine-Laurent Lavoiser was guillotined on May 5, 1794 for his sympathies for the crown.

English chemist Smithson Tennant burns a diamond to nothing, thus proving that there is no exotic element but only carbon.

Sweden. Yttrium (Y) is discovered. Swedish science contributes 19 elements to the periodic table, more than a fifth of the total, including manganese, molybdenum, and a large portion of the rare earth elements (yttrium, erbium, terbium, ytterbium, scandium, thulium, etc.).

Antoine-Laurent Lavoiser is arrested as a tax collector. Faithful to his studies, he asks to complete his final work. The judge’s response is famous: “The republic has no need of scientists!” The father of modern chemistry is guillotined, and his body ends up in a mass grave. He is said to have asked the executioner to count the number of words his head would be able to utter after decapitation.

Danton and Desmoulines and other Indulgents are executed by Robespierre