1740
Frederick II Ascends the Prussian Throne
Frederick, twenty-eight, flautist, atheist, poet, secret admirer of Voltaire, and long-tormented son of the soldier-king Frederick William, inherited Prussia. Europe expected a philosopher. Within six months he would invade Silesia without warning. Within five years he would be known to all as Frederick the Great. His father had built the army; Frederick, to everyone's surprise including perhaps his own, proved willing and able to use it.
Batavia Chinese Massacre
In the Dutch East India Company's capital on Java, authorities rounded up Chinese residents accused of plotting rebellion and handed them over to soldiers and mobs. For three days the canals ran red. Perhaps ten thousand Chinese were killed. The Qianlong Emperor, informed, shrugged: these were people who had abandoned their ancestral graves.
Maria Theresa Inherits the Habsburg Lands
Charles VI died, having spent decades securing the Pragmatic Sanction. His twenty-three-year-old daughter, pregnant with her fourth child, found the treasury empty, the army unpaid, and her neighbors licking their lips. She would prove the most formidable Habsburg since Charles V. The War of the Austrian Succession was hours away.
Frederick Invades Silesia
Without declaration, Prussian columns crossed the Silesian border in December snow. The province was rich, Protestant, and weakly garrisoned; Frederick took it in six weeks. The young king had announced himself by theft. The age of brazen, lightning, aggressive war had arrived on the European stage. Maria Theresa, the young Habsburg queen who inherited the province, never forgave him and spent two decades trying to get it back.
Richardson's Pamela
A middle-aged London printer named Samuel Richardson published an epistolary novel about a servant girl who resisted her master's seduction attempts until he, impressed, married her. Clergymen recommended it from pulpits. Henry Fielding parodied it as Shamela. Either way, the middle-class English novel had found its first enormous commercial success.
Want 1740 in context? Print the whole 18th century as a one-sheet timeline chart.
Frequently asked
What happened in the year 1740?
Saeculum lists 5 curated events from 1740. The most significant is Frederick II Ascends the Prussian Throne: Frederick, twenty-eight, flautist, atheist, poet, secret admirer of Voltaire, and long-tormented son of the soldier-king Frederick William, inherited Prussia.
What era was 1740 part of?
1740 falls within the Enlightenment (1651-1800). Reason, revolution, and the first global wars.
Which regions saw notable events in 1740?
The curated events from 1740 span Europe and Southeast Asia.