Los coleccionables del Museo Zumalakarregi

The French invaded Gipuzkoa 1795 during the War of the Convention, which ended with the Treaty of Basilea. As a result of this agreement, France returned all occupied territories, including Gipuzkoa, to Spain. In return, Spain ceded Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) to France.

Malthus, the father of demography, 1798 published  ‘An essay on the principle of population’. Alarmed by the rate by which the world population was growing, in his work, Malthus warmed that the population was increasing more quickly than food resources and recommended that marriages and births be limited in order to avoid an excess population.

Discovery of the vaccine against smallpox. With the aim of introducing the vaccine into Russia in order to combat this contagious disease, Empress Catherine the Great 1796 set an example for her frightened subjects by being the first, along with her heir, in being vaccinated. During this period, one in every ten people could expect to die from this disease throughout the world. The last case was registered in Somalia in 1977.

Discovery of the Rosetta Stone, dating from 196 BC, when a French official came upon it by chance during Napoleon’s 1798 campaign in Egypt. The black basalt contains three inscriptions in hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek, something which helped experts finally decipher the enigmatic symbols of Egyptian hieroglyphics in 1822.

Louis XVI was sent to the guillotine. Following an assault on the royal palace, the popular revolt appointed a new Assembly, called the Convention, which decreed the abolition 1793 of the  monarchy and proclaimed the Republic.