Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor
Each year, as the holiday season comes around and news becomes thin on the ground, we look back into history for a snapshot of the news in centuries past. This time we travel to 1808:
In the USA, the Theatre
St Philip opened in New Orleans. In Germany, Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe published the first part of
Faust. In Britain, the
first
Royal Opera House in Covent Garden was destroyed by fire and Sir Walter
Scott published Marmion,
an epic poem about the Battle of Flodden Field. In France,
Francois Marie Charles
Fourier (credited by modern scholars with originating the word feminisme)
argued in his
Theory of the Four Movements that the extension of the liberty of women
was the general principle of all social progress, though he disdained 'equal
rights'. Followers of Fourier would go on to establish about 30 socialist
colonies based on his principles in various parts of the USA.
Meanwhile, on the wider stage: The US Congress prohibited the importation of slaves; Sierra Leone became a British colony; the Spanish rose up against the French occupation in Madrid; Napoleon annexed Tuscany; James Madison was elected president of the USA, and a future US president, Andrew Johnson, was born.
