1772 - Political Events

Political Events

Poland loses one third her territory and half her population as she is partitioned August 5 among Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Russia acquires White Russia and all the territory to the Dvina and the Dnieper. Austria takes Red Russia, Galicia, and western Podolia with Lemberg and part of Kraków. Prussia acquires Polish Prussia except for Danzig and Thorn (see 1793; 1831).

Danish noblemen conspire against their dictator Johann Friedrich, graf von Struensee, who has held absolute power for 10 months and had an affair with the young queen Caroline Matilda. Former foreign minister Count J. H. E. von Bernstorff has died on his Holstein estates February 18 at age 59; Struensee is overthrown, condemned to death, tortured, and beheaded at Copenhagen April 28 at age 34.

Sweden's Gustav III restores absolute monarchy by an August 19 coup d'état that ends the power of the council and takes away the riksdag's authority to initiate legislation. He will abolish torture, improve Sweden's poor laws, encourage trade, and proclaim religious toleration and liberty of the press, but his enlightened despotism will turn to reaction beginning in the summer of 1789.

Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Durrani dies at Toba Maruf in mid-October at age 50 (approximate) after a 25-year reign in which he has founded the state of Afghanistan and built an empire that extends from the Amu Darya to the Indian Ocean and from Koorasan into Kashmir, the Punjab, and Sind, but he has lost control of the Punjab to the Sikhs.

The young Maratha peshwa (chief minister) Madhav Rao I dies, and the Maratha state becomes a confederacy of five chiefs under the nominal leadership of the peshwa Baji Rao II at Poona, and although the chiefs will unite at times against outsiders, they will generally quarrel among themselves (see 1775).

Oxfordshire-born East India Company official Warren Hastings, 40, begins a 13-year term as governor of Bengal that will be marked by reforms that will include a simplification of Indian coinage and government control of salt and opium production. While en route to the Indian subcontinent he has begun an adulterous relationship with a beautiful 21-year-old German baroness whom he will eventually marry (but not until 1795). Hastings files charges of embezzlement against the country's two chief financial ministers, but the official charged with conducting the case, one Nand Kumar (Nucomar), fails to gain a conviction, will himself be charged with corruption, bring charges of corruption against Hastings, and in 1775 be tried and executed on an earlier charge of forgery (see Regulating Act, 1773).

British forces from India move up into the Himalayan realm of Bhutan, whose affairs are in disorder (see 1720). The British will remain until next year (see 1864).

The Royal Marriage Act passed by Parliament requires the king's consent to the union of any member of Britain's royal family and makes an unsanctioned marriage invalid (see 1785).

Rhode Island colonists set fire July 9 to the armed British revenue ship H.M.S. Gaspée that has been stationed in Narragansett Bay to prevent smuggling. An arrogant Royal Navy lieutenant has been lured close to shore by the Hannah. He has run the Gaspée aground on a sandbar, news of her plight has reached Providence, drummers have gone through the streets to announce the situation and call for volunteers. Slave trader John Brown has supplied eight longboats; prominent Rhode Islanders quickly man the oars; Bristol privateer Simeon Potter, now 52, brings a ninth boat to the scene. Lieutenant William Dudingston commanding the Gaspée opens fire; the colonists return fire and board the ship; Dudingston is slightly wounded in the skirmish that follows; Gaspée's crew is put ashore, and their ship is destroyed.

Boston patriot Samuel Adams, now 50, and local physician Joseph Warren, 31, organize a Committee of Correspondence November 2; similar committees spring up throughout the colonies, relaying the anti-British polemics of Adams and others.

The Massachusetts Spy publishes in two installments The Adulateur, an anonymous drama lampooning the colonial royal governor Thomas Hutchinson. Its author will prove to be Mercy Otis Warren, 43.