1724
Immanuel Kant Born in Konigsberg
In a Prussian port city he would never leave, a harness-maker's son was born into a Pietist household and named Emanuel. He would shift the I to a K as an adult, never marry, never travel, keep to walks so punctual neighbors set their clocks by them, and reinvent philosophy from his study.
Yongzheng's Reforms
Beijing's new emperor, famously suspicious and fabulously industrious, began an anti-corruption drive that terrified provincial governors. He reformed the tax system, abolished the caste of mean people, and kept a private police network to watch his own ministers. The Qing bureaucratic state reached its most rigorous phase under him. His thirteen-year reign was the shortest of the great Qing emperors but arguably the most administratively effective.
Dahomey Conquers Allada
King Agaja of Dahomey stormed the coastal kingdom of Allada, seizing its trade routes and slave ports. Two years later he would take Whydah. Dahomey's female warriors - the Mino, whom Europeans called Amazons - fought in the vanguard. A West African military state was building itself on war and the Atlantic slave trade.
Treaty of Constantinople Partitions Persia
With Safavid Persia in chaos after the Afghan invasion, the Russian and Ottoman empires agreed to divide its Caucasian and western provinces between themselves. Peter had already taken the Caspian coast; now the Ottomans took Tabriz and Erevan. Persian sovereignty was a territory the neighbors walked across at will. Nader Shah would spend the next decade expelling both powers and restoring Iran's shattered borders.