Timeline 776 BC - 2003

TIMELINE - ESSAY GPS TOOL

Time Period/ Heading	Information
ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME
776 BC First Olympiad:	The Olympic games were held every four years and became the standard measure by which Greek and Roman historians dated time.
Timeline of Western Philosophers begins 600 BC
509 BC Roman Republic established	In Greek philosophy the nature of " reason " is explored. Human thought consciously sought to define what reason is and to use it as the key to understanding the world. The Greek philosophers were drawn on by later thinkers in the Arabic and European worlds. They include Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Euclid.
PYTHAGORAS Pythgoras's theorem	Pythagoras, who died about 500BC, founded the Pythagorean School of thinkers. They created mathematical ways of representing and analysing musical harmony, and theories explaining sight mechanically: thinking of light as an emission of particles travelling in straight lines between the eye and the object seen. Mathematics, experiment, theory, aesthetics and religious speculation were all part of the Pythagorean imagination. They established the relationship of harmonious sound between families of notes produced by striking metal bars of different lengths, and the numbers that relate the lengths to the notes. Pythagorus also believed in the harmony of nature: See Derek Antrobus, 7.2002 Philosophy of diet - or philosophy of life? A brief history of the abacus guesses the earliest counting boards at about 500BC. (See role in commerce and empire). Babbage built his mechanical counter in 1823 AD and Turing dreamed his in 1935 AD
SOCRATES
Before 469BC	Socrates (philosopher) born in Athens, Greece
451BC	In Rome the laws were inscribed on tablets. These were the foundation of Roman jurisprudence. (The science of law). The Ten Commandments of the Jews, another source of jurisprudence, were also originally inscribed on tables of stone.
431BC	Start of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta) [Thucydides Book 2]
429BC	Pericles (leader of the democracy in Athens) died of fever during a long war between Athens and Sparta. Political turmoil followed his death
427BC	Plato (philosopher) born
404BC	Athens surrendered to Sparta. Government of the thirty tyrants came to power in Athens.
403BC	Restoration of democracy in Athens.
399BC	Socrates tried for misleading the Athenian youth with his philosophy. Sentenced to death.
PLATO'S ACADEMY
386BC	Plato, a pupil of Socrates, established the Academy - the first university - where he taught for the rest of his life. Plato argued that: truth and reason are external. we must govern our personal and social lives using reason. humans can reason to external truth.
384BC	Aristotle (philosopher and naturalist) born.
363BC	Aristotle studied under Plato.
347BC	Plato died. Following Plato's death, Aristotle left Athens.
342BC	Aristotle tutor to Alexander, who became the Emperor Alexander.
ARISTOTLE'S LYCEUM
335BC	Aristotle returned to Athens, where he opened a school called the Lyceum. Most of his writings were composed during the following thirteen years. Aristotle argued that: truth and reason are within things the truth of something is its essence or nature the essence of something is what it could become. An acorn, for example, is a seed that could become an oak. Aristotle on reason, the state, slavery and women
331BC	Alexander destroyed the power of Persia, and established an empire which stretched from Macedonia to Egypt, and to the Indus.

322BC					Aristotle died
EUCLID'S GEOMETRY
About 300BC					Euclid taught in Alexandria, Egypt. Building on the practical geometry of the Egyptians, Euclid laid the foundations of theoretical geometry Read: Euclid's axioms
ROMAN EMPIRE					The Age of Augustus, from 31BC to 14AD, is taken as the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire. The empire may have included a larger percentage of the world's population than any other, before or since. Its survival was dependent on trade. Roads it built survive today. Its engineers also constructed long tunnels and bridges, including aqueducts. The arithmetic of its trade and commerce was calculated using counting boards and hand abaci.
BIRTH OF CHRIST
AD1					Alleged date of the birth of Jesus Christ. Calendar dates back from here (BC: Before Christ) and forward from here. Centuries are also numbered backwards and forwards from here. From the birth of Jesus back to 99BC is the first century BC From the birth of Christ forward to 99AD is the first century AD SO: 1600 AD to 1699 AD is the 17th century AD not the 16th century 1900 AD to 1999 AD is the 20th century AD not the 19th century 2000 AD to 2099 AD is the 21st century AD not the 20th century The system of numbering things at equal intervals (years in this case) from an arbitrary starting point (the birth of Christ in this case) with items being counted backwards and forwards from the starting point, is called an Interval Scale. The alleged birth of Jesus took place in Bethlehem (instead of Nazareth) because the Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus, ordered people throughout his empire to go to their family home to be counted for taxation. This is an example of political arithmetic, state arithmetic, or statistics.
37-41					Reign of the Roman Emperor Caligula who banished or murdered most of his relatives, executed large numbers of people, confiscated property and, for entertainment, had people tortured and killed whilst he was eating. He made himself a God. A Jewish philosopher, Philo Judaeus, went to Rome to plead with Caligula for the lives of Jews who had refused to worship him as God. Philo is remembered as a theorist who fused Greek and Jewish thought. Caligula was assassinated and is remembered by many social theorists as an example of an undesirable ruler. They read about him in the works of Philo.
90 to 168AD					Claudius Ptolemaeus or Ptolemy: Astronomer and geographer who lived in Alexandria and compiled a large compendium of astronomy, with the earth as the centre of the universe. His compendium was called the Almagest when translated into Arabic.
200AD to 400AD					The two centuries from are a critical turning point in the Saint-Simonian system of history between the epoch with polytheist ideas and a society based on slavery, and that with "theological" ideas and a feudal organisation of society.
393-397 AD					Synods of the Christian Church decided which books would form the Christian Bible. This is composed of an "Old Testament" (the Hebrew Bible) and a "New Testament" (books about Jesus and the early Christians). The whole is arranged in approximate chronological order, giving a history of the material world from its beginning (Genesis) to future end (Revelation) [See 1611]
405 AD					Jerome completed his translation (commenced in 382) of the Bible from Hebrew and Arabic into Latin: the language common to educated christendom. It became known as the versio vulgata or Vulgate.
EUROPEAN CIVILISATION					There is well established division of European history into the Classical Period (ancient Greece and the Roman Empire), which comes to an end about the 5th century AD, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period, which stretches from there to about the 15th century, and then Modern Civilisation. [External Link]. This last period may be what present day theorists mean by modernity. External link to Fordham University's Internet Medieval Sourcebook James Richards of Gordon University, Georgia, maintains that European culture has a "core of recurring basic ideas, values, beliefs, and aspirations"
BIRTH OF MUHAMMAD
ARABIC CIVILISATION
570 to 632					Muhammad. The works of the Greeks and Egyptians originally reached Christian Europe via the translations of scholars living in muslim countries At about the time that Muhammad was born, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms were emerging in England (external link: Anglo-Saxon Origins: The Reality of the Myth by Malcolm Todd)
about 680 AD					death of Caedmon, who gave birth to English poetry
673 to 735					The Venerable Bede of Jarrow.
768 to 814					Charlemagne (Charles the Great) was king of the Franks from 768 to 814
809 to 877					Hunain ibn Ishaq who directed the translation of numerous texts from Greek to Arabic at Baghdad .Feudalism? Marc Bloch's Feudal Society covers the period (roughly) from the middle of the ninth century to the first decades of the 13th in western and central Europe. He divides the period into a first and second feudal age, separated by "profound and widespread changes" towards the middle of the eleventh century The two centuries from 1000 to 1200 are a critical turning point in the Saint-Simonian system of history between the epoch with "theological" ideas and a feudal organisation of society and that with positive, scientific ideas and an industrial social organisation.
11TH CENTURY
Timeline Science, 1000 Years of Scientific Thought, runs back to here
About 990 to 1050					Guido d'Arezzo (Guido Aretino) lived. Guido was an Italian monk trying to find ways of improving the teaching of monks to sing the Gregorian Chants that were a large part of their religious duty. He used a system of recording music as writing by arranging symbols for notes on either side of a line (later lines) so that, if you understood the notation you could sing the music. As music became writing it became possible to compose on paper instead of having to work as a group developing and transmitting it. Writing music created a system of concepts for the analysis and manipulation of a sphere of deep sensual experience believed to be sacred. It was part of the development of rational analysis out of religious tradition in Europe.
1088					Convenience date for the foundation of the University of Bologna - the first in Europe. See L'Antico Studio di Bologna But where is it?
Late 11th century on					European translations from Arabic into Latin of Greek authors, including the anatomist, Galen
12TH CENTURY					"Towards the 12th century Carolingian script was replaced by a heavier, more pointed Gothic style. One of the reasons for this was that quill pens began to be cut at an angle, making it easier to produce these shapes." [External Link]. The term gothic (German) was used in the 17th century to distinguish this style of writing from the (French) Carolingian. Gothic then was applied to the architecture of the period.
About 1120					Euclid rediscovered
1121					Jim Shead's Waterways Chronology begins
					A Common Law for England: Henry 2nd (ruled 1154-1189) established royal courts at Westminster and divided England into circuits, over which his judges travelled and tried the more important civil and criminal cases in county courts. The judges did not impose a law from above, but brought together the traditional law they found in the different parts of the country to create one law that was common for the whole nation. To establish what the law of a district was, the traditional practice of trial by a jury of local people was revived.
Before 1170?					The University of Paris developed out of the Cathedral schools of Notre Dame. The short history of Oxford University says it (Oxford) developed rapidly after 1167, when Henry 2nd "banned English students from attending the University of Paris". External link to history of the University of Oxford External link to history of the University of Cambridge The University of Paris was formally established in 1215. Oxford has a formal constitution modeled on it
1175					Ptolemy rediscovered
13TH CENTURY
UNIVERSITIES					Universities founded at Cambridge (1209) - Salamanca (1218) - Padua (1222) - Naples (1224) - Toulouse (1229) - Siena (1240) - Montpellier (1289) - Lisbon (1290)
1220					Start of the building of the (new) Salisbury Cathedral - the one we now have. It took about hundred years to build. The Norman Westminster Abbey was replaced in the middle of the 13th century. The oldest parts of the present building date from this period.
1225 to 1274					Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas created a synthesis between Christian theology and Aristotelianism. He asserted that political power is natural, as hierarchic relations already exist among the angels in heaven.
14TH CENTURY					The Renaissance (cultural rebirth) is generally regarded as beginning in Florence, Italy, in the early 14th century. However, some historians speak of an earlier renaissance in 9th century France. "The civilization of Greece and Rome, which ever since the fourteenth century obtained so powerful a hold on Italian life, as the source and basis of culture, as the object and ideal of existence, partly also as an avowed reaction against preceding tendencies - this civilization had long been exerting a partial influence on medieval Europe, even beyond the boundaries of Italy. The culture of which Charles the Great was a representative, in the face of the barbarism of the seventh and eighth centuries, essentially a Renaissance, and could appear under no other form. Just as in the Romanesque architecture of the North, beside the general outlines inherited from antiquity, remarkable direct imitations of the antique also occur, so to monastic scholarship had not only gradually absorbed an immense mass of materials from Roman writers, but the style of it, from the days of Eginhard onward, shows traces of conscious imitations."
1347-1350					Black Death (Bubonic Plague) in Europe. Further outbreaks (England) in 1361-1362, 1369, 1379-1383, 1389-1393, and during first half of the 15th century.
1377					Mental Health Bethlem
1387					Geoffrey Chaucer (1328-1400) started writing The Canterbury Tales. The East Midland dialect he wrote in became the basis from which standard English evolved. Before the age of printing Rhymers like Geoffrey Chaucer Were needed to preserve in public verse The life of the people. Whilst in the monasteries Chorister's memory preserved Plain song, whose metrical rhythm Underpinned the mathematics still to come. And in ways like this, modern science Was made possible by medieval poetry.
about 1373-1438					Although she was the daughter of a town Mayor, Margery Kempe was unable to read and write, but heard many sermons, and books read. When she came to write her book, she dictated it.
YEAR						EVENT
15th Century						Universities founded at Leipzig in 1409 (external link) - St Andrews (1413) - Rostock (1419) - Leuven (1425) - Barcelona (1450) - Glasgow (1451) - Greifswald (1456) - Bratislava (1465) - Uppsala (1477) - Copenhagen (1479) - Aberdeen (1495)
						Slavery and Social Science Ancient civilizations, like that of Sparta were made possible by slavery. In western Europe this method of production gave way to feudal relations and then to free labor. But, as free labor developed in Europe, Europe developed slave labor abroad. From the 15th century, a system of colonial slavery was developed by the European powers. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the theoretical analysis of slavery played an important part in the development of social science. In the 18th and early 19th century, these theoretical developments, in their turn, played an important part in undermining the colonial slavery that Europe had established throughout her colonies.
1447						Pope Nicholas 5th authorized the Portuguese to make war on Muslims and pagans, and to make them slaves. He applauded the trade in Negroes, and hoped that it would end in their conversion.
About 1450						Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press - Which is probably why the middle of the 15th century is the most popular date for starting "modern history" - Although the Penguin Dictionary of Modern History starts in 1789 (and finishes in 1945!)
1482						The first printed edition of Euclid was a translation from Arabic into Latin
1492						Columbus's first voyage to America. Visited Haiti.
1493						Pope Alexander 6th apportioned the non-European world west of the Azores to Spain, that east of the Azores to Portugal. The grant was conditional on their converting the natives to Christianity.
YEAR	EVENT
1517	The publication of Luther's ninety-five theses became the official launch of protestant Christianity. The Bible was given priority over the church as the source of authority. The scope for religious disagreements multiplied as more and more people were able to read it for themselves. The movement for the reform of the Catholic (universal) church and the breakaway of protestant and reformed churches is called The Reformation.
1518	Royal College of Physicians founded
1525	William Tyndale's The New Testament in English printed in Germany and shipped into England against official hostility
1528	Copernicus finished a book arguing that the earth goes round the sun, not the sun round the earth. The first printed copy was in 1543 (see Galileo)
1544	Sebastian Cabot's map of the world
1559	Earliest surviving map of London.
1577	Jean Bodin published Six Livres de la Republique, the first major systematic treatment of politics since Aristotle. He argued that property and the family form the basis of society. His arguments from the material world (in contrast to Aquinas who argues from theology) make him a founder of the philosophical approach to social theory known as state of nature theory. Marx and Engels argued that one of the qualifications required by science is that its theories should start from material premises rather than theological ones. In this sense, Bodin is one of the earliest founders of social science.
1588	Robert Filmer (author of Patriarcha) and Thomas Hobbes (author of Leviathan) born
1599	In his play, As You Like It, William Shakespeare said that the whole social world is a stage on which the same people play different parts at different times. This is the basic idea of role theory, later developed by social scientists (Especially ErvingGoffman).
YEAR		EVENT
1601		Elizabethan Poor Law under which each parish was responsible for looking after its own poor. Mental Health and the Poor Law
1603		Death of Elizabeth 1. James 6 of Scotland became James 1 of England.
1610		Speech to Parliament in which king James said "kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called gods".
1611		Official (King James or Authorised) version of the Bible in English published. [See 393] The Bible story is largely chronological - beginning with the genesis of the world and ending with divine revelation of its end. It provided the framework for many historical explanations of nature and society. Usher gave it precise dates. For generations this book, more then any other, provided the English speaking peoples with poetry, history, religion, politics, ethics, names, imagery and visions, as well as a framework for natural and social science. Its downfall as the basis of science in the 19th century was a cultural cataclysm
1613		Francisco de Suarez, a Spanish Catholic theologian, published Defensio Fidei Catholicae, criticising James 1st's theory of the divine right of kings. Saurez's book was burned in London.
1614		In France, the Queen Regent called the States General (a representative body like the English parliament) together in an effort to counter the power of the nobility. It was dismissed in 1615, and did not meet again until 1789
1620		Francis Bacon published Novum Organum, one of the works in which he publicised his new method of gaining knowledge (science) by a process of induction.
1623		Probably after this date that Hobbes translated several of Bacon's essays into Latin and took down his thoughts as Bacon dictated them.
1632		In Italy Galileo published his A Dialogue on the Two Principle Systems of the World-Ptolemaic and Copernican. See Ptolemy and Copernicus. Notes on Hobbes and Galileo and Hobbes on Deductions from simple axioms
1637		In France, René Descartes published Discourse de la méthod, a slim book in which he argued reason as the foundation of knowledge and the source of certainty.
1640		November 1640 Hobbes left England to live in Paris because he thought parliament might arrest him as a supporter of the king's powers against parliament.
1642		Isaac Newton born
Nov. 1642		English civil war began between Charles 1st and parliament over the power of each.
1643		Filmer arrested by Parliamentary forces and kept for several months in Leeds Castle, Kent. It is not clear how much of 1643-1647 he was imprisoned, but he was at liberty in 1647
1644		The seven General Baptist churches issued the London Confession which said that men must be allowed to obey their own conscience and understanding. In 1647 George Fox (Quaker) began preaching under the conviction of the "inner light". The civil war, and the republican Commonwealth that followed it, were a period of intense religious ferment, individual thought and social disorder. Knowledge by the inner inspiration of God was known as "enthusiasm". Locke's Essay on Understanding (1690) sought to establish science as a common knowledge that could control the divisiveness of enthusiasm.
1646			In Paris Hobbes became mathematical tutor to the exiled Prince of Wales (later Charles 2nd)
1648			Filmer published political pamphlets in support of absolute monarchy
1649			Execution of Charles 1st. Abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords in England. Commonwealth established. Under the Commonwealth Filmer lost some of his property as a result of his loyalty to the king
1650			Rene Descartes died
1650-1654			James Usher's Annales Veteris at Novi Testamenti (years of the old and new testaments) dated the events in the Bible. The creation was fixed as taking place in 4,004 BC. Usher's dates were not only printed in the margins of many Bibles, but were accepted as scientific for a long time.
Apr. 1651			Hobbes' Leviathan published in London (Hobbes still in France). It distressed some of his previous supporters because it defended absolute rule, but not necessarily monarchical rule.
7.9. 1651			Procession to mark the formal ending of the minority of Louis 14 of France. Hobbes watched the procession from his window. From 1661, when he threw his chief minister into prison, until his death in 1715, Louis 14 ruled personally. "L'etat c'est moi" (I am the state), he said.
End of 1651			Hobbes returned to England
1653			20.4.1653 Oliver Cromwell, Commander in Chief of the Parliamentary Army, dissolved Parliament. 30.5.1653 Sir Robert Filmer died 16.12.1653 Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector under a constitution that combined his rule with a Parliament.
1654			Community care under the Old Poor Law
1660			Restoration of English monarchy under Charles 2nd, who attempted to unify the country around a common religion.
28.111660				Meeting that decided to start a "College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning" which led to the "The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge" (the Royal Society). John Locke became a member 26.11.1668. Isaac Newton became a member 11.1.1672. Thomas Hobbes did not become a member. Lord Chancellor takes over lunacy
1662				Act of Settlement said one acquired a right to relief in a parish by being born there, married there or serving an apprenticeship there. Adam Smith later (1776) criticized this Act for interfering with the mobility of labour. Ed Stephan's A Sociology Timeline begins with the birth of John Graunt on 20.4.1620. In 1662 Graunt published his Observations on the Bills of Mortality which drew social conclusions from the tables of London deaths. The time line concludes with Ed Stephan's own The Division of Territory in Society in 1995.
1662				Anonymous publication of The Port Royal Logic: La logique, ou l'art de penser (logic or the art of thinking), by Antoine Arnauld (1612-1694) and Pierre Nicole (1623-1695) of the Jansenist convent of Port Royal just outside Paris. Written in everyday French, and translated into everyday English and other modern languages, it popularised "the art of using reason well in the acquisition of the knowledge of things". (See Mill A System of Logic)
1666				Fire of London. Bethlem rebuilt.
1679				Thomas Hobbes died.
1680				Patriarcha by Sir Robert Filmer (died 1653) published. This supported absolute divine right of kings.
22.1 1680				Locke bought a copy of Patriarcha. It was probably at this period that Locke wrote the first treatise on Government (published 1689/1680), criticising Filmer. If so he would have kept it secret for fear of the king's police.
Summer 1683				For his safety, Locke left England to live in Holland.
7.12 1683				Algernon Sidney beheaded for High Treason, partly as a consequence of a book he had written (not published) criticising Filmer's Patriarcha
1685				James 2nd English king. He tried to enforce Catholic toleration.
1686				First edition, in Latin, of Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (English translation 1729). See also 1713, 1723, 1740.
1688				Glorious Revolution: William and Mary (protestants) were invited to become king and queen by the English parliament. James 2nd fled to France.
1689/90				Locke's Two Treatises of Government published. They were probably first drafted in 1679/1680. The Two Treatises has 1690 on its cover, but it and his Letter on Toleration were both in print by the autumn of 1689. Both were published anonymously. 1690 Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding published. This work he signed. 1693 Locke's Thoughts Concerning Education published
1690				Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding published. This work he signed.
1693				Locke's Thoughts Concerning Education published
1697				Britain began to keep records of the gap between its imports and its exports (the "balance of trade"). When nations kept figures from year to year in economics, weather or whatever, it made possible the production of graphs like the following which shows the British balance of trade from 1697 to 1925.
YEAR	EVENT
1704	Death of Locke.
1711	David Hume born
1712	Jean Jacques Rousseau (author of The Social Contract) born
1713	Second edition of Newton's Principles contained Roger Cotes' Preface trying to show how Newton's practice was consistent with the new ( Baconian) inductive science
1723	27.2.1723 David Hume, aged 12, started at Edinburgh University. He did not take a degree, but for two or three years was exposed to the new philosophy particularly that of Sir Isaac Newton.
1724	Immanuel Kant, author of the Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason, born.
1727	Isaac Newton died
1729	English translation of Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World (Published, in Latin, in 1686)
1734	: The Koran: Commonly called the Alkoran of Mohammed An english translation, directly from arabic, by George Sales, a London lawyer, who included a long Preliminary Discourse explaining the history and context of Mohammed. Served for centuries its declared purpose of making the Koran available to christians. My copy (Frederick Warne 1889), first bought for the Seafarers' Education Service, then joined the small library of Herbert Henry Moss, a primitive methodist, from whom I would borrow it in the late 1950s.
1740	Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. Hume attempted to be the Newton of Social Science.
1746	Champion's Brass Works established at Warmley, near Bristol, by the Quaker industrialist, William Champion (1709-1789). It closed in 1768, and in 1769 an inventory of what was in the factory was made. This shows that everything produced was for the African trade - probably to be exchanged for slaves.

Date	Information
1748	In The Spirit of the Laws, Charles Secondat "Baron de Montesquieu" (l689-l755) explored natural and human laws in a way that enabled people to analyse society as a whole, in relation to its parts, in relation to its history and in relation to its environment. -Jeremy Bentham, (author of A Fragment on Government ) born Olympe de Gouges (author of Declaration of the Rights of Woman) born Marie Gouze
1750	Rousseau's Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts.
1755	Rousseau's A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.
1756	William Godwin born. He was to develop a political philosophy to formalize and show the foundations of radical ones like Rousseau's preceding his.
1762	Rousseau's The Social Contract and Emile. The controversial content of Emile made life in France uncomfortable for him. In 1766 and 1767 he lived in England as the guest of David Hume. He died in France in 1778. In 1794 the remains of Rousseau and Voltaire were moved to the Pantheon in Paris. Steam came to power the machines that were developing fast (particularly in textile industries of England and Scotland), creating factories where people worked to the rhythm of the machine. Piston steam engines had been used to pump water since the end of the 17th century. In the 1760s, James Watt created more powerful engines by condensing the steam in a vessel separate from the cylinder. These made steam engines an alternative to water wheels, and moved industry from the side of highland streams to lowland coal-fields. In 1780s America and Britain, steam was first used to power paddle boats. The first rail- running steam carriages appeared in the first years of the 19th century. The revolutionary impact of steam became clear to everyone in Britain in the 1830s and 1840s as a network of railways was constructed, affecting every aspect of people's lives. Tennyson explained it to masses of English speaking readers six years before Marx and Engels explained it to small groups of revolutionaries in Europe.
1764	Beccaria's Essay on Crimes and Punishment
1770	Georg Friedrich Hegel born
1772	-Robert Owen born -David Ricardo born
1773	James Mill born
1774	-Louis 16th king of France. -Medical inspection of London madhouses introduced -Joseph Priestley isolated oxygen - dephlogisticated air from which everything except its life giving properties has been removed.
1776	-Britain's American colonies declared themselves independent. -David Hume died -Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Bentham's A Fragment on Government were both published in 1776
1778	France, Britain's traditional enemy, entered the war of independence on America's side. Death of Rousseau.
1780	Luigi Galvani observed electrical current passing from a generator to a frog's leg. See Wikipedia on Luigi Galvani Galvanic
1781	Immanuel Kant's The Critique of Pure Reason attempted to salvage the philosophy of science by arguing that whilst reason alone cannot establish the truth of what is, categories provided by the mind are needed for us to order our experiences. In The Critique of Practical Reason (1788) he argued that pure reason is practical when it comes to morality. Reason alone establishes what ought to be, as distinct from what is. His third major book, Critique of Judgement (1790) argued that beauty is the perfect compatibility of the forms with which we perceive with what we perceive.
1783	The American war of Independence was concluded by the Treaty of Versailles
1784	Immanuel Kant's What is Enlightenment? -See Enlightenment Robert Alun Jones' Timeline on Durkheim begins with the appointment of his great-grandfather, Simon Simon Durkheim, as rabbi in Mutzig (Alsace)
1787	22.5. 1787 Society for the Abolition of the British Slave Trade formed in London. 17.9.1787 The Constitution of the United States adopted.
1788	The Federalist Papers, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, established an independent tradition of political analysis in the USA. The cost of the American war overstrained the resources of the French King (Louis 16th) and was a reason for his calling the States General together in August 1788. This was the French representative body (like Parliament in England). But it had not met since 1614. The King hoped that it would enable him to raise new taxes. Cowper's The Morning Dream, A Ballad was composed and used in the campaign against slavery in 1788. February 1788 A society called the Friends of the Negro formed in Paris to campaign for the abolition of the French slave trade. Its members included people (like Brissot, Mirabeau, Petion, Condorcet and Abbe Gregoire) who were to become leading figures in the early years of the French revolution.
1987	FRENCH REVOLUTION Year of the Revolution. The States General met in May 1789. It had three parts: the first estate (clergy), second estate (nobles) and third estate (others). When it last met, 175 years before, the third estate had been overshadowed by the other two. Now the feelings of the representatives were very different. In February a pamphlet by Abbe Sieyes called What is the Third Estate? argued it was the whole nation. In other words, members of the Third Estate were claiming to represent the whole of France. The three estates sat apart, but the third estate argued that there should be only one assembly. On June 17th they took the law into their own hands and renamed themselves the National Assembly. On June 20th they resolved to go on meeting (even if the king dissolved them) "until the constitution of the realm is established" (tennis court oath). On June 27th they won: the king ordered the first and second estates to join the third. 14.7.1789 Fall of the Bastille. The Paris masses captured the state prison: an event that remains the symbol of the revolution and the date of the national holiday. 17.7.1789 The beginning of the Peasants' revolt. In the countryside people began burning the records on which their lords based their claims for "feudal" dues. July 1789 White people from Haiti asked for representation in the French Assembly proportional to the population of Haiti, which consisted mostly of slaves. Issue of race, slavery and rights of man began to be linked in the debates of the French Assembly. 4.11.1789: Begining of a series of decrees abolishing feudal rights and privileges. 11.8.1789: "The National Assembly totally abolishes the feudal system" 26.8.1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen 5.10.1789 The Insurrection of the Women. Women marched from Paris to the King's palace at Versailles to complain about the lack of bread. On the 6th October they marched back to Paris - bringing the King and Queen with them. - [This event offends Burke] 22.10.1789 People of mixed race from Haiti (not slaves) came to the French Assembly to ask it to recognise their rights as men. November 1789 Widespread persecution of people of mixed race began in Haiti. 4.11.1789 In London, Richard Price delivered a Discourse on the Love of our Country to the "Revolution Society" (formed to commemorate 1688). The society sent a congratulatory letter to the National Assembly. In January 1790 Edmund Burke read a pamphlet containing the discourse, the letter and a reply from the president of the Assembly. This stimulated Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (November 1790). Mary Wollstonecraft published a reply, A Vindication of the Rights of Man, in December 1790. Tom Paine's two part reply, The Rights of Man, was published in 1791 and 1792. FRENCH CONSTITUTION OF 22.12.1789: This gave the vote on the basis of taxation. Citoyens actifs were involved in direct and indirect elections to local councils and the National Assembly. Citoyens passifs had civic rights (freedom of expression etc), but no political rights. The Assembly had 745 deputies for France (colonial deputies were added later) and these represented départements according to area, population and revenue. December 1789 In Paris, a play by Olympe de Gouges that attacked slavery was hissed off the stage after three performances. 14.12.1789 Count Charles de Lameth told the National Assembly of France that although he owned many slaves in Haiti, I would prefer to lose all I possess there rather than violate the principles that justice and humanity have consecrated. I declare myself both for the admission of half- castes into the administrative assemblies and for the liberty of the blacks!
1790	14.7. William Wordsworth arrived in France "Among sequestered villages we walked And found benevolence and blessedness Spread like a fragrance everywhere... Unhoused beneath the evening star we saw Dances of liberty 21.10. Vincent Oge led an unsuccessful insurrection on Haiti. News of his brutal execution drew the attention of French people to the island.
1791	Spring Debates on a proposed Constitution for the French colonies. The Assembly heard evidence from people of mixed race. 15.5 Resolved by the Assembly that every mulatto whose parents were both free should have a vote. Comments of Olympe de Gouges 21.6 Louis 16 attempted to leave France. He was stopped at Varennes and brought back to Paris. The king's flight led to popular protests calling for a new head to the executive. Comments of Olympe de Gouges 16.7 Massacre of Champ de Mars: a meeting in Paris calling, in effect, for the king's abdication, was dispersed by the National Guard. About 60 petitioners were killed and 200 arrested. 22.8 Uprising of the slaves in Haiti. Toussaint L'Ouverture joined the uprising after about a month. As a result of the slave uprising the supply of sugar to France was cut off, leading to food riots in Paris in January 1792. October 1791 Meeting of Legislative Assembly. Brissot agitated for war. November 1791 Commissioners arrived in Haiti to restore order. Slave leaders tried to bargain their freedom for the re-enslavement of their followers. When the white colonial government refused the bargain, Toussaint L'Ouverture resolved to fight for complete liberty for all.
1792	January 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman published. On 14.1.1792 Talleyrand arrived in London on an unsuccessful diplomatic mission. Whilst in London he called on Mary Wollstonecraft. March 1792 The Paris Commune opened its galleries to the public, which made it more exposed to popular pressure. 20.3.1792 to 23.3.1792 Formation of a new French ministry led by Brissot. On 24.3.1792 the Legislative Assembly, by a large majority, passed a decree giving full political rights to free men of colour in the colonies. This became law on 4.4.1792. FRANCE AT WAR 20.4.1792 France declared war on Austria. This led to war with Prussia as well. Once France was at war, the influence of the streets on government became more powerful because of popular fear of traitors within the country. 10.8.1792 Paris masses stormed Tuileries and imprisoned the royal family. Early September 1792 The election of the Convention, by almost universal male suffrage, took place at the same time as the defeat of the French army at Verdun and at the same time that crowds massacred over 1,000 prisoners in Paris. 18.9.1792 Three commissioners from France arrived in Haiti to enforce the decree of 4.4.1792 21.9.1792 Meeting of Convention which (on 22.9.1792) abolished the monarchy and established the Republic. The Republican calendar started Year One here. Early October 1792 News of the imprisonment of the king reached Haiti, where the French fell out over it. On 12.10.1792 the Commissioners dissolved the Colonial Assembly and assumed full control over the colony. Haiti was becoming increasingly split by internal war and, secretly, the British government began to consider taking it over. December 1792. Mary Wollstonecraft moved to France to experience for herself the revolutionary civilisation. At the time she went political forces in France were moving against the people she sympathised with (The "Girondins") many of whom went to the guillotine whilst she was there. She returned to England in 1795. 19.11.1792 A decree of the Convention offered help to all peoples wishing to recover their liberties.
1793	FRENCH KING GUILLOTINED 21.1.1793 Execution of Louis 16th. 1.2.1793 France declared war on Great Britain. War with Spain followed in March and also civil war (the revolt of the Vendee from March to December 1793). Spain invaded Haiti early in the war. At first, Toussaint L'Ouverture and other black leaders fought for Spain against the French Republicans and in defence of the kings. Early September 1792 The election of the Convention, by almost universal male suffrage, took place at the same time as the defeat of the French army at Verdun and at the same time that crowds massacred over 1,000 prisoners in Paris. FRENCH CONSTITUTION OF 1793 June 1793 French Constitution of 1793 adopted. This gave the vote to every adult male, apart from domestic servants, but it was never put into practice. [Social Science History link: par. 93] 19.6.1793-20.6.1793 In Haiti the Republican French Commissioners quashed a revolt of the poor whites by sending armed free coloureds and slaves into the capital, Le Cap, which was destroyed in the fighting. For many colonists the destruction of Le Cap symbolised the end of white supremacy, and a mass migration followed. The main slave armies, however, were still fighting for the Spanish in defence of the kings. 30.7.1793 A French Commissioner reported from Haiti that The slaves remaining in the party of kings march in company with a great number of white emigres 29.8.1793 To secure some support from the slave armies, Sonthonax, a French Commissioner, declared the abolition of slavery in Haiti, but the slave armies continued to fight against him. 3.9.1793 White Royalists in Haiti asked for British intervention. An army left Jamaica (a British slave colony) and landed in Haiti on 19.9.1793. 16.10.1793 Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, guillotined in Paris 31.10.1793 Brissot and twenty other Girondins guillotined in Paris 3.11.1793 Olympe de Gouges guillotined in Paris 8.11.1793 Madame Roland guillotined in Paris December 1793 In the cause of the kings, Toussaint's slave army occupied central Haiti after a series of victories.
1794	"Erasmus Darwin, analysing the problem of living organisms in his Zoonomia (1794-1796), characterised animal motion not as a mechanical or chemical power, but as an intrinsic stimulus linked with the concept of irritation. ... Both Darwin and ... Galvani believed in an organism understood as a dynamic system of communication with a proper internal organisation based on the brain, not on the heart". Rafaella Simili 2003 See Frankenstein introduction 4.2.1794 Slavery abolished in French colonies. 30.2.1794 French celebrated the emancipation of slaves in the Temple of Reason. Early May 1794 News of the abolition of slavery by France reached Toussaint in Haiti and on 6.5.1794 he and his army deserted the Spanish to join the French. July 27/28 1794: Fall of Robespierre and Jacobins. End of the reign of terror in France.
1795	SPEENHAMLAND 1795 In England the parish of Speenhamland, in Berkshire, adopted a system of paying workers an allowance from public funds, on top of their wages, graduated according to the price of bread. Similar schemes were adopted by many other parishes. One of the consequences of welfare policies like these was that the money paid out on Poor Law soared. 7.4.1795 Metric system of measurement adopted in France External link: Important dates in the history of the modern metric system 20.3.1796 Mulattoes in Haiti, led by Vilate, revolted against the French General Laveaux. Toussaint rescued Laveaux and crushed the rebels. 1.4.1796 Toussaint was proclaimed Lieutenant Governor
1797	1797 Napoleon Bonaparte given command of the French army against England. 0.9.1797 Mary Wollstonecraft died.
1798	Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population contained the law that population increases much faster than subsistence unless checked by famine, war or vice (birth control). This was Malthus's refutation of the idea of people like Wollstonecraft and her husband, William Godwin that an unlimited improvement in the human condition was possible. It became very popular as a refutation of the philosophy behind the French Revolution.
1799	9-10 November 1799 Coup d'etat of 18 Brumaire. Napoleon Bonaparte, hitherto a military leader, became, by conspiracy and a "wiff of grapeshot" fired to disperse a crowd, the political and military leader of France. Under a new constitution he was First Consul of France. See 1804, 1806, 1815, Royal Institution founded It was here that Humphrey Davy and then Michael Faraday researched and lectured
19TH CENTURY
1800-1828		Robert Owen ran a model factory community at New Lanark in Scotland, demonstrating, he thought, that people respond to good treatment by becoming good people. This was a refutation in practice of Malthusian pessimism.
		Extracts from Owen Radicals, Socialists and Early Feminists discusses Owen and Bentham in relation to Thompson and Wheeler. Social Science History, chapter five on the theories that Smith, Bentham, Malthus and Owen made discusses Owen in relation to the poor law.
Monday 10.3.1801: First British Census		The censuses of 1801, 1811, 1821 and 1831 were purely numerical. Names were first recorded in 1841. 1801 recorded the number of people in each parish, the inhabited and uninhabited houses, and classified occupations into agriculture, manufacturing, commerce and handicrafts. Population of England and Wales: 8,893,000; Scotland: 1,608,000
October 1801		Having established the preliminaries of peace with the British, Bonaparte began preparation for a military expedition to Haiti to restore white rule. War between French forces and Toussaint.
		Humphry Davy's A Discourse, Introductory to a Course of Lectures on Chemistry
March 1802 to April 1803		Peace of Amiens
1.5.1802		Toussaint surrendered to the French and retired to private life on his estates.
About 7.6.1802		Toussaint arrested and taken on board a frigate waiting in harbour at Le Cap to go to France.
July 1802		News arrived in Haiti that the French had restored slavery in Guadeloupe. Bonaparte formally restored all the mulatto discriminations of the Old Regime.
24.8.1802		Toussaint imprisoned in Fort-de-Joux in the Jura mountains
October 1802		Armies of Mulattos and ex-slaves rebelled against the French in Haiti
1803		Second edition of Malthus on population
April 1803		Resumed war between Britain and France
Autumn 1803		French forced to evacuate Haiti by the black led armies
1804		Immanuel Kant died
1.1.1804		First ever black republic established. Called Haiti as it had been before European conquest.
May 1804		Napoleon became Emperor.
8.10.1804		The black leader of Haiti, Dessalines, crowned himself emperor as Jean Jacques 1st.
1805		Thomas Malthus became the first Professor of Political Economy
20.5.1806		John Stuart Mill, co-author of the future of the labouring classes, born. (early life) Harriet Taylor was born 10.10.1807 (life and ideas).
October 1806		Napoleon won the battle of Jena against the Prussians. Hegel described him as "the soul of the world"
20.11.1806		Humphry Davy's Bakerian lecture to the Royal Society in which he described the decomposition of matter into its elements by electricity. The Institut de France awarded him a prize of 3000 francs for the most important research in electricity that year.
1807		British Parliament prohibited slave trade.
1808		John Dalton's A New System of Chemical Philosophy argued that all matter consists of a range of elemental atoms (indivisible particles) each of which has a distinct atomic weight. The chemical combination of different atoms in different proportions producing substances qualitatively different from each other - although the constituent atoms remain the same. The experimental power of this theory (related to the calculation of weights) laid the foundations of modern chemistry - And put an end to any idea that qualities can only be explained as a result of the merging of constituent qualities. A precise and beautiful theory
March 1811		Percy Byshee Shelley, a young aristocrat, expelled from Oxford University for publishing a pamphlet on The Necessity of Atheism and challenging the clergy to debate it with him. In the following years he distributed pamphlets to the working class calling for revolution in the cause of liberty, equality and justice.
Monday 27.5.1811 Second British Census:		Population of England and Wales: 10,165,000; Scotland: 1,806,000
1812		Humphry Davy's Chemical Philosophy
		Assasination of British Prime Minister
1812 to 1814		Robert Owen wrote his four Essays on the Formation of Human Character
1813		Humphry Davy engaged Michael Farady as his assistant at the Royal Institution and entrusted him with performing the experiments which led to the condensation of gases into liquids by pressure. End of the Napoleonic Wars
April 1814		Napoleon abdicated
		Restoration of monarchies throughout continental Europe. Louis 18th King of France.
July 1814		Mary Shelley elopes: She journeys through France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland
		Humphry Davy patented the miners' safety lamp
1815		Napoleon returned, but was defeated at Waterloo (18.6.1815) The journey from London to Paris was calculated (Observer, 18.8.1816) to take 73 hours, consisting of 12 hours to Dover, an average of seven hours waiting at Dover, six hours crossing the channel and then 48 hours to Paris.
1815 Corn Laws		During the Napoleonic Wars farmers flourished because corn from abroad could not undercut their prices. Once the war was over foreign corn could come in and bring down the price of corn. To protect the rents of the landed aristocracy Parliament passed the Corn Laws which put taxes on imported corn. This rise in the price of the people's staple food coincided with a period of widespread poverty and unemployment, following the end of the war. The cost of poor relief soared, leading to a movement to reform the Poor Laws
June 1816		Mary Shelley's Alpine dream
18.8.1816		The Observer reported a project in which a balloon the shape of a dolphin, powered by steam and with wings that would act as rudders would "carry the nobility and gentry to Paris, and subsequently elsewhere" in ten hours or less. Balloons for flight, carrying humans, had been demonstrated in France in 1783, and used by Napoleon as military observation platforms.
1817		Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation published. People, like Malthus and Ricardo, who wanted to abolish any form of poor relief were known as the Abolitionists. They argued that poor relief perverted the market, undermined incentive, reduced the mobility of labour and encouraged overpopulation. Such arguments were at the strongest about 1817. Between 1817 and 1834, when the Poor Law Amendment Act was passed, they were modified considerably.
		Wealth and Poverty: Malthus and Ricardo
		Major writings of Saint Simon L'Industrie (1817), L'Organisateur (1819), Du Systeme Industriel (1821), Catechisme des Industriels (1823), and Nouveau Christianisme (1825).
		Mary Shelley's Frankenstein on the implications of science was completed 14.5.1817 and published anonymously on 1.1.1818. It was followed in 1826 by The Last Man, on the tragedy of social science.
1818		Karl Marx, joint author of The Communist Manifesto was born in Germany
1820		Friedrich Engels, joint author of The Communist Manifesto was born in Germany
16.8.1819 Peterloo		Troops fired on demonstrators in Manchester.
1820		JAMES MILL'S ESSAY ON GOVERNMENT
		James Mill's Essay on Government first published in the supplement to the Encyclopedia Brittanica. See 1825.
1820		Trial and acquittal of Saint Simon
Monday 28.5.1821: Third British Census		Population of England and Wales: 12,000,000; Scotland: 2,092,000
1822		John Stuart Mill and his friends formed a Utilitarian Society (broken up 1826). Utilitarianism was the dominant theory of Social Science in nineteenth century Britain. It was challenged by the French Sociologist, Emile Durkheim, in the 1890s.
		Suicide of British Foreign Secretary
1823		Charles Babbage built a mechanical computing device considerably more complex than an abacus.
		David Ricardo died
1824		Comte and Saint-Simon fell out over the way Comte's Systeme de Politique Positive was to be presented in Saint- Simon's Catechism Des Industriels
1825		James Mill's Essay on Government (1820) distributed in a free edition with other essays. William Thompson's Appeal on Behalf of Women written in collaboration with Anna Wheeler criticised this essay. . Thompson and Wheeler were Irish Owenites who developed socialist theories from Benthamism.
23.1.1826		The Last Man by the author of Frankenstein published
30.4.1827		A foundation stone laid in Gower Street of what became London University, the first "godless" university in England. Although many who supported it were very religious, the University was founded on the principle that religious tests would not be required of staff or students. For the first time, dissenters and jews (in particular) could study for a degree without travelling to Scotland or continental Europe. (external link)
		Michael Farady succeeded Humphry Davy in the chair of Chemistry at the Royal Institution. He published the first edition of Chemical Manipulation

1828	John Stuart Mill established contacts with Saint-Simonians at the London Debating Society.
	Insanity the scourge of God
1829	Thomas Babington Macaulay's review of James Mill's Essay on Government criticised it for using deduction rather than induction.
	John Stuart Mill read Comte for the first time.
	Robert Owen returned to England to find he is a guru of the labour movement.
May 1829	The British Association for Promoting Cooperative Knowledge founded in London.
1830
	Revolution in France.
	Swing Riots in England.
1830	The end of the Liverpool Tory Government (The only English government to last longer than Mrs. Thatcher's).
1830-1842	Auguste Comte's Cours de Philosophie Positive (6 volumes), published Postivism as Comte saw it.
1830	Royal Geographic Society founded. In 1831 it incorporated the African Society, which had been founded in 1788. From 1830 to 1840 it met in the rooms of the Horticultural Society. The National Geographic Society of the United States was founded in 1888.
1831
	James Clark Ross reached the magnetic north pole.
Monday 30.5.1831: Fourth British Census	Population of England and Wales: 13,897,000; Scotland: 2,364,000
September 1831	British Association for the Advancement of Science founded. A brief (pdf) history on the British Association's website implies that an objective was to make science more open, and less elitist. The focus of the Association's activities was its Annual Meeting "which was an important forum for major scientific announcements and debate".
	The Spirit of the Age
1831	Georg Friedrich Hegel, the philosopher of history as the development of ideas, died in Germany.
	Hegel on the French Revolution
	German "idealism" and French "positivism" provided English speakers with alternative approaches to social science to utilitarianism.
	John Stuart Mill's articles on the Spirit of the Age (1831) showed the influence of Saint-Simon in his explanation of the way different ideas fit different periods of history. Mill was a utilitarian arguing that there is a cultural difference in what gives pleasure. He adapted utilitarianism to the philosophy of history.
	John Stuart Mill, Saint Simon and the origins of sociology
	Thomas Carlyle argued against utilitarianism in a fiction called Sartor Resartus (Latin for "clothes maker repaired"), which he wrote in 1831 (published later). This argued for a social science based on the analysis of symbols. Clothes are typical social symbols. We are naturally naked, but in society we use clothes to convey meaning to one another. Although the movement of planets may be described on the model of a machine, Carlyle said social science requires the analysis of meanings. Religion had provided this, but, like old clothes, it no longer fits. The times require new clothes. Utilitarianism will not do, because it removes the significance of symbolic meanings, reducing them all to degrees of pain and pleasure in an effort to imitate the machine model used by physics.
1832
	In 1832 Whig Government passed a Parliamentary Reform Act. This did not add many voters, but it spread the vote more evenly over the country. There was a marked shift in the balance of power from the landed aristocracy to the urban middle classes.
	Jeremy Bentham died. He left his body to medical science and you can still visit his corpse at the University of London.
	Royal Commission on the Poor Laws appointed. It reported in 1834
1833
August 1833 Emancipation of Slaves	The British Parliament passed an Act prohibiting slavery in British colonies. This Act came into force on Friday 1.8.1834, which was treated as a day of celebration by the people of Britain. As in France in 1794, the common people of the slave-owning country identified with the freedom of the slaves. This is how the novel John Halifax, Gentleman (D.M. Craik, 1856) described the celebrations: "what a soft, gray, summer morning it was, and how it broke out into brightness; how everywhere bells were ringing, club fraternities walking with bands and banners, school-children having feasts and work-people holidays."
	Slave owners and compensation
	Statistical Societies formed
	Members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, meeting at Cambridge in the summer of 1833, formed a statistical section.
	Manchester Statistical Society was established before the end of 1833.
1834
	The Statistical Society of London, which had been projected at Cambridge, was established in the spring of 1834, and "since that time the pursuit of this science has extended very rapidly". Journal of the Statistical Society of London, Vol.1, no.1 May 1838 p.4
1834 POOR LAW
1834 Poor Law Amendment Act	By this Act a Poor Law Commission was created to regulate the poor law centrally. Under its influence local authorities were encourage to build workhouses and to refuse poor people any welfare payments unless they left their home and lived in the workhouse. The Act was hated by the working class who called workhouses the English "Bastilles". To erect some workhouses the government had to provide an army guard. Malthusianism was blamed for the New Poor Law. So evil were its motives thought to be that many thought they would be poisoned in the workhouse to control population.

Time Period	Event
1835 The first volume of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America published in French	The second volume was published in 1840. John Stuart Mill wrote a review in The Edinburgh Review, vol 72, 1840. Tocqueville's Recollections were written in 1850/1851. His The Ancient Regime and the French Revolution was published in 1856. He died in 1859 Quetelet published his conception of the qualities of an average person as the central values of measurements grouped in "curve of possibility" - which we now call a "normal curve". This bell shaped picture drawn by Quetelet illustrates a distribution according to laws of probability. Quetelet showed that the distribution of naturally occurring features, such as the heights of adult men, approximated to the same shape. So, there would be very few very short men (left), large numbers of medium height men (around the central axis) and very few very tall men. Hidden in this picture was the possibility of measuring normality and abnormality (deviance) "scientifically". This external link illustrates the relation between the normal curve and probability.
1836	James Mill died
1837 Poor Law Commission	Poor Law Commission decides to extend the law to the north. Opposition spread faster than the Commissioners. An Anti-Poor law campaign and a campaign to control factory-working hours merged with the campaign for the Charter. The Charter called for a vote for every adult male. Chartists believed that if the working class could gain control of Parliament they would gain control of the welfare system and of the economy. Tied to the Charter was a plan to bring it about. A large demonstration would present a monster petition to Parliament asking that all men should have a vote. They would wait outside Parliament and when the petition was rejected they would declare themselves a National Convention -a kind of People's Parliament which would take over from the official Parliament - To enforce their will they would call a sacred month or national strike of the working classes. The use of the word "Convention" was seen as deliberate reference to the French Revolution. The idea of the "sacred month" was common amongst the Owenites. Aborigines' Protection Society (London) founded in the aftermath of British emancipation of slaves. The Ethnological Society of London was founded in 1843
1838	In volume four of Cours de Philosophie Positive, Auguste Comte coined the word Sociology. In October 1838, Charles Darwin read Malthus on Population. This eventually led to his theory of evolution by natural selection.
Hungry Forties	The Hungry Forties; life under the Bread Tax was the title chosen by Jane Unwin, in 1904, for a collection of documents from the 1840s. The term caught on as the British labour movement of the early twentieth century recounted to itself the struggles of its predecessors, and British communists studied the Communist Manifesto and tried to relate it to the decade that gave birth to it. The "hungry forties", when a large part of the Irish peasantry starved to death and the condition of the English workers was also miserable, had a strong effect on the ideas about society of people of many different political persuasions. But the date 1840 is artificial, the period really begins in the 1830s. The 1830s and 1840s were a period of rapid industrial development, social distress and the emergence of open class conflict. A period when Britain came nearer to revolution than at any other time in recent history. It was also a period when people were thinking about how society is structured and how society changes. There was a great deal of political and theoretical discussion, not only about class, but also about how we should think about men, women and children and their position in society.
July 1840 First presentation of the Charter to Parliament.	December 1840 An article by Lord Ashley in the Tory Quarterly Review, discussed the employment of children in factories, and argued that society and the family in Britain were being destroyed by the industrial revolution. The way to restore a healthy society was for the rich to concern themselves with the welfare of the poor.
1841 Thomas Wakley's alternative poor law	Sunday 6.6.1841/Monday 7.6.1841: Fifth British Census This recorded names for the first time. People over 15 years old had their age recorded to the lowest term of five. The part of the country a person was born in was recorded. For the first time, householders could complete their own forms if they were able to. Population of England and Wales: 15,914,000; Scotland: 2,620,000
1842 No Gloomier Year	Poems by Alfred Tennyson published. One that was soon popular (Locksley Hall), celebrates science and the march of mind and industry as the spirit of the age in Europe and contrasts it with the savagery of dusky races. (The words are Tennyson's, not mine). "Here about the beach I wander'd, nourishing a youth sublime With the fairy tales of science, and the long result of Time; When I dipt into the future far as human eye could see; Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be - In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind. Tennyson dreams of having children with a "savage woman" so that they are supple-sinewed, leaping brooks rather than poring over books, but recoils. "I the heir of all the ages, in the foremost files of time - Let the people spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change. Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." Compare with Barry Cornwall The poet recognizes mind in women as well as men: "Women is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match'd with mine are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine". In 1847 Tennyson published a poem in which a royal princess founds a women's university. She falls from the chastity of thought when she falls in love, but the dominant image is that European men and women are both to be engaged in the adventures of science and thought. But the march of mind and the march of hunger are in competition. In the immediate present "all things here are out of joint, science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from point to point: Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher". (Quotations all from Locksley Hall)
May 1842	Second presentation of the Charter to Parliament.
July 6 1842	Lord Ashley introduced a bill intended to ban women and children from working in mines.
October 8 1842	Coal Mines Act became law.
Summer 1842	Plug riots. English workers, striking for the Charter, roamed the Midlands and North of England setting light to rich men's houses and pulling out the plugs of factory boilers. Parliament thought that the revolution was upon them.
February 1843	Ethnological Society of London founded by members of the Aborigines' Protection Society. To be "a center and depository for the collection and systematization of all observations made on human races". Divided over racialist issues from early days, it split into an Ethnological Society and an Anthropological Society in 1863. Merging in 1870, it became The Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in 1871. (Royal from 1907). Now The Royal Anthropological Institute (Link goes directly to its website) Spring 1843 A System of Logic, by John Stuart Mill, published. Mill defended deductive theory against induction, and induction against deduction, arguing that science needs both. He suggested how psychology (the study of mind) could become a science of experiment and observation, and discussed the foundations of a science of society (sociology). The argumant of the book is outlined under John Stuart Mill defends deductive theory in Social Science History, chapter one: John Stuart Mill and his problems with Francis Bacon
1844 The Claims of Labour	An Essay on the Duties of the Employers to the Employed, published anonymously, argues for a new order of society based on benevolence of employers towards the employed.
1845	Ashley's Acts establish publicly regulated lunatic asylums in every part of England and Wales John Stuart Mill's review of The Claims of Labour in the Edinburgh Review argues that a new moral order based on benevolence would undermine the independence and self- determination of working class people
Summer 1845	Engels: The Condition of the Working Class in England
October 1845	Beginning of the Great Famine in Ireland. Potato blight destroyed three-quarters of the crop.
1846 Repeal of the Corn Laws	In Dickens' 1838 satire on the Poor Law, Oliver Twist caused a sensation by asking for more food. In 1846 it seemed the satire had come true. It was revealed that in Andover Workhouse the residents were so hungry that they fought over rotten bones. The scandal of Andover led to the replacement of the Poor Law Commissioners, in 1847, by a Poor Law Board responsible directly to Parliament and, under new management, the poor law became the centre of a remarkably extensive pauper welfare state. Poor law hospitals laid the foundations for the National Health Service - and many are still in use. Winter 1846/1847: John Stuart Mill laid aside work on the Principles of Political Economy to campaign for land reform in Ireland.
July 1847 Poem Song of the Famine in Dublin University Magazine	Mrs Alexander's Hymns for Little Children, first published in 1848, launched All Things Bright and Beautiful, in which the natural and social orders are praised as the creation of God: The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, He made them, high or lowly, And ordered their estate. This was written in Ireland. See also the speech of Shaftesbury to the Social Science Congress in 1858.
1848 Revolutions	John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy published with a chapter drafted by Harriet Taylor on the self- determination of the labouring classes. The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels published in German. Saint-Simon had argued that history is moved between different stages by the rise of new classes. Marx and Engels argued that all history is class conflict. The 1848 manifesto was a redraft by Marx of an 1847 draft by Engels called the Principles of Communism, See also 1806 1822 1828 1829 1835 1843 1845 1859 On Liberty 1861 Representative Government 1869 Subjection of Women 1880 Freud and J.S. Mill Mill and Taylor on the future of the labouring classes Mill and Taylor on Freedom as Self Development Mill and Taylor weblinks See also 1846: German Ideology 1859: Marx explains how his political economic theories developed. 1884 Engels' Origin The Communist Manifesto Principles of Communism
10 April 1848	Chartists gathered on Kennington Common to prepare for a march to Parliament. The marchers were fewer than expected and the presentation of the third, and final, petition ended peacefully. Elsewhere in Europe 1848 was a year of revolutions. In France the monarchy collapsed and the Second Republic was established. In the German Confederation there were many revolts for constitutional government and a national parliament.
1849	Marx settled in London as a political refugee. From 1849 Engels worked in his father's business in Manchester and supported Marx financially.
December 1850	Napoleon 3rd (President) dissolved the French Assembly and restored universal male suffrage. His total power was then approved by plebiscite.
1851 Lord Ashley became the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury	Sunday 30.3.1851/Monday 31.3.1851: Sixth British Census From 1851 the exact ages and birthplaces were given, together with marital status and relationship to the householder. The number of blind, deaf and dumb was noted. In 1851 there was a special census of church congregations and accommodation. Population of England and Wales: 17,928,000; Scotland: 2,889,000
30.5.1851	Meeting to establish the Central Co-operative Agency, 76 Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. Founder Edward Vansittart Neale and Thomas Hughes one of the contributors
21.4.1851	Marriage of John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor
July 1851	Harriet Taylor's article Enfranchisement of Women in The Westminster Review
1853	Karl Knies's Political Economy from the Historical Point of View published in German and Harriet Martineau's English translation of Auguste Comte , published. Geoff Bunn's A Chronology of Psychology in Britain 1853-1987 begins with J.D. Morrell's (1816-1891) Elements of Psychology as "the first book published in England to be called psychology. (Hearnshaw, 1964: 21)" External links: html of chronology and references and selective bibliography
1855	Herbert Spencer's Social Statics and the first edition of his Principles of Psychology published
1856	Sigmund Freud (author of Interpretation of Dreams) born
1857	National Association for the Promotion of Social Science founded. This held annual Congresses to discuss issues of social reform and published its proceedings. Isa Craig, a working Scottish poet from Scotland was the secretary until her marriage in 1866. Henry (Lord) Brougham and Ashley Cooper, the Earl of Shaftesbury, were frequent leaders of the Congresses. Robert Owen contributed five papers to the first Congress and spoke at the second. In 1866, with Shaftesbury presiding, its topics included the best means of preventing infanticide, education of various groups of working class children and control of their work, public health and housing. The last congress was held in Birmingham in 1884. The Association dissolved itself in 1886
5.9.1857	Auguste Comte died
1858	Emile Durkheim born
3.11.1858	Death of Harriet Taylor - buried in Avignon
17.11.1858	Death of Robert Owen
1859	John Stuart Mill's On Liberty published (extracts)
November 1859	Charles Darwin's Origin of Species published. The theory that species develop from another through a long process of evolution became credible when Darwin showed how it could happen. He argued that there was a natural selection of naturally occurring variations through the survival of those best adapted to their circumstances. Social theorists drew different conclusions for society from Darwin's biological ideas. Marx and Engels welcomed the theory because it had a material base and provided a developmental theory for the natural world to match theirs for society. Herbert Spencer, who had developed evolutionary theory independently of Darwin, saw competition as the mechanism through which the fittest members of society are selected. The theory that the fittest should be selected through struggle is known as "Social Darwinism". It has been used by Spencer and his followers to support an unregulated market. Benjamin Kidd, however, argued that the struggle is between societies, and that the strength of a society depends largely on the collective support its members give one another. Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf argued human history is a struggle for survival between biological races of human beings. By the early 20th century, social darwinist theories had become a common "scientific" analysis of society. The joint shocks of the second world war and the revelation of attempted race extermination were followed by a reconstruction of European culture that marginalised such theories.
April 21 1864	Max Weber born Herbert Spencer's Principles of Biology published First International Workingmen's Association established by French and English Labour leaders in London (dissolved 1876). Marx drew up its Inaugural Address - a much more moderate document than the Communist Manifesto
1865	John Stuart Mill's Auguste Comte and Positivism published
1865 to 1868	John Stuart Mill was Liberal Member of Parliament for Westminster. In 1867 he made a speech on: "The Admission of Women to the Electoral Franchise".
1867	Representation of the People Act Votes for Town Workers
February 1 1867	J.S.Mill gave his Inaugural Address as Rector of St. Andrews University, Scotland, in which he reviewed the whole scope of education, discussing the value of what we now call the Humanities, Mathematics, Natural Science and Social Science. He spoke in favour of psychology as a discipline and drew attention to the role of Scottish thinkers in this area.
1867	Metropolitan Asylums Board
March 27 1867	Marx completed the manuscript of Das Kapital on 27.3.1867. At 2am in the morning of 16.8.1867 he wrote to Engels the he had "just finished correcting the last sheet (49th) of the book" and thanked Engels for enabling him to complete the "immense labour" of the book. In the third week of September 1867: Volume I of Das Kapital was published in a print run of 1,000 in Hamburg. It was not translated into English until 1887
1869	John Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women published. (Written in 1861) Click here for extracts from The Subjection of Women, linked to notes and quotes to help you read it. Mill and Taylor web link
YEAR		EVENT
1869		the "Eisenach Party" (SAP) [South German Party] was founded by Marx's German followers.
1870-1871		Franco-Prussian war. The leaders of the Eisenach Party were imprisoned for opposing the war.
18.1.1871		a German Empire was proclaimed at Versailles with Wilhelm 1st as Emperor and Bismarck as Imperial Chancellor. German Unification.
1971		Paris Commune (Short lived proletarian republic) German academic psychiatry Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man published
Sunday 2.4.1871/Monday 3.4.1871		Eighth British Census
From 1871		the census for England and Wales was taken separately from that for Scotland, but on the same date. Population of England and Wales: 22,712,000; Scotland: 3,360,000
1869		"Eisenach Party" (SAP) [South German Party] was founded by Marx's German followers.
1870-1871 Franco-Prussian war.		The leaders of the Eisenach Party were imprisoned for opposing the war. On 18.1.1871 a German Empire was proclaimed at Versailles with Wilhelm 1st as Emperor and Bismarck as Imperial Chancellor. German Unification.
1871		Paris Commune (Short lived proletarian republic)
		German academic psychiatry
		Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man published
		Sunday 2.4.1871/Monday 3.4.1871: Eighth British Census
From 1871		The census for England and Wales was taken separately from that for Scotland, but on the same date. Population of England and Wales: 22,712,000; Scotland: 3,360,000 The 1871 to 1911 censuses asked if the person was blind, deaf or dumb, "imbecile or idiot" or "lunatic". (See 1870 Act)
1872		Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals published. Darwin's study of body language provided a starting point for symbolic interaction sociology. Whist Darwin focused on the expression of emotions, George Herbert Mead interpreted body language as a system of communication (the conversation of gestures) that preceded and allowed the development of symbols and conscious reflection.
1873 John Stuart Mill		Died in Avignon and buried with Harriet. His Autobiography was published after his death.
		Herbert Spencer's The Study of Sociology
1875 German social democrats (ADAV and SAP) merged on the basis of The Gotha Programme.		This was more Lassallean than Marxist. Marx sent a private criticism and said that he would have to dissociate himself, but he did not - because the press perceived the Gotha Programme as "communist". The party became the SDP in 1890. From 1878 to 1890 the Anti-socialist law prohibited socialist societies, assemblies and pamphlets. But the party was still able to take part in Reichstag elections - where it increased its representation in the (powerless) German national parliament.
1876		First edition of Volume One of Herbert Spencer's The Principles of Sociology
1877: Georg Cantor (1845-1918) became Professor of Mathematics at Halle.		He laid the foundations of modern set theory, leading to the heady possibility that all rational human thought can be rationally understood by human thought - A possibility that Bertrand Russell, to his own annoyance, proved unproven. In his autobiography, Russell reproduces a letter to him from Cantor saying "dear Colleague... I am a Baconian...and am quite an adversary of Old Kant..."
		Morgan's Ancient Society published
1879		In Leipzig, Wilhelm Wundt set up the world's first laboratory of experimental psychology.
		Albert Einstein born
1880		The young Freud translated works by John Stuart Mill into German. In later comments, Freud argued that there are fundamental differences between men and women that Mill had not recognised. This contrast between Mill and Freud is reflected in late 20th century feminist thought in the contrast between those feminists who (like Wollstonecraft and Mill) perceive mind as genderless, and those who believe the male and female minds are different.
		Sunday 3.4.1881/Monday 4.4.1881: Ninth British Census Population of England and Wales: 25,974,000; Scotland: 3,736,000
1883 Karl Marx died.		At his death, a virtually unknown author in the English speaking world.
1883-1891		Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra
1884		Votes for Country Workers
		Engels: The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State developed by Engels from notes by Marx. The Origin provides an overview of their historical materialism as they left it. Working on the theories of Morgan, they incorporate "Reproduction" into the material base, alongside "Production"
		At the final meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, Edward Vansittart Neale, a cooperator, read a paper "What is the social condition of the working classes in 1884 as compared with 1857, when the first meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science was held in Birmingham; and in what way can the working classes best utilise their savings?"
1885		Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury died.
1885-1886		Durkheim in Germany studying German social research and ethical speculation
		October 1885 to February 1886 Freud in France studying nervous diseases under Charcot, who had developed hypnosis as a treatment for hysteria. His experiences were an important stage in moving from mapping the human brain and nervous system to mapping the human mind.
		1887 In 1887 a lectureship of social science was created for Durkheim at the University of Bordeaux.
Karl Marx's Capital (1867)		Translated by Samuel Moore & E. Aveling, published by F. Engels, London. Engels edited the translation and wrote a preface. The same year: F. Engels. The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844, translated by F. K. Wischnewetzky, was published in New York and reprinted in London. Engels added an appendix on "The Working Class Movement in America". Samuel Moore's translation of The Communist Manifesto was published early in 1888.
1889		Charles Booth's Life and Labour of the People of London was published in 17 volumes between 1889 and 1902. Charles Booth (1840-1916), a statistician, spent eighteen years preparing this survey. Amongst those who helped him was his cousin, Beatrice Potter Webb.
1890		brain postmortems and the nervous base of insanity Ivan Pavolv (1849-1936) appointed professor at St Petersburg Military- Medical Academy, Russia, where he established a laboratory observing the digestion of live animals through a hole in the stomach. He won the Nobel Prize for physiology in 1904.
1892		Alfred Marshall's Principles of Economics. An introductory volume published. His Economics of Industry was published in 1892. Marshall was "Professor of Political Economy" at Cambridge University until 1908

	William Booth's Darkest England and the Way Out published. William Booth (1829-1912) was the founder of the Salvation Army, an evangelistic Christian organisation with ideas about the redemption of society. He should not be confused with Charles Booth.
	It is unusual for followers of Karl Marx to speculate about what life will be like after a communist revolution. This, however, is what William Morris did in his 1890 dream novel News from Nowhere
	Edwin Chadwick died
	The right of a husband to use force against his wife was first denied by the English courts in 1891.
	Sunday 5.6.1891/Monday 6.6.1891: Tenth British Census Population of England and Wales: 29,003,000; Scotland: 4,026,000
1892	Durkheim's latin thesis on Montesquieu.
1893	In Division of Labour in Society, Durkheim tried to show that societies are real and that the reality of societies lies in something that he calls solidarity. He also said punishing crime is a way a society defines the way it thinks, reinforcing its solidarity
1894	In Germany, Weber became Professor of Economics at Freiburg University in place of Karl Knies.
	In America George Herbert Mead became a lecturer at Chicago University where, before his death in 1931, he developed theories that showed how social interaction by means of symbols could have developed from the conversation of gestures of animals.
	Benjamin Kidd's Social Evolution (See Darwin) This book contained the idea that "irrational" religion is needed by societies to hold them together. Societies require the subordination of individual self-interest to the collective welfare, and the motivation for this is provided by religion.
1895	Engels died.
	Weber's inaugural address at Freiburg, The National State and Economic Policy, - a confession of belief in imperialist realpolitik and the House of Hohenzollern.
	In Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim argued that if we want to be sociologists we should "treat social facts as things". (Extracts) He also argued that crime is necessary and normal for society.
	Fabians found The London School of Economics and Political Science, which held its first classes in October 1895. It became a major centre for the social sciences in England. By employing staff of diverse political persuasions, it has been as often the centre for conservative as for radical thought.
1896	Weber became Professor at the University of Heidelberg
	Lev Semenovich Vygotsky born
1897	Durkheim's Suicide seeks to show that society is so real that it controls acts as (apparently) individual as suicide.
	Weber's father's death was followed by Weber's mental breakdown.
	F. Tonnies' Der Nietzsche-Kultus. Eine Kritik. Leipzig. An extremely successful book on Nietzsche that influenced Weber.
20th Century	1900 Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. 1880 Freud and John Stuart Mill 1885 Freud and Charcot 1913 Totem and Taboo 1938 Outlining Psychoanalysis Freud and society
	Sunday 31.3.1901/Monday 1.4.1901: Eleventh British Census Population of England and Wales: 32,612,000; Scotland: 4,479,000

	1901 to 1902 Durkheim's last Sociology lectures at Bordeaux were on the history of sociology. All that survives of them is his article on Rousseau's Social Contract. This argued that Rousseau bridges the gap between state of nature theory and sociology
	Enrico Ferri's The Positive School of Criminology
	24.10.1901: The Psychological Society founded. It was renamed the British Psychological Society in 1906.
1902	Durkheim Professor of the Science of Education at the Sorbonne.
	Talcott Parsons born
1903	November 1903 Sociological Society formed at the London School of Economics. The original society had an international membership. The society sought to bring together, for debate, all with a scientific approach to society and social issues. Major issues in its early years included selective breeeding, town planning and welfare. See David Evans (1986) in "Le Play House and the Regional Survey Movement in British Sociology 1920 - 1955" for subsequent developments.
1904	In his Nobel Prize address, Pavlov introduced the idea of the conditioned reflex. 20th Century Words records the term in English use from 1906. Pavlov's works appeared in English in 1926
1904/1905	Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first published in German
	Leonard Trelawney Hobhouse lectured at the LSE from 1904 to 1929. He became the first Professor of Sociology in a British University in 1907. Ronald Fletcher says of him that, with the exception of Talcott Parsons: "Hobhouse was probably the last scholar to accomplish an entire 'system' of sociology with success" Many of his works, such as Morals in Evolution (1906), Development and Purpose (1913) and Mind in Evolution (1915) were about the evolution of societies.
1905	Eugenics: its definition, scope and aims by Francis Galton.
1907	New terms recorded: racialism (1907), race relations (1911), racialist (1917), racist (1932), racism (1935). See Sorokin (1928) on the racialist branch of the biological school of sociology
1908	The 1908 Old Age Pensions Act was brought in after a long campaign to remove older people from the punitive effects of the Victorian Poor Law. It provided people over 70 with a pension of 5/- a week.
1910	1910-1914 Weber's Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and Society) written. It included Structures of Power, Class, Status, Party and Bureaucracy.
	Principia Mathematica by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell published in two volumes by Cambridge University Press in 1910 and 1913. This attempts to demonstrate that mathematics is a development of logic: A way of grouping the world into sets and showing what will be included in, and what excluded from particular sets and how the sets relate to one another. It was an element in what Russell called the "dethronement of mathematics" from its special status as a source of knowledge in reason rather than empirical observation. Mathematics, Russell wrote "is not a-priori knowledge". "It is, in fact, merely verbal knowledge. 3 means 2 + 1 and 4 means 3 + 1. Hence it follows (though the proof is long) that 4 means the same as 2 + 2"
	Sunday 2.4.1911/Monday 3.4.1911: Twelfth British Census Population of England and Wales: 36,136,000; Scotland: 4,751,000
1912	In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim argues that human beings have always had a knowledge of the fundamental reality of their societies. This knowledge, however, was not, previously, scientific, but religious. (See extracts and the dance of life)
1913	Mental Deficiency Act and The Board of Control
1913-1914	Freud's Totem and Taboo applies his psychoanalytic theories to anthropology and the prehistory of human beings.
FIRST WORLD WAR August 1914:	First world War started
1916	Vilfredo Pareto's Trattato di Sociologia generale published in two volumes, Florence. These were translated into French in 1917 and 1919. Parsons used the French edition. An English translation, The Mind and Society, was not published until 1935. Like Weber and Parsons, Pareto was an economist attempting to create a social model of human action that included more than the rational ("utilitarian", as Parsons' called it) search for economic goods.
1917	Durkheim died
	Baliktsioglou Christos writes: The Russian Revolution started. This has a wide scientific interest as it was guided by the theories of Karl Marx. Moreover, it is related to the development of the labour movements and revolutions around the world. It's the same the whole world over, Isn't it a blooming shame? It's the rich what gets the pleasure, It's the poor what gets the blame. Chorus of anonymous song that British soldiers sang in the trenches about the seduction and suicide of a girl who was poor, but honest.
1918	At Brest-Litovsk, Leon Trotsky, commander of the Soviet Red Army, negotiated peace with Germany, withdrawing Russia from the war. In the course of negotiations, on 14.1.1918, German General Hoffmann complained that the soviet government was supported by force. Trotsky replied that "in a society based on classes every government rests on force. The only difference was that General Hoffmann applied repression to protect big property-owners, whereas we did it in defense of the workers". (From Trotsky's acoount - External Link). Later in 1918, Max Weber quoted Trotsky in a very long lecture given at Munich University. (Published 1919 as Politics as a Vocation). This contained Weber's definition of the modern state Britain: Votes for men over 21, women over 30 Albert Einstein's Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (in German) translated into English 1920
9.12.1918 Armistice signed	Firing stopped on all fronts.
1919	The war had a secularising influence. Religious organisation lost influence. This is reflected in the near collapse of the Junior Civil Service Christian Union.
15.10.1919	Preface to The ABC of Communism by N. Buharin and E. Preobrazhensky describes it is "an elementary textbook of communist knowledge" to be "followed in the party schools" and "used for independent study by every worker or peasant who desires to acquaint himself with the party program."
1919	Partito Nazionale Fascisto was formed in Italy. The fascisti controlled Italy from 1922 to 1943. They opposed liberalism and communism, symbolising their social order by the ancient Roman fasces - the bundle of sticks that bound together cannot be snapped. The fascists donated to social theory the concepts of fascism and corporatism. Unlike National Socialism (also described as fascist), Italian fascism was not virulently anti-semitic or racist.
1920	The rise of logical positivism Logical positivists sought to divide the world of ideas into the meaningful (science) and the meaningless (metaphysics). They held that "a statement has a meaning if and only if the fact that it is true makes a verifiable difference" (M. Schlick 1932). Only two types of knowledge were accepted: logic (which had to include mathematics) and empirical knowledge. Lenin to the eighth congress: "Communism equals the power of the Soviets plus electrification of the whole country" (Compare Morris on force) H.G. Wells' The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind published. George Bernard Shaw suggested (1932) that this and "the host of imitations and supplements that its huge success has called into existence" was the modern alternative the Genesis as an explanation of who we are and where we come from.
April 1920	Le Play House, 65 Belgrave Road, Westminster, opened as a home for the Sociological Society, which had been based at the London School of Economics.
June 1920	Weber died of pneumonia [aged 56]
Sunday 19.6.1921/ Monday 20.6.1921	Population of England and Wales: 37,932,000; Scotland: 4,882,000 1922 Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1923 Karl Korsch published (in German) Marxism and Philosophy and Lucaks History and Class Consciousness
1923 First outside broadcast	On 18.1.1923 The Postmaster-General granted the British Broadcasting Company a licence to broadcast.
1924	Vladimir Lenin died. Talcott Parsons studied as a post-graduate at London School of Economics from 1924 to 1925. Lecturers at the time included Harold Laski, R.H. Tawney, Morris Ginsberg, L.T. Hobhouse and Bronislaw Malinowski. This was followed by a year at the University of Heidelberg, in Germany, where he studied for a doctorate in The Concept of Capitalism in recent German Literature and read, amongst others, the works of Marx, Sombart and Weber.
1925	First volume of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf argued human history is a struggle for survival between biological races of human beings. Hitler's social theories drew on mainstream sociology, as can be seen by comparing them with the range of theories covered by Pitirim Sorokin. The forged Protocols apart, most elements of Hitler's theory can be found. Lucien Levy-Bruhl (1857-1939), Paul Rivet (1876-1958) and Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) created the Institut d'Ethnologie. Rivet and Mauss were the secretary-generals.
1926	Pavlov, Conditioned Reflexes: An investigation of the physiological activity of the cerebral cortex Translated from Russian into English and edited by G. V. Anrep, published by Oxford University Press 4.5.1926 The British general strike began. Newspapers (apart from one the Government ran) disappeared, but the BBC broadcast five news bulletins daily. "It is not easy to estimate what would have been the effect of the strike if there had been no such thing as wireless communication". (Radio Time) Creation of the UK General Electricity Board, followed by the construction of the National Grid for Electricity, enabling industry to move off the coalfields. (Paul Lyons on cooperation in the electricity industry See Morris on force)
1927	Ronald Laing born Sir Alexander Morris Carr-Saunders (1886-1966) and David Caradog Jones A survey of the social structure of England & Wales as illustrated by statistics Carr-Saunders published The Population Problem. A Study in Human Evolution (1922); Report on Juvenile Employment in Liverpool (1924); Population (1924); Eugenics (1926); Professions: Their Organisation and Place in Society (1928); Standing-Room Only: A Study in Population (BBC Talk) (1930); A Century of Pauperism (1934). He contributed to We Europeans: a survey of 'racial' problems by Julian Huxley and A.C. Haddon (1935) Eugenics in the light of population trends (The Galton lecture to the Eugenics Society 16.2.1935) and similar works. On 20.5.1842 he gave the 12th L.T. Hobhouse memorial lecture in Cambridge on The biological basis of human nature.
1928	Contemporary Sociological Theories by Pitirim Sorokin published in USA. Sorokin, a Russian, taught in the sociology department of Minnesota, USA. He followed the German theorists, George Simmel (1858-1918) and Ferdinand Tönnies (1885-1936) in arguing that sociology should be about the forms of social interaction. He also claimed that it was only valuable as a science in as far as it produced empirical results. His book helped to set the tone for USA Sociology. He established the sociology department at Harvard University in 1931 and was succeeded by Talcott Parsons as head of the department in 1942. Robert King Merton (see crimtim) was one of his students.
1929 Our Baby - 180,000 copies - on idiocy	"Nature is on the side of obedience - It is proved that a definite stimulus produces a definite response" The Science of Life. A summary of contemporary knowledge about life and its possibilities by H. G. Wells, Julian Huxley and G. P. Wells published in three volumes by Amalgamated Press, 1929-1930. Jean Piaget (9.8.1896-1980): 1929 The Child's Conception of the World. 1932 The Moral Judgement of the Child. 1951 Dream and Imitation in Childhood. 1952 The Origins of Intelligence in Children. 1968 Structuralism
1930	Talcott Parsons' translation into English of Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Alfred Rosenberg's The Myth of the 20th Century provided a possible theoretical structure for the racialist doctrines of the Nazi (Nationalsozialist) party. To replace Christianity, Rosenberg suggested a story of a Nordic race that, through the German state, would subdue inferior races. According to this story, the aristocracy of France, at the time of the French revolution, was Nordic. The revolution was an uprising of inferiors who spread the doctrines of liberalism (freedom, equality and universal community). Liberalism developed into Marxism that produced the Russian revolution. The destiny of Germany was to combat the ideas of the French revolution, and to undo their effect. See Nazi theory. See also Nazi-Christian dialogue
1931 Death of George Herbert Mead.	After his death students published lectures and articles by him as Mind, Self and Society, from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (1934) His theories enabled people to analyze our minds and personalities (our "self") as something we actively create in symbolic interaction with others. Mead's theories were made popular by Goffman, and others, in the 1960s.
1932	Ivan Pavlov's Essay on the Physiological Concept of the Symptomatology of Hysteria
December 1932	George Bernard Shaw's The Adventures of The Black Girl in Her Search for God, designed and engraved by John Farleigh, went through (at least) four reprints in the month of publication. (See Shaw on Pavlov)
1933-1945 Hitler and the Nazi (Nationalsozialist) party in power in Germany.	The two German marxist parties were made illegal and liberal theories were opposed. Social theorists who had built ideas of human progress on the triumph of reason and democracy were thrown into intellectual crisis by the popular support for the Nazi's. This led to the creation of new social theories, sometimes by synthesising the ideas of Marx and Freud. The Nazi persecution of German (and other) Jews led to many German intellectuals emigrating, and founding new academic traditions of social science in Britain, the United States, or elsewhere. See Nazi theory
1934	Karl Popper's Logik der Forschung (The Logic of Scientific Discovery) published. (See review and external link) Popper accepted much of the programme of logical positivism, but argued that verification of general scientific statements, in the sense of proving them true by testing against experience, was not possible. Good and meaningful science would seek to draw out consequences from its theories which could prove them false. A meaningful or scientific theory is one constructed to make predictions about the empirical world which could prove it wrong. Voluntary Sterilisation Lev Semenovich Vygotsky died
June 1935	A meadow at Granchester: Alan Turing tried to envisage a machine that would decide the provability of any mathematical assertion presented to it. His paper "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" (January 1937) laid the mathematical foundations for modern computers that can handle thought patterns much more complex than the arithmetic of Babbage's machines. A "computable number" is any number that can be defined by some rule. So pi () is a computable number even though it can never be calculated. Turing's imaginary machines linked the world of abstract symbols to the material world of metal and glass. Valves and then silicon chips would later sort out thought at speeds beyond the speed of thought. "On the Concept of Function in Social Science" (external link to extract) by Radcliffe-Brown. published in American Anthropologist 37: pages 394- 402. It was reprinted his 1952 collection of essays Structure and Function in Primitive Society See Functionalism. Also look at the entry for Malinowski on the LSE History site
6.1.1936	Heavy rain and flooding in England 20.1.1936 Death of George 5th announced by John Reith on the BBC outside normal radio news hours. February 1936 First British comic (Mickey Mouse Weekly) in full colour photogravure. 1.3.1936 Edward 8th broadcast his first message to the Empire. 8.3.1936 German troops reoccupied Rhineland. First week July The Radio Times "Television Number" was restricted to London: In range of the transmissions from Alexandra Palace which the 300 owners of private sets could receive. 18.7.1936 Start of Spanish Civil War. 1.8.1936: Berlin Olympic Games opened by Hitler. Television pictures were available to the Berlin public in television parlours. Nazi's and Christians 4.10.1936 Battle of Cable Street when Oswald Mosley (British Fascist) was prevented from marching through the East End. 5.10.1936 Start of Jarrow March. Unemployed led by Ellen Wilkinson MP walked 280 miles from Jarrow to London. It was reported sympathetically on Cinema Newsreels. 30.11.1936 Crystal Palace burnt down. Baird had all his television equipment stored here. Friday 11.12.1936 Edward 8th's abdication broadcast from Windsor Castle. Accession of George 6th (who stuttered). Christmas 1936 No King's Christmas broadcast.
1937 Talcott Parsons The Structure of Social Action	A study in social theory with special reference to a group of recent European writers. Primarily an integration of the work of Marshall, Pareto, Durkheim and Weber to create a general theory (the action frame of reference) in which socially directed actions of individuals are integrated by the common value system of the society. Herbert Blumer coined the term symbolic interactionist for theories developed from Mead. 12.5.1937 Coronation of George 6th televised. Seen on the 300 sets then existing around London. Musée de l'Homme founded in Paris. Its Director, Paul Rivet, was a prominent anti-fascist.
1938	In June 1938 Sigmund Freud and his family fled their home in Vienna to escape the Nazis's. They settled in Hampstead, London, where Freud wrote a summary of his theory, An Outline of Psychoanalysis. He died in September 1939.
1939	"There had been an Anderson shelter in the garden since early spring" July 1939: mercy killings of the insane SECOND WORLD WAR 1939-1945 Second World War Friday 1.9.1939 Germany invaded Poland - A panic exit from London Saturday 2.9.1939 Conscription of UK men between 18 and 41 Sunday 3.9.1939 Britain declared war on Germany
1940’s	The Asylum Inheritance
1942 Behemoth	The Structure and Practice of National Socialism by Franz Neumann, attempted a rational analysis of Nazi (Nationalsozialist) ideas and its social system. Neumann wrote from a position sympathetic to both liberalism and marxism. His friend, Herbert Marcuse, in Reason and Revolution. Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (1941) argued the case for a critical social theory founded on reason, concluding with a chapter on "National Socialism versus Hegel". In The Fear of Freedom, Erich Fromm attempted a critical integration of Marx, Freud and Durkheim to explain National Socialism.
1943 Jean Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness	An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (English translation 1958) set out philosophical grounds for human responsibility, confronting claims the our actions are determined by our unconscious, by history or by our race. Sartre, and his colleague, Simone de Beauvoir, developed existentialist thought in a way that would provide new directions for both social theory and mental health theory in the 1960s. Prior to Satre, existentialism (in Nietzsche and Heidegger) was a philosophy associated with National Socialism rather than against it.
1944	Friedrich Hayek, in The Road to Serfdom, argued that the totalitarianism experienced in Nazi Germany was the end result of economic planning not the final stage of capitalism. The book provided a focus for a revival in free-market thinking that led (eventually) to Thatcherism. Hayek and freedom Roger Scruton born
Thursday 19.4.1945	Richard Dimbleby's (5 minute) report on entering Belsen broadcast by the BBC. People begin to believe what had happened in the holocaust. 8.5.1945 Allied victory in Europe. 6.8.1945 Atomic bomb first used against Japan. Hiroshima laid waste. 9.8.1945 Nagasaki destroyed by the second atomic bomb. 15.8.1945 End of second world war.

1945
24.10.1945		The United Nations founded
1945 - 1949		George Orwell's Animal Farm in 1945 was followed in 1949 by a book called Nineteen Eighty Four. Animal Farm pictured the defeat of communist ideals of equality and cooperation. "All animals are equal - But some are more equal than others". Nineteen Eighty Four pictured a future society of total surveillance where the official language is newspeak, devised to meet the propaganda needs of Ingsoc (English Socialism). "Do you know the newspeak word goodthinkful?"
1946
	First edition of Mary R. Beard's Woman as Force in History. A Study in Traditions and Realities published in USA. Completed in the Summer of 1945, it showed the recognition by communists, democrats and fascists that the support of women was needed for their cause and argued that women always had been a force in history, but one which social theorists had denied. (See Hidden from History)
	First edition of Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy
3.5.1946	Speech by Winston Churchill in Fulton, Missouri, USA: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent". The war-time alliance between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the United States of America was breaking down. The battle of cultures and long-distance arms (wars in other people's countries) from the late 1940s to the mid 1980s was called the "Cold War"
	La Société Psychoanalytique de Paris resumed activity after the war. By the 1950s it was falling out with one of its leading members: Jean Jacques Lacan
	UK National Health Service
1949
			Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex published in French. Translated into English in 1953. An existentialist, De Beauvoir believed that human beings are essentially self-determining and free. Her book explores why women are treated (and treat themselves) as "the other", as objects of male attention rather than self-determining beings.
			Robert King Merton's Social Theory and Social Structure. Towards the codification of theory and research published in United States. A revised and enlarged edition with the shorter title Social Theory and Social Structure was published in 1957, and appears to be the best known. Merton argued for middle range theories.
			January February 1949 Talcott Parson's gave the University Lectures in Sociology at the University of London. They formed a rough outline for his book The Social System
1951			British Sociological Association founded. A professional body based at London School of Economics, which soon replaced the Sociological Society, which decided to close in 1955.
			structural functional analysis
			Talcott Parsons' The Social System attempted to provided a model for sociology that views society as more than the sum of its individual members, whilst remaining consistent with American ideas of the importance of the individual sick role
Sunday 8.4.1951 Monday 9.4.1951			Fifteenth British Census Population of England and Wales: 43,815,000; Scotland: 5,102,000 The previous census was in 1931
1953			The Institute of Community Studies established in Bethnal Green, London, by Michael Young, Peter Willmott, Peter Townsend and Peter Marris. (See dictionary community). "Our main research focus in the Institute's early years was the smallest institution of all, the family in its nuclear and extended versions." (Peter Willmott 1995)

2.6.1953				Coronation of Elizabeth 2nd televised. The number of television licences doubled from 1.5 to 3 million in the run- up to the Coronation.
Autumn 1953				Jacques Lacan began seminars in Paris. His interpretation of Freud attracted participants from outside psychoanalysis.
1955				Albert Einstein died
1956				Karl Popper's article, Science: Conjectures and Refutations, argues that the origin of science is in imagination, and suggests falsification as the destructive empirical test of theories
				New Scientist magazine launched. A popular magazine for science and technology. New Society followed in 1962. New Scientist still thrives, New Society has withered away.
				USA: Robert Dahl's A Preface to Democratic Theory published.
1957				Family and Kinship in East London by Michael Young and Peter Willmott published (Institute of Community Studies). It became a Penguin paperback in 1962.
1957				Percy Report favours community care
1960
	Marshal McLuhan popularised the idea that developments in modern media are creating a global village.
	Books by Erving Goffman, published in the 1960s, showed how the symbolic interaction theories of George Herbert Mead can be used to analyze everyday life. They included The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), Asylums (1961), Encounters, Behavior in Public Places, Stigma (1963) and Interaction Ritual (1967).
	In France, Michel Foucault's Histoire de la Folie (1961) began an excavation of history that was awake to the traditions of philosophy, literature, social science and the creative imagination. Nobody was quite sure what to do with it.
	Monster computers (electronic counting machines) were developed during the 1960s. By the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, machines the size of a London bus were processing statistics for social scientists.
Wednesday 2.11.1960	The Evening News: "Jury Says Yes To The Novel Banned For 32 Years". Lady Chatterley's Lover launched the permissive society.
Sunday 23.4.1961 Monday 24.4.1961	Sixteenth British Census Population of England and Wales: 46,196,000; Scotland: 5,184,000
1962	New Society, a popular UK magazine about social science, launched by Paul Barker. It thrived in the 1960s and 1970s, and withered away in the 1980s.
Between 1962 and 1970	George Brosan and Eric Robinson engineered the rapid expansion of the social sciences at Enfield College of Technology, a small north London college founded in 1901 by the English inventor of the electric light bulb. The idea of "People's Universities" was publicized by Eric Robinson in The New Polytechnics, a Penguin paperback in 1968. At about the same time, the whole side of the main building at Enfield was converted to a room in which technicians maintained a large computer at exactly the right temperature. This computer was shared with local industry. By the 1970s, social scientists outnumbered engineers and, Middlesex Polytechnic (now Middlesex University) had an international reputation as a center for the social sciences and, in particular, criminology.
1963	Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908- 1990) The Structural Study of Myth. - Discussed by Mary Klages (external links).
1965	In France, theoreticians of the Communist Party, including Louis Althusser, thought hard about how to read Marx. Lire Le Capital was translated into English as Reading Capital by Ben Brewster in 1970 and was intensely studied in the mid-1970s.
	Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences founded.
1966	Two books by Peter Berger (the first written with Thomas Luckmann) used symbolic interactionist theory to make a sociology that felt human because it was centred on the construction of meanings by ordinary human beings, as distinct from social scientists. The first was called The Social Construction of Reality, the other Invitation to Sociology. A Humanistic Perspective. Berger and Luckmann's approach is called phenomenological sociology.
	Purity and Danger - An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo by Mary Douglas
August 1966	Howard Becker's presidential address to the Society for the Study of Social Problems: "Whose Side are We On?" argued that objective neutrality is not possible in sociology: "We must always look at the matter from someone's point of view. The scientist who proposes to understand society must, as Mead long ago pointed out, get into the situation enough to have a perspective on it"
	The paper was widely circulated in the 1970s. Becker spoke of a "hierarchy of credibility" favouring the perspectives of those with the highest social rank. Instead, new social scientists in the 1970s often chose to look at the world through the eyes of the deviant or lower ranks. (See Criminology for Criminals). It took less than thirty years for the criminals to become the police. Since the 1990s, or earlier, Becker's ideas have been taught as "research ethics".
	Juliet Mitchell's Women: the Longest Revolution (article) published in the November/December 1966 edition of New Left Review
	Scholarship and the history of the behavioural sciences by Robert Young (History Today) reviewed the then histories of psychology.
1967	Gregory Stone and Harvey Faberman published an article suggesting that Durkheim was moving towards the perspective of symbolic interaction
15.7.1967 to 30.7.1967	Roundhouse Congress (London) on the Dialectics of Liberation. Followed in 1968 by the Anti-University LSE
1968
February 1968				Anti-University started in London. It had collapsed by 1969 but an anit-psychiatry group continued to meet in a member's flat
May 1968				Paris student rising
Sunday 11.8.1968				Last day of steam on British Rail
				Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia
1969
				Spring: Sheila Rowbotham's Women's Liberation and the New Politics (Mayday Manifesto pamphlet 4, 2/6) contained the germ of her Hidden from History. 300 Years of Woman's Oppression and the Fight Against It (1973) in its emphasis on "breaking the silence". Hidden from History recognises the previous work of historians such as Mary Beard, but attempts a class conscious analysis of women's history. The publication of Hidden from History was important for the development of women's history studies, much of which took place outside the universities in Workers Educational Association and similar groups.
1.9.1969				The first "Interface Message Processor" was installed at the University of California, Los Angeles "about" this day. By the end of the year four defense research sites were connected to "ARPANet" (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) and the first email message had been sent from Los Angeles to Stanford. This was all part of the Cold War: the USA Military wanted a bomb-proof communication system. Out of it was born the internet
1970
early 1970s	energy crisis mainly due to rising oil prices
	Kate Millett Sexual Politics
1971	Ronald Fletcher published two volumes of The Making of Sociology, his history of sociological theory. He saw a unity in sociology as a science, in contrast to the dominant spirit of the times which set theory against theory as irreconcilable opposites.
	Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex argued
	"that the natural reproductive difference between the sexes led directly to the first division of labour based on sex, which is at the origins of all further division into economic and cultural classes and is possibly even at the root of all caste (discrimination based on sex and other biologically determined characteristics such as race, age, etc)" (Firestone, S. 1970 p. 9)
	Firestone's chart of Engels' overview of history is used to provide a model for her own theory of biological materialism. Her book includes an analogous chart showing the development of "sex" (caste), "class" (production - division of labour) and "culture" according to Engels and her theory.
Sunday 25.4.1971 Monday 26.4.1971	Seventeenth British Census Population of England and Wales: 49,152,000; Scotland: 5,236,000
1971	Mental Health Statistics
1972	Alvin Gouldner's The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology published in Britain. Some sociology courses adopted it as their main text. Students were expected to evaluate the criticism without any experience of the subject criticised.
	new word: environmentalism
1973	The New Criminology by Ian Taylor, Paul Walton and Jock Young, set out a specifically social theory of deviance, developed after an analysis of criminology since the 18th century. Particular attention was paid to the theories of Robert King Merton and Friedrich Engels.
	The Criminology and Deviancy Theory History Timeline is based on The New Criminology
1974	Juliet Mitchell's Psychoanalysis and Feminism. A Radical Reassessment of Freudian Psychoanalysis
	Approaches to Sociology. An introduction to major trends in British sociology edited by John Rex.
10.10.1974	New Society "The Coming Corporatism" by R. E. Pahl and Jack Winkler.
1975	Paradigms and Fairy Tales by Julienne Ford used the idea that theories are like fairy tales.
	In France, Michel Foucault's Surveiller et Punir: Naisance de la Prison (1975) explored the joint genesis of institutions and social structure in the all seeing eye. This was translated in English in 1977 as Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison .
1977
			A group of right wing (Conservative) social theorists published The Attack on Higher Education. Marxist and Radical Penetration, surveying and criticising the contribution of left wingers to social theory during the 1960s and 1970s. Academic social theory had become a heated political issue. The next decade was to see a move away from socially critical and collectivist theories towards conservative and free market theories.
			There was a revival in the ideas of Adam Smith. The Adam Smith Institute was founded in the USA in 1977 and in the United Kingdom in 1981. The ideals identified in Smith's work were "the importance of free markets, fair competition, and limited government". It promoted the 'privatisation' of socially owned assets.
1978
				When Dave Davies proposed a course on microchips to Hackney Workers Educational Association, I and other members did not know what they were. Micro Chips: Silicon Electronics and Society six fortnightly meetings with speakers in October, November and December. Part of the publicity read
				"Microchips, as the new generation of very small computers are called, have recently become a major talking point...What will the impact be on our jobs, the way we do them? Which industries are threatened by the most dramatic changes? What difference will it make to us as consumers? Already we have electronic watches, calculators and TV 'Games', and this is only the start." As a social science, Psychology usually argues that it is scientific because its theories are empirically testable. Its roots include John Stuart Mill's speculations that testing is possible and Wilhelm Wundt's laboratory. Small "personal" computers, based on the microchips, made it possible to computerize the teaching of experimental psychology. At Middlesex University the decision to do this was taken in 1978.
				The first electronic spreadsheets appeared in 1978. Spreadsheets led to computers being adopted widely by business.
1979
		Talcot Parsons died
		re-structuring society: chips reaganomics perestroika global web
3.5.1979		Conservatives won the General Election in the United Kingdom. Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister with an agenda to "role back the frontiers of the state". In 1968, the marxist historian Ralph Miliband had written "More than ever before men now live in the shadow of the state. What they want to achieve, individually or in groups, now mainly depends on the state's sanction and support." Traditional Conservatives had often been associated with this expansion of the state's influence. But, under Margaret Thatcher, "true Conservatism" was seen as the restriction of collectivism and the encouragement of private enterprise.
1980
				Death of Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
				Death of Erich Fromm (1900-1980)
Sunday 5.4.1981 Monday 6.4.1981				Eighteenth British Census Population of England and Wales: 49,634,000; Scotland: 5,180,000
				Roger Scruton's Meaning of Conservatism
				Brief note on Scruton
				Mental health policy under Thatcher government
1981				Mental Health Statistics
				Peter Townsend's massive Poverty in the United Kingdom. A Survey of Household Resources and Standards of Living published by Penguin.
1982				Death of Erving Goffman (1922-1982)

1983 16.1.1983	Margaret Thatcher's television interview, in which she agrees that "Victorian Values" of self-sufficiency, enterprise and non-reliance on state benefits made Britain great.
	Political Science in Africa. A Critical Review A collection of seventeen articles, edited by Yolamu Baronga "..the inception of political science.. in Black African universities coincides with the attainment of independence"
1984	Death of Michel Foucault (1926-1984)
1985 Glasnost: 11.3.1985	In a speech accepting the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev called for greater openness in public statements, including criticisms of government policy. He used the Russian word "Glasnost" (publicity). In 1986, perestroika (restructuring) was added to glasnost.
27.10.1986 Big Bang:	Deregulation of the London Stock Market
19.10.1987	Black Monday: world stock market crashes began in New York
31.10.1987	Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Woman's Own
	"There is no such thing as Society. There are individual men and women, and there are families" You would not expect a Durkheimian sociologist to agree with her (see society) - But some Weberian sociologists said she had correctly understood their position and should restore their funding. (Or words to that effect)
1988	Diana H. Coole's Women in Political Theory. From Ancient Misogyny to Contemporary Feminism. This, and other books at this time, re-explored and revitalised the history of social theory by looking at its concepts of gender.
July 1988 to April 1989	Hackney Workers Educational Association explored the varieties of conservatism, liberalism, socialism and green politics in monthly classes and an Ideas about Politics magazine. See liberalism, utilitarianism and socialism and Morris, Marx and Ruskin,
1989	Ronald Laing died
	First edition of Frank Pearce's The Radical Durkheim "too little attention has been paid to developing" Durkheim's concepts "fruitfully". crime
	The avalanche of post-modernism: "an avalanche of literature was produced at the turn of the 90s" about post-modernism and sociology. (Oleg Kharkhordin, Postmodern ghosts in sociology. Working paper from the Summer School for Soviet Sociologists, 1991)
1990	Death of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-1990) (external link)
	Peter Morea's Personality - An introduction to the theories of psychology took a human look at the theories of Freud, Skinner, Rogers, Fromm, Mead and Kelly.
Sunday 21.4.1991/Monday 22.4.1991	Nineteenth British Census Population of England and Wales: 51,099,000; Scotland: 5,107,000
16.9.1992	Black Wednesday: Financial speculation forced the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
1993	Mosaic, the first browser for the world wide web, was free. An estimated 2 million people were using it after a year.
See 1927, 1937. 1953.
		Television showed CCTV footage of two ten year old boys taking a toddler out of a shopping centre. The toddler was later found dead. But the eye could also be faked. A 1995 commercial video Caught in the Act used CCTV shots for entertainment. One of these, a sex scene in a lift, was staged by actors. Images were everywhere, but which were true?
1994		At Western Washington University (West Coast, USA), Ed Stephan began creating his The Division of Territory in Society as a web document. (Clicking on the link should take you directly to it).
Death of Karl Popper (1902-1994): (external link)
1994	Anthony Giddens Beyond Left and Right, followed by The Third Way: the renewal of social democracy in 1998, The Third Way and its Critics in 2000 and The Global Third Way Debate Polity in 2001
	Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society founded in the USA: (website)
1996	Manuel Castell's The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture volume one "The Rise of the Network Society". (Volumes 2 and 3 were published in 1997)
About 1996	Howard Becker started Howie's Home Page on the world wide web, making his papers available to anyone who wants them, and sharing photographs of Everett Hughes, Alfred Lindesmith and Herbert Blumer.
July 1996	Albert Benschop started SocioSite. The internet gateway to world wide social science, based at the University of Amsterdam.
1997	The Fontana History of the Social Sciences by Roger Smith Review by Nick Crossley
1.5.1997	British General Election won by "new" Labour. Prime Minister Tony Blair. New Labour, replacing true Conservatism had a philosophy of freemarkets balanced, or humanised, by the state.
1.1.1999	Eurozone: Euro the currency of eleven European nations. Notes and coins were introduced in 2002.
Spring 1999	Anthony Giddens gave the the 1999 BBC Reith Lectures from different cities around the world, accompanied by an email collation of views from people around the world. This was called the Runaway World Debate. A major theme was globalisation.
15.8.1999	"Why Daniel Bell Keeps Getting It Right" of a reissue of The Coming of Post- Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (1973) with a new, 30,000-word foreword by the author
12.5.2000	Official opening of Tate Modern: as much about recent social theory as modern art?
Sunday 29.4.2001/Monday 30.4.2001	Twentieth British Census Population of England and Wales: 52,042,000; Scotland: 5,062,000

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