European History time line 1801 - 1900

 

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European History time line 1801 - 1900

 

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European History time line 1801 - 1900

 

European History time line 1801 - 1900

19th Century Timeline: 1801 to 1900

1801  Britain makes Ireland part of a single British kingdom. Parliament in Dublin is abolished. The Anglican Church is to be recognized as the official church in Ireland. No Catholics are to be allowed to hold public office.

1801  Napoleon of France has defeated Austria. In the treaty of Lunéville, Austria renounces claims to the Holy Roman Empire. 

1802  The Ottoman Turks, trying to maintain empire, are fighting the Saud family and its Sunni Wahhabi allies. In Mesopotamia the Wahhabis capture the Shiite holy city of Karbala. In Arabia they capture Mecca.

1802  Leader of Haitian independence, Toussaint L'Ouverture, receives a message from the French General Brunet to meet for negotiations. Brunet assures Toussaint that he will be perfectly safe with the French, whom he says are gentlemen. When Toussaint shows up for the meeting, the French take him and ship him to France, to a prison near the Swiss border.

1802  The war-weary British sign a treaty ending their war against France -- The Treaty of Amiens.

1803  Troussaint L'Ouverture dies in prison.

1803  A German makes morphine from opium. Physicians are delighted that opium has been tamed. Morphine is lauded for its reliability and safety.

1803  In England, seven Irish rebels are the last sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. In deference to public opinion the sentence is commuted to merely hanging and beheading.

1803  Irish are rebelling against British rule. They are crushed militarily by the British, but unrest among the Irish will remain in Ireland through the rest of the century.

1803  France sells Louisiana Territory to the United States.

1803  Their treaty breaks down. Britain and France return to war. 

1803  The Wahhabis do not view the Shia as Muslims. A Shia assassinates the conqueror Abdul Aziz of the House of Saud.

1804  The Royal College of Surgeons is founded in London.

1804  Japan refuses trade with arriving Russian ships.

1804  The Russians visit the Hawaiian islands on their way to Fort Ross in California.

1804  Around 150,000 Hawaiians -- nearly half of the population -- are dying from the Great Sickness -- an unknown disease brought by Europeans.

1804  Serbs revolt against Ottoman authority and win autonomy status -- self-rule within the Ottoman Empire -- demonstrating Ottoman weakness to Greeks, who remain under Ottoman rule.  

1804  Haiti proclaims itself a republic and independent.

1804  In Hausaland (south of the Sahara and west of Lake Chad), Muslim herdsmen war against non-Muslim Hausa chiefdoms and gain power in the region.

1804  In the wartime atmosphere and as a defense against French royalty, the Senate in France votes in favor becoming Napoleon I, "Emperor of the French." Napoleon crowns himself emperor. Beethoven is enraged. He dislikes royalty and tears up the title page for his Symfonia Buonaparte, which will be known as his Symphony No.3.

1804  Spain joins Napoleon's war as an ally against the British.

1805  Russia, Austria and Sweden ally themselves with Britain.

1805  In Milan, Napoleon is crowned King of Italy. He is looking towards an invasion of England. A French fleet sails north to Spain's Atlantic port of Cadiz. Napoleon orders his French and Spanish ships out of Cadiz to do battle with the British. The British win, at the Battle of Trafalgar, frustrating Napoleon's invasion plan.

1805  For two years the British East India Company has been warring against the Maratha Empire -- which was allied with Napoleon. The East India Company wins and gains control over Orissa and western Gujarat.

1805  The son of Abdul Aziz, now head of House of Saud, defeats an Ottoman garrison and captures the holy city of Medina.

1806  The Emperor of Austria, Francis I, abdicates his other title: Holy Roman Emperor. The Holy Roman Empire, created in the 800s, is formally dissolved, with Napoleon reorganizing much of it into his Confederation of the Rhine.

1806  Jean Jacque Dessalines, leader of Haiti's revolution and self-declared emperor, is being viewed by his generals as a ridiculous figure. Dessalines announces his plan to march with troops into the south, where he is not popular, and the south explodes in rebellion. Dessalines' generals prepare a trap for him along the way. His horse is shot from under him. He is pinned under his horse, he is shot in the head and his body hacked to pieces with machetes.

1806  Ruling the seas, a British naval force takes control of Cape Colony in South Africa -- the Dutch who had been ruling there now being ruled by Britain's enemy, Napoleon.

1807  Extending its power at sea, Britain outlaws slave trading across the Atlantic, for its own ships and for ships from all countries united with Napoleon. Britain turns a presence on the coast of western Africa into a crown colony -- Sierra Leone.

1807  The U.S. Congress passes a law that bans the importation of slaves into the U.S., a law to be largely ignored in southern states.

1807  The Geological Society of London is created, the founders expressing their desire to avoid preconceived notions and to collect facts for discussion.

1807  With help from the French, Muhammad Ali Pasha drives the British out of Egypt (a part of the Ottoman Empire).

1807  Napoleon moves to consolidate his position in Europe. He defeats a combined Prussian and Russian force in February. Danzig surrenders to him. He defeats the Russians in June and occupies Königsberg. Alexander of Russia is annoyed with the British and agrees to meet with Napoleon. In August, Napoleon demands that Portugal join the trade boycott against the British and declare war on Britain. Portugal hesitates. Napoleon's ally, Spain, allows French troops to pass through its territory to Portugal. The French captured Lisbon as Portugal's royal family flees to Brazil.

1808  Napoleon intervenes in a quarrel between Spain's king, Charles IV, and the son of Charles, Ferdinand. He makes the two of them prisoners in a comfortable setting and moves his brother Joseph from the Kingdom of Naples to the throne in Spain. Spaniards resent the presence of French troops and Napoleon's interventions. An unusually barbarous war begins within Spain -- with Napoleon as usual caring little about hearts and minds. Resistance to the French spreads to Portugal. The British land a force there to help the resistance. It is the beginning of Napoleon's decline.

1808  Spain's authority in its American colonies declines. Armed uprisings occurred from Mexico to Argentina. Without Spain in control, the British are able to do more business in Latin America, rescuing Britain from Napoleon's economic boycott.

1808  John Dalton argues that matter consists of a range of atoms each of which has a distinct weight.

1809  Russia defeats Sweden. Sweden loses Finland, which becomes an autonomous Grand Duchy within Russia's empire. Returning to the Hawaiian Islands from California and hoping for trade, Russians build a fort at Honolulu and try to establish themselves on the island of Kauai. They ignore Hawaiian customs and are driven out.  

1809  Napoleon is spread thin. The Austrians defeat him at the Battle of Aspern-Essling, and he loses his reputation for invincibility. The Austrians fail to follow up on their victory. Napoleon organizes an assault and defeats the Austrians. The Austrians make peace with Napoleon. 

1809  Napoleon's economic blockade is not working. Britain's exports reach an all-time high.

1810  Allied with the Portuguese against Napoleon, the British negotiate an agreement with the Portuguese calling for the gradual abolition of the slave trade across the South Atlantic.

1810  People have been migrating from the United States into West Florida. These settlers rebel and declare independence from Spain. Recognizing Spain's weakened condition from occupation by Napoleon, the U.S. President James Madison and Congress declare the region for the United States -- a move not recognized internationally.

1810  The ruler of Kauai cedes his island to Kamehameha. Kamehameha is now ruler of all of the Hawaiian Islands. In accordance with Hawaiian tradition he is considered divine and commoners prostrate themselves before him. 

1811  The French are driven from Portugal.

1811  Independence is declared in Caracas (Venezuela), La Paz (Bolivia) and New Grenada (Colombia). Fighting erupts between those favoring independence and Spanish authority in Latin America.

1811  In Egypt, Viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha exterminates Mameluke warlords. He invites them to a banquet and has them slaughtered.

1811  A 60-year-old Spanish priest, Hildago, who was influenced by the Enlightment, is executed after leading an uprising in behalf of the well being of Indians and mestizos.

1812  For the Ottoman empire, Muhammad Ali Pasha drives the Wahhabi and Saudis out of Medina and Mecca.

1812 In England, a few workers in various cities in the spinning and cloth finishing industries have been destroying new machinery. They are called Luddites. Some are executed.

1812   Priests in Caracas claim that an earthquake is God's anger against the sins of the new government. Spain's military is able to regain control of the city.

1812   At sea, Britain has a counter-blockade against France. Britain's new prime minister, Lord Liverpool, instructs the British navy to treat U.S. trading ships with new tact and to avoid clashes with Americans. This does not deter those in the U.S. who want war, and Congress declares war against Britain on June 18, 1812.

1812  Napoleon's march into Russia exposes his recklessness and shallow strategic thinking. He returns to Paris without his army. 

1813  Napoleon's move against Russia has delayed Russia's ability to protect their fellow Orthodox Christians, the Serbs, who have been rebelling against Ottoman rule. The Ottoman Empire moves against rebel Serb areas, and Albanian troops plunder Serb villages.

1813  Napoleon has failed to win enough friends. In Spain, British and Spanish forces defeat his military. Napoleon withdraws from Germany after the Russians, Prussians, Austrians and Swedes defeat him there. His Confederation of the Rhine falls into history's trash bin.  

1813  Laura Secord walks 20 difficult miles to warn of a surprise attack by an invading U.S. force. She is to be a Canadian heroine. 

1814  A negotiated  treaty ends the War of 1812-14 and restores "peace, friendship, and good understanding" between the United States and "His Britannic Majesty." 

1814  Russian and Prussian forces enter Paris. Napoleon is exiled to the island of Elba. The terms of peace between the victors and France are settled in another Treaty of Paris. The victors over Napoleon gather at Vienna -- the Congress of Vienna -- to create a stable Europe to their liking. 

1815  Napoleon returns to France, inspires men to reach again for glory, and his final military defeat comes at Waterloo. 

1815  At the Congress of Vienna, the British, Spain, Portugal, a politically new France, and the Netherlands are meeting to discuss the world without Napoleon, and they agree to eventually abolish the slave trade. 

1816  In France, the income of working people in terms of what it buys (real wages) begins a four-decade decline. 

1816  The British return to the Dutch their empire in Indonesia.

1816  Spain's military drives Simón Bolivar from New Grenada. Bolivar flees to Jamaica and then to Haiti.

1817  Bolivar and a small force return to Venezuela and establish a base inland in the rain forest along the Orinoco River.

1817  In Britain, real wages have been declining at least since the late 1790, as Britain has been burdened by war against France. From this year on and into the next century real wages in Britain will be rising. 

1817  The British sign a Maratha kingdom, Nagpur, into its system of alliances. Those opposed sack and burn the British residence at Poona (Pune). 27,000 attack a British force of 2,800 a few miles north of Poona -- the beginning of the Third Anglo-Maratha War.

1818  The Third Anglo-Maratha War ends with the break-up of the Maratha Empire and the British in control of most of India.

1818  For the Ottoman Empire, Egyptians are taking control of the Arabian Peninsula. They destroy the mud-brick town of Diriyah (thirteen miles from the center of what today is Riyadh) which had been the home base of the Saud family and Wahhabis. 

1819  In England, 60,000 gather in a field and listen to a call for universal suffrage. A magistrate sends a force to arrest the main speaker, Henry Hunt. People riot. Eleven are killed and others injured. A movement for reform gathers strength.

1820  The combined area of Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi and Alabama has six times the number of people of European heritage that it had in 1800.

1820  A liberal uprising begins in Spain, beginning with soldiers, is joined by others who want a constitutional monarchy, or a republic. A few who are poor and illiterate attack and set fire to churches.

1820  Per capita world Gross Domestic Product (according to today's economic historian Angus Maddison) is $667, measured in 1990 dollars. This (according to Maddison) is up from $435 in the year 1000. Western Europe, which was lower than the world in general in the year 1000, at $400, is at $1,232.

1821  The stability for Europe sought at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 is coming undone. Following Serb rebellions against Ottoman rule in previous years, the Greeks in March rise simultaneously against Ottoman rule, including in Macedonia, Crete and Cyprus. The Turks respond by hanging the Patriarch of Constantinople, Gregorios V. The Greeks  liberate the Peloponnesian Peninsula in September. There, in the city of Tripolitsa, a center of Turkish authority, Muslims in the thousands are massacred for three days and nights.

1821  Napoleon Bonaparte dies at the age of fifty-one under British authority on the island of St. Helena, the reported cause: stomach cancer. The English poet, John Keats, dies of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-six.

1821  A treaty is signed between the United States and the declining power of  Spain. The U.S. buys Florida for 5 million dollars, money the U.S. government gives to U.S. citizens with claims against Spain. Spain receives an established line separating the U.S. from its territory in North America.

1821  Caracas falls to Bolivar's force. Venezuela is now free of Spanish rule. Peru and Mexico declare independence. In Guatemala independence is declared for its provinces: Costa Rica,  Honduras, Nicaragua, San Salvador and Chiapas.

1821  Michael Faraday, son of a blacksmith, has overcome the conceit of aristocrats and, as a scientist, has been promoted in Britain's Royal Institution. His interest in a unified force in nature and work in electro-magnetism produces the foundation for electric motors and contributes to what will be "field theory" in modern physics, which includes its most basic formula: E=MC2.

1822  A member of Portugal's royal family is in power in Brazil. He has lifted duties paid on the importation of books, abolished censorship and ordered the teaching of law at the universities of São Paula and Olinda. His rule is being challenged from Portugal, and from his royal palace he declares "Independence or death!" At the age of 24 he his proclaimed Emperor of Brazil: Pedro I. 

1822  Officials of the American Colonization society have purchased a strip of land they call Christopolis, at Cape Mesurado on the Atlantic Coast in western Africa. Eighty-six freed blacks have arrived. 

1822  In Vienna the accordion is invented.

1822  The British reduce the penalty for more than crimes that had been capital offenses. 

1822  The Ottoman Turks respond to rebellion on the island of Chios by slaughtering five-sixths of the islands 120,000 inhabitants. 

1823  Austria, Russia and Prussia authorize French troops to enter Spain to destroy the liberal revolution there and re-establish the rule of Ferdinand VII. Ferdinand begins revenge killings that will revolt those who returned him to power.

1823  Steam powered shipping begins between Switzerland and France on Lake Geneva.

1823  Mexico, interested in populating Texas, allows Stephen F. Austin to sell plots of land to settlers so long as they are of good character. 

1824  The Frenchman, Eugène Delacroix, paints The Massacre of Chios.  Britain's romantic poet, Lord Byron, who has written "We are all Greeks," has gone to Greece and dies of "marsh fever."

1824  Britain and the U.S. negotiate a treaty establishing procedures for suppressing the slave trade, but the U.S. Senate undercuts the treaty's powers and the British refuse to sign.

1825  Louis XVIII has died and is succeeded by his reactionary brother, Charles X.

1825  Russian military officers, who had been exposed to the Enlightenment during Russia's occupation of France, attempt to replace authoritarian rule with a representative democracy. Their coup, called the Decembrist Rising, fails and they are crushed.

1826  In Spain the Inquisition had been ended by the Revolution in 1820 that had overthrown King Ferdinand VII, but with Ferdinand's return it is revived.  A Jew burned is burned at the stake, also a Spanish Quaker  schoolmaster who replaced "Hail Mary" with "Praise be to God" in school prayer. It is to be the last of such executions.

1827  Britain, Russia, France break with Austria regarding the Greek war of independence -- Austria still feeling threatened by any revolt against empire while the Russians want to protect their fellow Orthodox Christians. Egypt, a part of the Ottoman Empire, is helping the Turks, but a combined British, French and Russian fleet sink an Egyptian and Turkish fleet at Navarino Bay, on the west coast of the Peloponnesian Peninsula. This weakens Ottoman power in Greece and in Arabia.  

1827  In Vienna, Austria, over 10,000 mourners attend the burial of Beethoven.

1827  New York passes a state law emancipating slaves.

1829  In London, parliament extends tolerance, passing the Catholic Emancipation Bill, making it possible for Catholics to hold public office.

1829  The Treaty of Adrianople ends war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire grants Greece independence.  Russian authority in Georgia is recognized. The Russians are allowed access through the narrow straits from the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea. Autonomy is extended to Serbia and to the Romanians of Moldavia and Walachia, under Russian protection.  

1829  Scotch tape is invented.

1829  Mexico abolishes slavery in its territories, hoping to discourage migration into Texas from the United States.

1830  With China's great population growth, unemployment has risen and there has been a shortage of land, creating peasant unrest. China is still the leader in manufacturing output (real rather than per capita), but its share is slipping from 32.8 percent in 1750 to 29.8 percent. India's share since 1750 has fallen from 24.5 percent  to 17.6 percent. Britain, with a fraction of the population of either China or India, has increased its share in this period from 1.9 to 4.3 percent. The U.S. share is 2.4 percent.

1830  France has reneged in paying its bill for wheat bought from Algeria. A new era of European imperialism begins with Charles X sending an invasion force of 36,000 troops to Algeria, claiming that he was responding to the insult to his ambassador. The invasion is described as a civilizing mission and a mission to abolish slavery and piracy -- a response to Algeria's reputation in France for having attacked the ships of Christian nations during past centuries and for an estimated 25,000 European slaves in Algeria, including women in the harems.

1830  Businessmen and common people loath Charles X, who has returned to absolutism, including dissolving parliament. The barricades go up in the streets of Paris. Charles X is frightened and rather than fight goes into exile, back to Britain. Parliament returns, creates a constitutional monarchy and elects a new king, Louis-Philippe.

1830  Violence erupts across Germany. Rent, tax and military records are burned. People want bread or are annoyed by higher prices for food, military conscription and in places by feudal dues. In Brunswick, Grand Duke Karl flees and a liberal constitution is created. The king of Saxony grants his subjects a liberal constitution. In Hesse-Kassel a constitution and a unicameral legislature are created.

1830  In Britain, the first edition of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology is published.

1830  The first railway station opens in the United States -- in Baltimore Maryland. 

1830  President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act, which rips the Cherokee and other eastern tribes from their homes and banishes them to areas west of the Mississippi River.

1830  Joseph Smith Jr. of New York organizes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

1830  In England the lawn mower is invented. 

1830  A Frenchman patents a sewing machine.

1830  Simón Bolivar dies disappointed and regretting that Spain did not allow people in its American colonies to develop self-government within a framework of institutions as had Britain with its colonists.

1831  Various uprising are taking place on the Italian peninsula, including the papal states. Pope Gregory XVI is opposed to democracy at any level and calls for help from Austria. Austria's army marches across the peninsula, crushing revolts and revolutionary movements.

1831  In Warsaw, Polish soldiers revolt against Russian rule. Crowds take control of the city. Austria and Prussia want the revolt crushed. Freedom for the Poles is a popular cause in Britain and in France, but little help arrives and Nicholas I, who considers himself both the Tsar of Russia and King of Poland, sends troops that overwhelms the rebellion.

1831  In England, parliament's lower body, the House of Commons, passes a reform bill. Britain's new Prime Minister, Earl Grey, wants to end undue representation to towns that have shrunk (rotten boroughs) and to give Britain's growing industrial towns representation in the House of Commons. The bill is defeated in the House of Lords, dominated by aristocratic conservatives. Rioting erupts in various cities, most seriously in Bristol from April 15 to May 4.

1831  A severe flood and plague devastate Baghdad. Mumeluke rule ends there as Mahmud II, sultan, reasserts Ottoman control over Mesopotamia

1831  Charles Darwin, 22, has complete his B.A. at Cambridge and sails as an unpaid naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle to South America, New Zealand, and Australia.

1831  In Boston, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrisons begins publishing an anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator.

1831  In Jamaica, a black Baptist deacon, Sam Sharpe, has gathered from the Bible that all men are created equal. He has learned from newspapers that people in England want an end to slavery. He organizes a sit-down strike timed for harvest time. Local planters move to crush the revolt and a group of slaves become violent, set fire to buildings and to cane fields. The planters crush the rebellion and hang Sam Sharpe.

1832  Egypt takes advantage Russia's defeat of the Ottoman Turks and declares independence.

1832  The Whigs acquire more power momentarily. They are largely aristocrats with liberal leanings. They want to make Britain's political system fairer and to placate working people without giving in to all their demands. The Great Reform Act, denied in 1831, is passed into law.

1832  In Illinois, a state since 1818, the Fox Indians, led by Black Hawk, are defeated militarily. In his surrender speech Black Hawk acknowledges defeat. He says he has done nothing shameful.

1833  Carl von Clausewitz' On War (vom Kriege) is published two years after his death. Clausewitz saw violence as the only proper defense against the violence of others, and he saw war as a political act for political goals. 

1833  Too much rain produces crop failures and what is called the Tempo famine. (The previous famine was around fifty years before.) Prosperity comes to a temporary end. The famine is to last three years and an estimated 300,000 are to die.

1834  Britain's Abolition Slavery Act goes into effect, with the British government prepared to compensate financially those who lose slaves. In Canada many slaves had been freed years before. The remaining 781,000 slaves are freed, but no claims for compensation are submitted. 

1834  The Queen Mother, Maria Christina, fourth wife of Ferdinand VII, who died in 1833, officially ends Spain's Inquisition.

1835  In Britain, vaccination becomes mandatory.

1835  Britain and Spain renew agreement against the slave trade. British sea captains are authorized to arrest suspected Spanish slavers and bring them before mixed commissions established at Sierra Leone and Havana. Vessels carrying specified “equipment articles” (extra mess gear, lumber, foodstuffs) are declared prima-facie to be slavers.

1835  In the southern states of the United States, abolitionists are expelled and mailing anti-slavery literature  is forbidden.

1835  Steamships appear on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

1835  Samuel Colt of Connecticut receives a patent for his revolver in Europe.

1836  Sam Colt receives a patent for his revolver in the United States.

1836   Britain has been emancipating slaves in its Cape Colony. Boers in the colony dislike it. From 10,000 to 14,000 Boers begin their Great Trek away from British rule and for new African lands to occupy.

1836  Pope Gregory XVI bans railways in his Papal States, calling them "ways of the devil."

1836  Anglo Texans are defeated at the Alamo. They declare Texas independent and go on to defeat Mexico's forces.

1837  The United States officially recognizes Texas an independent.

1837 Britain invites the U.S. and France to participate in international patrols to interdict slave ships. The U.S. declines to participate.

1837  Sam Morse invents the telegraph.

1837  A revolt by the French and some Anglos in Canada fails.

1837  The United States recognizes Texas as independent of Mexico. Mexico does not.

1837  In wake of the famine in Japan, the city of Osaka, rebellion and fire destroy one-fourth of the city before it is crushed. At Edo a U.S. ship arrives to repatriate shipwrecked Japanese sailors, to establish trade and land missionaries. The ship is fired upon and driven away. 

1838  Cherokee Indians are forced off their farms and out of the homes and sent on what will become known as the "Trail of Tears" to Oklahoma.

1838  In Britain this year, 58 children under the age of 13 have died in mining accidents, and 64 between the ages of 13 and 18.

1838  Building on a theory about geology by Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin develops a theory of evolutionary selection and specialization.

1839  In Britain, conservatives kill another reform package, and there are riots in Wales and such cities as Glasgow, Newcastle and Birmingham.

1839  The British fear Russian influence in Afghanistan and want "a trustworthy ally" there -- on India's western frontier. There they have sent a force of 12,000 British and Indian troops, with elephants, 38,000 camels and a horde of followers, including families, prostitutes, and sellers of opium, rum and tobacco.

1839  The British have claimed lands in the valley of the Aroostook River, an area claimed by the state of Maine. A land agent arrives from the U.S. to expel them. British lumberjacks seize him. Maine sends 10,000 troops to the area. A British militia in New Brunswick is called up. Neither side wants war and the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 is created, creating a recognized border dividing the area between the U.S. and Canada.

1839  U.S. authorities take custody of a slave trading ship, the Amistad, a Cuban schooner. It has 53 Africans on board who had taken control and were trying to sail the ship back to Africa. A trial was held to decide whether the Africans would be free to return home or whether they would be treated as property and face a life of slavery.

1839  Charles Goodyear invents vulcanization, for making rubber.

1839  Egyptians defeat the Ottoman Turks at the battle of Nisibin, near the Turkish-Syrian border.

1839  After a decade of anti-opium campaigns, China's government creates tougher laws and seizes 20,000 chests of British opium. The party in power in London, the Whigs, did not want to  be accused of failing to protect Britain's commercial interests. It sends a punitive expedition, starting the first Anglo-Chinese war.

1839  France becomes the first European power to recognize Texas as independent of Mexico. Great Britain, Holland and Belgium do so months later. 

1840  Europe's four big powers, including Britain, force Egypt to relinquish control over Syria. Britain occupies the port of Aden (in south Yemen) to protect itself from the Egyptians.

1840  Science applied to farming is described by Justus Liebig, in his published work Chemistry in Its Application to Agriculture and Physiology.  This is to transform agriculture, and agriculture is to make possible coming advances in industrialization.

1840  The population of the United States has increased 36 percent in the last ten years -- from 13 to almost 18 million. Railway track has grown from 100 to 3,500 miles. The U.S. now has 1,200 cotton factories, two-thirds of them in New England.

1841  Britain makes New Zealand a colony.

1841  The President of the Republic of Texas sends an army into New Mexico, hoping to annex it and other territory, including California. A Mexican force drives the invaders back to Texas.

1841  Britain's political resident at Kabul is hacked to death and an uprising in the city leaves 300 of a British detachment dead.

1841  Naval guns have been firing unexploding cannonballs. A time-delay mechanism invented by the French navy now allows exploding shells to be fired safely by high-powered, flat trajectory guns. The navies of Britain, the United States and Russia will have such gun before the decade ends.

1842  The Russians withdraw from Fort Ross in Northern California.

1842  The British are forced to withdraw from Afghanistan.

1843  Britain and France announce their recognition of the Hawaii Islands as an independent state.

1843  England outlaws gibbeting -- displaying bodies of the executed for the purpose of deterring crime -- the last of this having occurred in 1832.

1843  In the United States, Charles Thurber advances a effort that began in the early 1700s in Britain. He invents a typewriter.

1844  In New Zealand the Maori rebel.

1844:  In Australia, a "Protection of Children Act" allows Church missionaries to kidnap aboriginal children in order to "civilize" them -- a policy that is to last to the 1960s.

1844  In the United States, Samuel Morse invents the telegraph.

1845  The Congress of the United States approves the annexation of Texas. Mexico breaks relations with the United States.  President Polk sends troops to Texas.

1845  The faster shipment of potatoes from the Americas across the Atlantic to Europe allows the survival of mold arriving with the potatoes. The mold creates potato crop failures across Europe and starvation in Ireland.

1846  Poles in Krakow revolt against Russian rule. Austrian and Russian troops enter Krakow and Austria annexes the city.

1846  Pope Gregory XVI dies and is replaced by Pius IX, who deviates from Gregory's policies by introducing railways and gas streetlights to the Papal States. Gregory had thought them departures from God's intentions. 

1846  In India the British are appearing weak after their Afghanistan debacle. A coalition of Sikhs attack the British. In three months of fighting the British forces prevail and the Sikhs sign a treaty obliging them to disband most of their military.

1846  In the United States, Elias Howe invents a "lock-stitch" sewing machine.

1846  A patient in Boston is given ether as an anesthetic, a revolution in surgical practice.

1846  In Belgium, Adolphe Sax invents the saxaphone.

1846  In Italy, Ascanio Soberero discovers how to make nitroglycerin.

1846  Cholesterol is discovered in blood. It will be more than a hundred years before it is a widespread concern.

1847  Members of the Donner Party are starving in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, and they turn to cannibalism.

1847  Liberia becomes an independent republic.

1847  Three years of fighting in Tahiti ends with the French crushing Tahitian resistance to French domination. 

1847  Britain's parliament passes the "Ten Hours Bill," which limits to sixty-three the hours of work per week for women and children.

1848  The war between Mexico and the United States ends with the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The United States wins recognition of its possession of Alto California, New Mexico and Texas to the Rio Grande. Mexico is given a guarantee of rights for the people who had been living in these areas and loyal to Mexico.

1848  The economies of Europe have been suffering from a recent economic downturn. In France and Germany there has been a longer range decline in income as measured by what income can buy (real wages). Karl Marx is going to use figures from such decline to theorize about capitalism making working people more and more miserable and about capitalism's decline and eventual overthrow.

1848  In Milan there is taxation without representation.In Milan in January, sixty-one people are killed protesting against a rise in taxes by Austria's authorities. In January in Palermo, Sicily, people riot. In February in Paris people go to the barricades. The monarchy quits and the Second Republic is born. Revolution in Paris inspires uprisings in Germany and Austria. And Hungarians demand independence.

1848  In the summer, economic recovery begins across Europe.

1848  Revolutionaries in Paris, upset by elections that did not go in their favor, stage another uprising, and they are crushed. The middle class in Germany joins the aristocracy against disorder, and revolution there is crushed. The political left in Vienna has alienated the liberal center and reaction there replaces revolution.  Austria crushes Czech and Italian nationalism. With help from Russia, Austria crushes Hungarian resistance to its rule.

1848  Switzerland's civil war ends. Federalism and unity win against the separatism wanted by the Catholic Church and Austria.

1848  A gold rush begins in Central California.

1848  At a women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, a call is made for equal treatment of women and men under the law and voting rights for women.

1848  Ownership of land in the Hawaiian Islands is individualized, seen by Hawaii's leaders as advantageous for Hawaiians as well as enabling foreigners to buy land. It is called the Great Mahele (land division).

1848  An ancient human-like skull is discovered in a quarry on the island of Gibraltar that in eight years will be identified as Neanderthal.

1849  Karl Marx is ordered out of Paris and goes to London.

1849  Conservative rule in Prussia is devoted to improving education and science, seen there as contributing to the nation's power.

1849  The British have defeated a second Sikh rising. The British formally annex the Punjab and territory to Peshawar and the Khyber Pass.

1849  In New York, Walter Hunt invents a safety pin. Poor sanitation in New York City creates a cholera epidemic, killing 5,000 poor people, most of them poor and Irish. Some believe the epidemic is God's punishment.

1850  A Chinese Christian in China sees himself as the son of God ordered to save the world. He has started a movement for sharing wealth, land distribution and the Ten Commandments. He favors chastity and an end to foot-binding for women and opposes opium smoking. He creates what is to be known as the Taiping Rebellion. It sweeps across central-eastern China, intending to drive away  "Manchu demons" and rival faiths.

1850  In Prussia, new freedoms won by peasants are maintained, and a decree moves 640,000 peasants to free farming.

1850  In the United States, Congress passes another Fugitive Slave Act, which mandates government support for the capture of escaped slaves. Protests occur in the northern states.

1850  In Britain, the Public Libraries Act is passed, which will widen reading. In the carrying capacity of its ships, five percent has passed from sail-powered to steam-powered.

1851  Thousands rush to gold in Australia, including Chinese prospectors and prospectors from California. There are tent cities with populations as large as 40,000. Food growers have a greater market for their produce, stimulating Australia's economy. An agricultural revolution is beginning using a mechanical harvester, called Ridley's Stripper, that had been invented in Australia.

1851  In Siam, King Mongkut ascends the throne. He invites European diplomats to his coronation. He becomes known for speaking English, French, and Latin.

1852  The novel Uncle Tom's Cabin is published. In the South complaints arise that the novel is exaggeration. In the South, owning a copy of the book is made illegal.

1852  The British arrive in lower Burma and bring opium from India for sale to the Burmese.

1852  In the United States, Francis Wolle invents and patents a machine that makes paper bags.

1852  Britain recognizes the right of Boers to administer their own affairs beyond its Cape Colony border so long as the Boers end slavery. 

1852  Louis-Napoleon (Bonaparte's nephew), President of France's Second Republic, has consolidated conservative support and dissolves parliament. He crushes an uprising, establishes a dictatorship and holds a plebiscite to justify his move. Peasants and the religiously devout give him the votes he wants.

1853  Louis-Napoleon is declared Emperor Napoleon III.  He would like to create a dynasty. France is no longer a republic. It is called the Second Empire.

1853  The Frenchman Joseph Gobineau has two volumes of his work published, a work of about the fall of civilizations that he believes is based on science. Degeneration he claims came with conquerors mixing with those they had conquered, polluting the purity of the conquerors' race. Jews he holds had once been biologically pure but they had become "bestialized" and a threat by having mixed with Africans. 

1853  Commodore Matthew Perry arrives in Japan with 967 men on four ships, including two steam-powered vessels, which intimidates the Japanese. He demands that Japan open its ports to trade with the United States. He declares that he will return the following year to receive Japan's response.

1853  Tsar Nicholas I of Russia goes to war against the Ottoman Turks over what he sees as his right to defend Orthodox Christians in Turkey and in Jerusalem (then under the authority of the Ottoman Empire).

1854  The Japanese government signs a treaty with the United States that offers "peace and friendship," the opening to two ports (Shimoda and Hakodate), help for U.S. ships wrecked off Japan's coast, protection for shipwrecked persons, and permission for U.S. ships to buy provisions.

1854   In London, construction of the Clock Tower (Big Ben) is finished. Urbanization and the new industrial age have been producing a new era of tick, tick, tick.

1854  Imperial Britain and France are afraid of Russian expansion. At a Turkish port on the Black Sea, the Russian navy, using exploding shells for the first time, sets a Turkish fleet afire. The British respond with horror to the devastation. The British declare war, and Queen Victoria writes of "the great sinfulness" of Russia having "brought about this War" -- the Crimean War. 

1854  Pope Pius IX addresses a question about differences between Jesus Christ and others. He proclaims the infallible doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (virgin birth) of Jesus Christ, that Jesus was born exempt from all stain of original sin. 

1854  Elisha Graves Otis has invented an elevator brake and has started a company to manufacture elevators that will hoist freight. He demonstrates the elevator at the World's Fair in New York City.

1854  The scientist John Snow had been claiming that cholera was carried in water or food and could be ingested. Colleagues have dismissed his idea. A cholera epidemic has broken out in London, in an area around a water pump. Snow takes a sample of the water from the pump and through a microscope finds it contaminated. He removes the pump's handle and the cholera comes to a quick end. 

1855  Much of Japan's capital, Edo (Tokyo), is destroyed by earthquake, tsunami and fire.

1855  King Mongkut of Siam signs a trade agreement with Britain. He builds roads, sets up printing presses, creates a currency and sets out to reform slavery.

1855  Chicago adopts a plan for the first comprehensive city sewer in United States.

1856  The first railway bridge across the Mississippi River is completed, at Rock Island Illinois and Davenport Iowa, three miles away.

1856  Tsar Nicholas I of Russia dies. His son, Alexander II,  makes peace with Britain and France, The Crimean War ends. Russia's humiliation inspires Alexander's desire for reform. 

1856  A ship owned by a Chinese, registered with the British in Hong Kong, and docked at Guangzhou (Canton), is searched by Manchu government agents looking for a notorious pirate. The British send an expedition of ships seeking redress and are joined by the French, who want to avenge the Manchu execution of a French missionary. There is also dissatisfaction with Chinese compliance to agreements made at the end of the first Opium War. The Second Opium War begins. 

1857  Elisha Graves Otis installs the first passenger-safe elevator in a department store in New York City. 

1857  Giuseppe Garibaldi, who has been on Staten Island, New York, for five years, founds the Italian National Association to fight for the unification of Italy.

1857  Madame Bovary, by French novelist Gustave Flaubert, is partially published. It is about a woman who has adulterous affairs and it creates a scandal. Flaubert has to go to court to have the entire novel published.

1857  The Supreme Court of the United States, in the Dred Scott case, rules that African Americans, free or slave, are not citizens and have no recourse in federal courts.

1858  The Second Opium War ends. China is forced to pay Britain and France indemnities and to open more ports. The opium trade is legalized. Christians are to be allowed to proselytize and guaranteed protection, and Westerners are to be allowed  to hold property in China. Russian and the United States rush in to gain benefit from the British and French victory.

1858  In Vietnam, a French and Spanish expedition seizes the port city of Tourane (today Da Nang). The French are interested in ending Vietnamese persecution of Christian missionaries and in trade with Indochina.

1859  In Vietnam, the French take over Saigon (today Ho Chi Minh City.) 

1859  John Brown wants to begin a war for the liberation of all slaves in the United States. An armed rising by him and his eighteen supporters is crushed. Brown is tried, convicted and hanged.

1859  Charles Darwin has been sitting on his Origin of the Species for 21 years. He has it published.

1859  British scientist John Tyndall describes carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapor trapping heat in the atmosphere. And he suggests that change in the concentration of gases could bring climate change.

1859  The first successful oil well in the United States is drilled, in northern Pennsylvania. 

1859  Rabbits are brought to Australia, which will produce an ecology disaster.

1860  Taiping rebels fail to take Shanghai, repelled by a force led by an Englishman, Frederick Townsend Ward.

1860  In the United States, George Crum has created what is to be known as the potato chip. He opens his own restaurant, featuring potato chips in a basket placed on every table.

1860  J.J.E. Lenoir of France develops an internal, non-compression, combustion engine. 

1860  Jews in Britain are allowed to vote.

1860  International trade has been increasing. World exports are 4.53 times what they were in 1800.

1861  Tsar Alexander II issues his proclamation emancipating Russia's serfs.

1861  Abraham Lincoln takes office as the President of the United States. He tries to reassure southern states, announcing that he does not intend to interfere, directly or indirectly, with the institution of slavery. But southern politicians have allowed themselves exaggerations and panic. Some southern states proclaim secession. Shooting erupts in the South over who will possess federal forts.

1861  Whale oil has been the primary fuel for lamps. In Pennsylvania an oil well has begun producing more than 3,000 barrels per day, and oil refining has begun, producing an alternative fuel for lamps. In the U.S. Civil War, the Union is using whaling ships for naval blockades, contributing to the decline in whaling.

1861  China's Manchu emperor, Xianfeng, has been weakened by debauchery and drugs and dies at the age of thirty. The son of his consort succeeds him. The former consort, Cixi, becomes the boy's regent and acquires the title Dowager Empress.

1861  In Germany, workers making mirrors have lost all of their teeth. A professor of medicine discovers they are victims of mercury poisoning. His findings lead to government regulations requiring alternative mirror making processes.

1861  In Britain a government commission begins to investigate non-textile industries employing children. Occupational diseases among children are discovered.

1862  In Prussia, the largest of the German states, a member of the landed aristocracy, Otto von Bismarck, becomes minister-president. Representing the king, he declares that his government is to rule without parliament.

1862   In the king's court in Siam, women being taught English by Christian missionaries are turned off by their sermons. Anna Leonowens arrives in Bangkok to teach English in their place. She is the English woman to be depicted in The King and I.

1862  Miners have begun invading the Rocky Mountains and plains and clashing with Indians. The Lakota Sioux massacre or capture almost 1,000 people on the Minnesota frontier.

1862  In the United States the first paper money is issued.

1863  Thirty-eight Lakota Sioux are hanged before a crowd of angry whites in the town of Mankato Minnesota.

1863  President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation becomes law. 

1863  Slavery ends in Dutch ruled Indonesia.

1863  Cambodia become a French protectorate, with the approval of its king, Norodom.

1863  In Britain, legislators respond to air pollution from the chemical industry by creating the Alkali Act for reducing hydrogen chloride emissions during alkali production.

1863  In London, the first underground (subway) passenger system opens.

1863  The U.S. civil war has cut Russia off from its primary source of cotton. Cotton growing in Central Asia has become of greater importance to the Russians, and Russia sends its military into Central Asia, where people are sparse, largely tribal, economically undeveloped, and Muslim.

1863  A devout Baptist, John D. Rockerfeller, age 24, enters the oil refining business.

1864  The Dutch in Java and Sumatra experiment with rubber cultivation.

1864  An atronomer calculates the distance to the sun as 147 million kilometers -- short 2.6 million kilometers. 

1864  In China, the leader of the Taiping Rebellion, Hong Xiuchuan, proclaims that God will defend his city, Tianjin (southeast of Beijing). When government forces approach he swallows poison and dies. The monarchy re-establishes control over most areas of China. The Taiping rebellion is all but defeated.

1864   A few hand-cranked Gatling guns, designed by Richard Gatling in 1861, are in use in the U.S. Civil War. 

1865  Miners have been invading Colorado Territory, dislocating and angering Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. A Cheyenne-Arapaho war against whites has erupted. An Indian chief of a band of Cheyenne and Arapaho has chosen peace. They have settled temporarily at Sand Creek. A military commander, Colonel Chivington, is intent on killing Indians and leads 700 men in a massacre at Sand Creek that includes women and children.

1865  The U.S. Civil War ends with General Robert E. Lee and his officers surrendering their swords. President Lincoln is assassinated.

1865  The Winnebago Indians have been removed from Iowa, Minnesota and that part of Dakota Territory that is to be South Dakota. And they are put on a reservation in Nebraska.

1865  The Central Pacific Railroad Company hires Chinese to work on the transcontinental railroad.

1865  In what today is Uzbekistan, Russians capture the city of Tashkent, which is to become a Russian administrative center.

1865  Over-reaction in crushing a rebellion in Jamaica produces an investigation in England. The island's governor is widely condemned and called to London. Some demand that he be tried for murder. He is removed from office but a grand jury refuses to indict him.

1866  In New Zealand, British regulars, white settlers and Maori loyalists defeat another Maori rebellion.

1866  In the Hawaiian Islands the first plantation workers have arrived, eighty-five percent of them are from China (470 males and 52 females). From Japan, 148 laborers have arrived.   

1866  The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is founded.

1866  A Russian student, acting alone, tries to assassinate Tsar Alexander II.  The government becomes hostile to all students. A new minister of education takes charge of the universities and applies stricter controls.

1867 One in five adult males in England and Wales can vote. Demonstrations erupt across Britain. A demonstration in London's Hyde Park is banned by the government, but the crowd is s are so huge that the government does not attack. The Reform Act of 1867 is passed, extending the vote to those individuals in whose name homes are owned or rented. This doubles the number of males in Wales and England who can vote. Politicians must account themselves to the increased electorate, but the upper classes can better afford the increased campaigning, which helps conservative candidates.

1867  The government of Tsar Alexander II is seeking consolidation of its the frontier. It sells Alaska to the United States.

1867  The United States Congress abolishes peonage in the territory of New Mexico.

1867  In the United States, the Republican Party has gained more seats in Congress, and Congress overrides President Andrew Johnson's veto of the "Reconstruction Act." An army, including a black militia, is sent to the South to enforce the law. 

1867  In Vienna, the Blue Danube Waltz, by Johann Strauss, premiers.

1867  In the U.S., five all-black colleges are founded: Howard University in Washington D.C., Morgan State College in Maryland, Talladega College in Alabama,  St. Augustine's College and Johnson C. Smith College in North Carolina.

1867  The Jesse James gang robs a bank in Savannah, Missouri, killing one person.

1867  Dating trees by their annual rings begins.

1867  In Sweden, Alfred Nobel finds that when nitroglycerin is combined with an absorbent substance it becomes safer and more convenient to manipulate. His mixture is patented as dynamite.

1867  E. Remington and Sons, manufacturers of guns and sewing machines, develop and manufacture the first commercial typewriter.

1867  Crown Prince Mutsuhito, age 14 ascends throne as Emperor Meiji.

1868  Feudal lords and others have been conspiring against the Tokugawa rule. A rallying cry is, "Honor the Emperor; expel the barbarian."  Despite the anti-barbarian slogan, U.S., British, French and Dutch forces join against the shogunate, shelling costal fortresses and sinking the shogun's ships. Tokugawa rule is declared over. The capital, Edo, is renamed Tokyo. The emperor rules nominally while civil war continues. Attacks on foreigners continue, but people with influence and power do not want to provoke intervention by the Western Powers and move to end such attacks.  

1868  In the United States the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution is ratified. This overturns the Dred Scott case. It entitles all persons born or naturalized in the United States to citizenship and equal protection under the law. Civil rights aree not extended to Indians or anyone who has held office in the Confederacy.

1868  George Custer and his Seventh Cavalry follow tracts of a small raiding party to a Cheyenne village on the Washita River, in western Oklahoma, within the borders of the Cheyenne reservation. There they slaughter Black Kettle, his family and others of the Cheyenne tribe.

1868  Reconstructed governments had been set up in Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina.

1869  Tokugawa forces that have attempted to establish rule in Hokkaido are defeated. Leaders of the military victory over the Tokugawa begin associating Emperor Meiji with Shinto ideology. Shinto shrines are common on Buddhist temple grounds, and, in an effort to free Shinto from Buddhist domination, violence and the breaking of images is committed against Buddhism. Buddhist temple lands are confiscated.

1869  The transcontinental railroad is completed, ending six years of work. Track from west and east meet in Utah.

1869  The Suez Canal opens. It is largely French owned but eager for international business. Access is promised ships from all nations, for a fee. The canal is to reduce travel time between Europe and Asia. Giuseppe Verdi has written an opera for the opening celebration - Aida.

1869  One-third of the population of Savu (in the Indonesian Archipelago) dies from smallpox.

1869  The Territory of Wyoming allows women to vote.

1870  The Territory of Utah allows women to vote.

1870  Pius IX convenes the First Vatican Council, at which papal infallibility is proclaimed on matters of faith and morals.

1870  Diamond deposits have been discovered  in southern Africa, at Kimberley in the land of the Griqua, or Griqualand, on the northern frontier of the British colony. Diamond diggers are rushing there -- Africans, whites from Europe, Australia and the Americas.

1870  Australia now has a substantial number of Germans and Catholic Irish, who worshiped freely. The Irish have found Australia to be without the oppressions they had known in Ireland. 

1870  In Pennsylvania a coal mine fire suffocates 179 men. The state responds by passing mine safety laws.

1870  Joseph Lister believes that microorganisms transmit disease. He reports success in sterilizing tools used in surgery.

1870  Bismarck believes that war will arouse nationalist fervor and serve to unite the independent German states with Prussia. France opposes such unity. Bismarck wants a showdown with France and tricks the French into starting war. The Franco-Prussian War begins in July. In September the Prussians defeat the French decisively at Sedan and capture the French emperor, Napoleon III. The emperor is deposed. France's Second Empire ends and Third Republic begins.  

1870  In Britain, France, Germany, Austria and in Scandinavian countries, trade relative to population size has increased four to five times what it was in 1830. In Belgium and the Netherlands the increase is about three times.

1871  The war between Prussia and France officially ends with the Treaty of Frankfurt. Bismarck's success has enhanced respect among Germans for his authoritarianism as opposed to the liberalism of his critics. Bavaria agrees to unify with Prussia. France cedes to Germany Alsace and Lorraine, and it is not popular among the people there. French forces crush the Paris Commune, and as many as 30,000 "Communards" and innocent Parisians are summarily executed.

1871  The Meiji government sends a few men to Europe and to the U.S., hoping to secure abolition of the Unequal Treaties and to examine Western technology, banking and agricultural techniques -- the Iwakura Mission.

1871  Life expectancy at birth in England has risen from 36 years in 1700 to 41 years. (Calculated in a study in the 1980s by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure.)

1872  In Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Charles Taze Russell begins what will become the Jehovah's Witnesses.

1872   Speaking to Union Leaders in Holland, Karl Marx speaks of the possibility of victory for the working class through electoral politics. 

1872  All former Confederate States have returned to the Union (the United States). An Amnesty Act restores the vote to those whites in the South who have been denied it.

1873  Japan's mission to Europe and the United States returns hopeful that Japan can catch up with the West in modernization. The Meiji government declares religious freedom and ends Confucianism as official state ideology.

1873  Russia's government orders students in Switzerland to return to Russia. The returning students launch a "To the People" movement, which they hope will revolutionize society.

1874  Germany is suffering a small pox epidemic. Vaccination becomes mandatory.

1874   In the United States, barbed wire has been invented. It is sold to farmers to keep passing herds of cattle off their land. 

1874  Britain makes a colony of coastal territory 100 kilometers deep and 400 kilometers wide in what today is Ghana. During fighting there a British commander has his troops wear brown jackets and khaki trousers rather than the traditional red coats -- a move toward camouflage.  

1875  In Canada the light bulb is invented. Thomas Edison buys the patent.

1875  Britain has bought into part ownership of the Suez Canal enterprise.

1875  Southern Africa has became the largest diamond producing area in the world.

1875  Prospectors discover gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota, an area that the U.S. government has promised the Sioux would be theirs forever.

1875  An attempt by Ottoman agents to collect taxes in Herzegovina leads to a popular uprising, and the rebellion spreads to Bosnia. 

1876  Rebellion against Ottoman rule has spread to Bulgaria. A reformist group in Turkey deposes Sultan Abd al-Aziz. Murad V becomes sultan but is declared insane. Abd al-Hamid becomes sultan and he accepts the new constitution.

1876  Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone

1876  In the former Confederate states, conservatives have gained power and are running what they called "redeemed" governments. Some of these governments are inventing ways to limit voting by blacks: complicated ballot boxes, literacy tests and poll taxes.

1876  The Russians have conquered all of Uzbekistan and occupy the northern part of Kyrgyzstan.

1876  German physician Robert Koch establishes an procedure that proves the germ theory of disease and boosts microbiology and the identification of microorganisms. Soon there will be a substantion shift among many people from concern with the devil to concern with germs.

1876  Colorado becomes a state.  Sioux and Cheyenne warriors annihilate Lieutenant Colonel George Custer and 210 or so of his Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn River. White Americans are outraged and demand retribution. The U.S. government redraws Indian reservation boundaries.

1876  A three-year-old Niño-caused drought has devastated India, China and Brazil, causing as many as 30 million deaths from starvation and disease.

1876  Japan forces the Koreans to accept a trade agreement similar to Commodore Perry's demands to the Japanese government back in 1853.

1877  A punitive expedition under Colonel Nelson Miles defeats the Sioux and Cheyenne. The Crow and Blackfoot Indians are ejected from their reservations. In Colorado, holdings of the Ute Indians are confiscated and opened to settlement. Gold is discovered on the Salmon River in Idaho, and whites begin invading territory that was promised to the peaceful Nez Perce Indians. War erupts, and the U.S. Army defeats the Nez Perce.

1877  The U.S. economy has been on a down swing, and labor unrest has spread across the country. Three million men, roughly 27 percent of the working population are unemployed. In San Francisco there is bitterness over wealthy people hiring Chinese. A popular orator, Denis Kearney, is haranguing the crowds with his slogan, "The Chinese must go." 

1877  Thomas Edison develops the gramophone and phonograph.

1877  The last of union troops are withdrawn from former Confederates states.

1877  In Japan, agrarian and samurai revolts against government reforms have been defeated militarily, the largest being the Satsuma Rebellion, involving several thousand men. A society is founded similar to the Red Cross. The fighting drains the national treasury and leads to inflation.

1877  The British intend to protect the Boers (Afrikaners of Dutch, French and German descent) from the Zulus and to repair the Boer Republic financially. They suppose that a majority of Boers favor British rule and they annex the republic. 

1877  Supporting their fellow Orthodox Christians in the Balkans, the Russians are marching toward Constantinople.

1878  The defeated Nez Perce nation is sent to a reservation in Oklahoma.

1878  Sultan Abd al-Hamid has dismissed the new liberal constitution and reformist politicians. The first attempt in modern times to graft western political ideas onto Islamic society has failed. All opposition is suppressed and all governmental power transferred to the Sultan's palace.

1878  The British fear Russia's expansion southward. The word jingoism is on the way, rising from a popular song in Britain that begins: "We don’t want to fight, but by jingo if we do We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men and got the money too!"

1878  European powers get together in Berlin to settle problems regarding revolts and war against the Ottoman Empire. They create problems for the future that will lead to the disastrous war Great War of 1914. They settle matters to some degree in accordance with national determination, recognizing Bulgarian and Romanian independence and giving independence to Montenegro and Serbia, but they also defer to old fashioned empire: the Habsburg monarchy in Vienna is given approval of its takeover in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Vienna's army, carrying symbols of Roman Catholicism is crushing Orthodox Serb resistance. 

1878  Cyprus transfers from Ottoman to British control.

1878  Fearing Russia's advances into Turkistan and Samarqand, the British occupy Kabul. The "Second Afghan War" has begun.

1878  Vera Zasulich, a member of the youthful radical group "Land and Liberty," seeks revenge for the beating that one of her activist friends has received in prison. She shoots and wounds the military governor of St. Petersburg and is tried by a jury, which fails to convict her. The government responds by ending jury trials for people charged with politically motivated crimes. The government also steps up its arrest and exile of persons suspected of supporting terrorism. 

1878  The British order the King of the Zulus, Cetshwayo, to disband his army of four to six thousand. He refuses. The Zulus defeat the British at Isandhwana, killing 800 British and capturing 1,000 rifles, with ammunition.

1879  With the help of Gatling guns, the British overpower the Zulus, at the Battle of Ulundi. Queen Victoria urges "kind and generous treatment of Cetshwayo," who is exiled to Cape Town. By now the hand-cranked Gatling gun could fire 1,200 rounds per minute -- 400 rounds per minute said to be more reasonable. 

1879  A yellow-fever epidemic begins in New Orleans.

1879  A territorial dispute between Bolivia and Chile erupts into war. The prize is nitrate deposits. Chile makes war also against Peru. 

1879  In Constantinople, Turkish authorities forbid Armenian performances.

1879  Interested in peace among Europe's powers, Bismarck joins his Germany with Austria-Hungary in a defensive alliance. 

1879  St. Petersburg had its first significant strike by industrial workers.

1880  After many failed attempts to assassinate Alexander II, radicals fail again, blowing up the dining room at the tsar's palace, killing eleven and wounding fifty-six. The tsar was late for dinner. Police arrest many members of the radical group "Will of the People," almost destroying the organization.

1880  In Europe, the industrialization of food has begun with new technology replacing the stone grinding of grains. The oil in flour will now quickly turn rancid, so it is removed. The new flour is without valuable nutrients, which is unknown to those processing the grains. Vitamins will not be discovered until the 1930s.

1880  John D. Rockefeller’s empire controls 95 percent of U.S. oil refining. In less than eighty years, the whaling industry on the Pacific ocean has collapsed. 

1880  The conservative British politician, Benjamin Disraeli, for the last six years has been in his second run as Britain's Prime Minister. Many are unhappy with his having raised taxes and unhappy about the cost of military operations. Election results are not in his favor and he steps down.

1881  A member of the radical group, "Will of the People" assassinates Tsar Alexander II.  His son and successor, Alexander III, makes no distinction between terrorists and political activists of the non-violent variety. Censorship is tightened. Publishers and writers with liberal ideas are harassed.

1881  Austria-Hungary joins Germany's alliance with Russia, a move encouraged by Bismarck, who hopes that Russia and Austria-Hungary will manage their rivalry in the Balkans.

1881  In the Transvaal, Boers (Afrikaners) rebel against British rule and defeat the British at Majuba Hill. Britain's prime minister, Gladstone, returns self-rule to the Boer Republic except for control of foreign affairs.

1881  France declares Tunisia a protectorate.

1881  Tennessee's legislature mandates racial segregation on railroads.

1881  Muhammad Ahmad leads a pan-Islamic rebellion amid cries for war against infidels. He proclaims himself the Mahdi (Messiah) who is to rid the world of evil.

1882  In response to a nationalist revolt in Egypt against Ottoman rule, Britain and France support the Ottoman sultan. A British army defeats an Egyptian force at the Battle of Tell al-Kabir. Britain is concerned about the Suez Canal, and Queen Victoria wants to protect Christians in Egypt. Exercising her power to consult with and advise her government, she favors keeping troops in Egypt.

1882  Massachusetts passes a pure food law.

1882  The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by the U.S. Congress, goes into effect.

1882  In Appleton Wisconsin a hydroelectric power plant begins operation.

1882  Alexander III believes that Jews are the killers of Christ. Pogroms against Jews have been spreading across Russia's empire. They are being expelled from Moscow and are fleeing the empire.

1882  German physician Robert Koch, discovers the rod-shaped bacterium that causes tuberculosis.

1883  Robert Koch discovers the rod-shaped bacterium that causes cholera.

1883  Bismarck introduces a state heath insurance law.

1883  Karl Marx dies, John Maynard Keynes and Benito Mussolini are born.

1883  The Ottoman sultan, Abd al-Hamid II, has his former prime minister, Midhat Pasha, strangled.

1883   The Orient Express railway opens between Constantinople and Baghdad.

1884  After five years of war, Chile against Peru and Bolivia, and Bolivia is now landlocked.

1884  France incorporates Vietnam into its empire. In Africa, France occupies Guinea.

1884  In Uganda, Christians object to the King Mwanga's homosexual relations with young boys and men who serve him as pages and attendants. Mwanga, has numerous Christians put to death, some by burning. Christians arm themselves and ally with local Muslims in a civil war against Mwanga.

1884  Britain proclaims a protectorate over the southern coast of New Guinea and adjacent islands. The Germans turn northeastern New Guinea into a colony. The Germans are trading in copra and coconut oil.

1884  In Africa, Germany declares Togoland, Cameroon and Southwest Africa as protectorates. The British feel their interests threatened.

1884  In the United States an insurance salesman, Lewis E. Waterman, creates a fountain pen that is not supposed to leak.

1884   Britain sends a force to the Sudan to supervise an Egyptian withdrawal from Khartoum, and the force takes charge of 2,500 women, children, sick and wounded. Muhammad Ahmad's force surrounds them. The British government's rejects a request for military help from a Sudanese slave trader and warlord.

1885  After ten months, Muhammad Ahmad overrun's the British force in Khartoum. Its leader, Charles Gordon, is killed.

1885  With help from the British, who are involved in neighboring Sudan, Italy takes from the Egyptians control over what today is Eritrea.

1885  European powers meet in Berlin and make agreements concerning Africa. They give King Leopold of Belgium control of the Congo. Germany acquires what is today Tanzania as a protectorate. Britain annexes what today is Botswana and approves Germany's position in Southwest Africa and the interior of Cameroon. France is colonizing Central Africa and establishes a little colony on the northern tip of Madagascar.

1885  Germany buys some of the Marshall Islands from Spain, a transaction mediated by Pope Leo XIII.

1885  In Germany, Karl Benz develops an internal combustion engine. It can run at 250 revolutions per minute.

1885  A bicycle with a diamond-shaped frame and a chain drive to the rear wheel is exhibited in London.

1886  Britain and Germany agree on a boundary between German East Africa and Rhodesia. Germany recognized Britain's claim to Zanzibar.

1886  Gold is discovered in the Transvaal - Boer territory.

1886  In Germany, Heinrich Hertz uses sparks to send a radio signal.

1886  After a four-year effort, American troops capture the Apache chieftain Geronimo.

1887  The Interstate Commerce Act is made law. Financier-industrialist J.P. Morgan believes that some order is needed in commerce and he helps enforce the act.

1887   Ethiopians are fighting Italy's attempt at colonization. The Italians remain in Eritrea. 

1887  The Yellow River bursts its banks, and the flooding kills 900,000 Chinese.

1888   George Eastman invents the Kodak camera, making it easy for non-professionals to take photographs.

1888  In London, five prostitutes who ate poisoned grapes have been disemboweled. The murders are attributed to Jack the Ripper.

1888  The German Emperor dies. His son, Friederich III, dies of throat cancer after reigning 99 days. Friederich's son, Wilhelm II, son of Queen Victoria's politically liberal daughter, Vicki, becomes emperor. 

1888  Slavery officially ends in Brazil. Compensation is paid to the slave owners.

1888  Brazil overthrows its monarchy and becomes a republic. 

1889  The Ivory Coast becomes a French protectorate, and the English and French agree on spheres of influence on the Gold Coast and on the Senegal and Gambia rivers.

1889  In a small town in Austria, Braunau, by the River Inn, which borders Germany, Adolf Hitler is born, to a mother who is a normally good woman and of humble origins. (baby picture)

1889  John Muir campaigns to save Yosemite Valley in California from exploitation.

1889  North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington became states.

1890  Idaho becomes the 43rd state. Denial of statehood to Wyoming because it allows women to vote is overcome. Wyoming becomes the 44th state.

1890  The U.S. Congress creates Yosemite National Park

1890  In Constantinople, Armenians in the district of Gum-Gapu protest, and authorities crush the demonstration with bloodshed.

1890  An Indian named Wovoka foresees a messiah rescuing Indians and killing all whites. Acceptance of the vision spreads and is associated with a "ghost dance." Without foundation, whites fear that Sitting Bull, now an old man, will lead a rebellion, and Sitting Bull is shot and killed. About 500 U.S. soldiers massacre 300 or so men, women and children at Wounded Knee.

1890  Forty-five percent of the work force in the United States lives in cities. The South is abandoning its dependence on cotton growing.

1890  Mississippi creates a poll tax, literacy tests and other measures to prevent blacks from voting.

1890  Vincent Van Gogh commits suicide.

1890  For the sake of popularity, Wilhelm II does not renew Bismarck's anti-socialist legislation. As Wilhelm desired, Bismarck resigns. 

1890   Economies in Europe have been in a down turn. British investors sell their U.S. stocks for needed money.

1891  Hawaii's King Kalakaua dies of kidney disease and is succeeded by his brilliant sister, Liliuokalani.

1891  In West Africa, the French invade the Mandinka Empire, employing artillery and machine guns. The Mandinka ruler, Samoie Touré, resorts to a scorched earth policy and shifts his empire to the east.

1891  In the United States, W. L. Judson develops a zipper.

1891  Germany's Social Democratic Party advocates the 8-hour day, prohibition of child labor under the age of 14; government regulation of working conditions, the abolition of laws that restrict the right of people to assemble, direct suffrage by secret ballot, the election of judges, an end to laws that put women at a disadvantage as compared with men, a graduated income and property tax, free medical attention, a people's militia for defense, secularized public education and no public money supporting religious institutions.

1891  The German government initiates the first public old-age pension system.

1891  Various Turkish intellectuals, including in the military, are drawing inspiration from the West. In institutions of higher learning secret societies have formed. Exiles called Young Turks meet in Geneva to organize a nationalist movement against Sultan Hamid's rule. His repressions are failing.

1892  Journalist Ida B. Wells begins to investigate lynching of blacks after three of her friends are lynched in Tennessee.

1892  In Pennsylvania a bloody five-month strike fails at one of Andrew Carnegie's steel mills.

1892  In Russian ruled Poland, unrest among workers brings an attack sent by authorities that kills 46.

1892  The Sierra Club is founded, with 182 charter members. John Muir is elected president. The club defeats an effort to reduce the boundaries of Yosemite National Park.

1893  Hawaii's Queen Liliuokalane is planning a constitution that will deprive white businessmen and professionals of their power in government, despite their not being Hawaiian citizens. She plans to spread power to Hawaiian citizens. The U.S. president, Benjamin Harrison moves for annexation of Hawaii. Liluokalane is overthrown by an armed militia of whites. In March, Grover Cleveland becomes U.S. President and opposes annexation because the people of Hawaii do not favor it. But the whites who overthrew Liliuokalane remain in power.

1893  Laos becomes a French protectorate.

1893  A mounted British column crosses the Umniati River into Matabeleland (today Zimbabwe. They have rifles, two 7-pounder field guns and a number of Maxim machine guns. Six thousand Ndebele warriors attack the British encampment. Hundreds of Ndebele die. Less than 10 members of the British column are killed or wounded.

1893  New Zealand is the first country to give women the vote in national elections.

1893  Colorado becomes the first state in U.S. to allow women to vote in state elections.

1893  The U.S. economy has benefited from the rising sale of agricultural products to Europe, but Europe is in an economic contraction. In the United States, what has been a booming economy plunges. The Reading Railroad has collapsed financially. Hundreds of banks and businesses dependent upon the Reading and other railroads have failed. Gold is being exported to Europe. Money in circulation declines. Agricultural depression spreads in the West and South of the United States. Unemployment jumps from three percent in 1892 to between 8 and 12 percent.

1894  In the United States, unemployment jumps to between 12 and 18.4 percent.

1894  Alexander III dies of kidney disease. His eldest son, at 26, is crowned Tsar Nicholas II. His main interest is devotion to God and an undisturbed family life. A few days after his coronation, trinkets and such are presented to the masses as presents from the tsar. Surging forward to the gifts in an open field, more than a thousand people are trampled to death. Nicholas visits churches, venerating saints, and where he appears, devout Russians follow the custom of falling to their knees at the sight of him and his entourage - a moment of silence usually followed by roaring cheers.

1894  Dahomey becomes a French colony.

1894  Korea's king calls for help from China to suppress riots. Opposed to China's influence in Korea, Japan sends troops and takes control of Korea. Japan's military moves north from Korea into Manchuria, and they move eastward to Port Arthur.

1894  Captain Alfred Dreyfus is falsely accused of passing military information to German agents and is sent to Devil's Island. Rightwing haters of the Republic and its secularism, associate the treason of Dreyfus, a Jew, with government malfeasance. 

1894  An antiquated military force from Manchu China is overwhelmed by Japan's more modern force.

1895  China signs the Treaty of Shimonoseki, ceding to Japan control over the Liaodong peninsula to Port Arthur, ceding to Japan Taiwan and permitting Japanese to live in and trade with Chinese.

1895  In Germany, Wilhelm Roentgen develops X-rays

1895  Studies in Hysteria by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud launch an Age of Analysis.

1895  In Russia the average male dies at 31.4 years-of-age and the average woman at 33.3.

1895  From Florida, Jose Marti and other exiles arrive in Cuba and start another war for independence from Spain. Marti is killed but a guerrilla war continues, the guerrillas outnumbered five to one by Spain's forces.

1896  The United States Supreme Court rules that "separate but equal" public facilities for whites and blacks are legal.

1896  The National Association of Colored Women is formed, bringing together more than 100 black women's clubs

1896  Utah becomes the 45th state, and Idaho allows women to vote. 

1896  In Constantinople, Armenian nationalists attack the Ottoman Bank. Authorities retaliate and 3,000 Armenians die.

1896  The British are alarmed by the spread of French influence in southern Sudan. Britain's military leader, Horatio Kitchener leads an army into the Sudan.

1896  Britain declares Ashanti (today Ghana) a protectorate.

1896  At Adwa, in the far north of Ethiopia, Ethiopians defeat an Italian army, saving themselves from colonial rule. 

1896  In Matabeleland, rebels kill more than 120 white settlers. A force of 500 whites is assemble and end the rebellion. 

1896  In France the real spy in the Dreyfus Affair has been found, but the French Army prefers to keep its mistake hidden and to maintain Dreyfus, still on Devil's Island, as guilty.

1897  The novelist Émile Zola denounces the French General Staff  regarding the Dreyfus Affair. Zola is prosecuted for libel and flees to England.

1897  Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist from Hungary, has been disturbed by the anti-Semitism connected with the Dreyfus Affair. He organizes and holds the first Zionist Congress.

1897 German forces occupy and start to build a naval base at TsingDao (QingDao) following the murder of two German missionaries. This provokes a European and American rush for concessions in China.

1897  In Cuba, Spain has a "Reconstruction Policy," trying to separate the rural population and the guerrillas.  Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have been herded into camps, which are disease-ridden and where malnourishment spreads. A total of 321,934 people will be counted as having perished under the Reconstruction Policy. Hostility by newspapers and the public in the United States against Spain rises sharply.

1897  The first subway (underground) passenger system in the United States opens in Boston Massachusetts.

1898  Spain fails militarily and grants limited autonomy to Cuba. The battleship U.S.S. Maine is sent on a "courtesy" visit to Havana, with words of friendship to Spain, which sends a naval ship to New York in exchange. The Maine blows up in Cuba's Havana harbor, killing 266. Spain's government is blamed. Spain denies the charge. President McKinley gives into passions, goes before Congress, asks and receives authority to send troops to Cuba. Spain refuses an ultimatum and the U.S. declares war. On May 1, the U.S. Navy, at the Battle of Manila Bay, defeats a Spanish squadron. On June 10, U.S. Marines land at Guantanamo. On July 1 the Battle of San Juan Hill takes place, with 1,200 U.S. and 593 Spanish casualties.

1898  In June, Congress passes a resolution that annexes Hawaii. In July, President McKinley signs it into law. 

1898  Spain sues for peace. A formal peace treaty is signed in Paris in December. The United States acquires all of Spain's colonies, including the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico. Cuba is recognized as independent.

1898  Britain obtains a 99-year lease of Hong Kong from the Chinese.

1898  In China and India the bubonic plague begins to kill what will eventually be three million people.

1898  A force of  8,200 British and 17,600 Sudanese troops, under British command, win against more numerous Dervish warriors, at the battle of Omdurman, in the Sudan, near Khartoum. The British lose 48 dead. An estimated 5,000 Dervish are taken prisoner and 10,000 are killed. 

1898  Flashbulb photography begins. 

1898  A gold rush is on in Canada's Yukon Territory.

1898  A book by a Polish financier, Ivan Bloch, is widely distributed in Europe that predicts the kind of warfare to be fought in World War I. Bloch describes warfare as no longer a solution to diplomatic problems. 

1899  The United States refuses to recognize the new republic in the Philippines. Wanting Wake Island  for a cable link to the Philippines, the U.S. claims the island. War erupts as two U.S. privates fire upon and kill three Filiopino soldiers on the outskirts of Manila.

1899  Rudyard Kipling writes the poem "Take up the White Man's Burden," which speaks of "new caught sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child."

1899  British settlers had streamed into Boer country with the discovery of gold there. The gold mines became British owned. Various British colonial leaders wanted to annex the two Boer republics. War erupts, with the Boers striking first. 

1899  Alfred Dreyfus is pardoned.

1899  Valdermar Poulsen of Denmark develops the first tape recorder.

1899  The boll weevil crosses the Rio Grande and begins to spread through U.S. cotton fields, damaging Southern cotton production and stimulating a migration of blacks to the North.

1899  Germany acquires islands in the northern Mariana and Caroline Islands. A treaty is signed in Berlin recognizing Western Samoa as a German colony, U.S. control of American Samoa, and Britain as having power over the Island of Tonga.

1899  Tsar Nicholas II moves to tighten control over autonomous Finland, and  Finnish resistance to the Russian tsar's rule begins.

1899  The McKinley administration hopes to build prosperity at home through trade with China. It calls for equal trading rights among all powers in all parts of China and for China's territorial integrity - a so-called Open Door policy. It is ignored except that Russia and Japan voice displeasure.

1899  In China angry men take up terrorism. They are known as Boxers. More than terrorists, they are nationalists. In the streets that display slogans such as "protect the country and destroy the foreigner." At least half of them are youths, and they have religious fervor. They fear magic created by the Christians. They attack and kill Christian missionaries and Chinese converts to Christianity. Rather than rebels, they have government approval. 

1900  The U.S., Japan, and European nations send military forces to China to rescue people and to put down what the West calls the Boxer Rebellion. Filled with vengeful wrath, troops move through Beijing, attacking those they believe are Boxers. They injure and pillage the property of innocent Chinese.

1900  Unemployment in the United States is back down around 5 percent, close to what it was in 1891.

1900  Carry Nation and friends, with hatchets, cross Kansas, smashing glass in saloons.

1900  Another Anglo-Asante war erupts, in what today is Ghana. Asanti warriors abandon skirmishing for  frontal attacks against British machine guns.

1900  In the United States, the Hawaiian Islands are deemed U.S. Territory.

1900  In the United States the paper clip is invented. 

1900  1.5 million telephones are in use in the United States, in a population of 75.8 million.

1900   In Britain the average male is dead at 51.5 years of age, the average woman at 55.4. In France these figures were 45.4 and 50, in Spain at 41 and 42.5.

1900   Germany leads the world in literacy. Germany is well supplied with engineers, chemists, opticians, skilled workers for its factories, skilled managers, knowledgeable farmers and skilled military personnel. Literacy is said to be above 90 percent in Britain, France, Norway, Sweden, and Australia; between 70 and 90 percent in the United States, Canada and Japan; 78 percent in Italy; 50 to 70 in the Balkans; 30 to 50 percent range in Russia; and below 30 percent in China, India, Africa and the Islamic countries.

1900  World population is roughly 1.7 billion, up from about 1 billion in 1800.

 

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