Diderot's Encyclopédie
A compendium of knowledge becomes the Enlightenment's landmark
Edited by Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert, the multi-volume Encyclopédie of sciences, arts and trades began to appear. Despite censorship and bans, it became the great monument of the Enlightenment, spreading ideas of reason and tolerance.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 18th century
Did you know
Catherine II corresponded with Voltaire and Diderot and offered to publish the Encyclopédie, banned in France, in Riga.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1762 Accession of Catherine the Great — 11 years later
- 1764 Founding of the Hermitage — 13 years later
- c. 1768 Extinction of Steller's sea cow — 17 years later
- 1772–1795 Partitions of Poland — 21 years later
Middle East
- 1747 Ahmad Shah Durrani founds the Afghan state — 4 years earlier
Asia
- 1757 Battle of Plassey — 6 years later
Americas
- 1776 US Declaration of Independence — 25 years later
Oceania
- 1768–1771 Cook's first voyage — 17 years later
Alive at the time
- Voltaire (aged 57)
- Benjamin Franklin (aged 45)
- Mikhail Lomonosov (aged 40)
- James Cook (aged 23)
- Catherine the Great (aged 22)
- George Washington (aged 19)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (aged 2)
- Tokugawa Yoshimune (aged 67)
- Carl Linnaeus (aged 44)
- Leonhard Euler (aged 44)