The 19th century lasted
from 1801 to 1900 in the Gregorian calendar (using the Common Era system
of year numbering). Common usage sometimes regards it as lasting from
1800 to 1899, but this is considered incorrect due to the nonexistence
of a "Year Zero" before AD 1. The 19th century is also sometimes
known as the eighteen hundreds (1800s), referring to the latter usage.
Decades are almost always considered as starting with the "0"
year and named accordingly ("1890s", etc.), so the first decade
of a century technically overlaps back into the preceding one.
Historians sometime use "Nineteenth Century" as a label for
the era stretching from 1815 (The Congress of Vienna) to 1914 (The outbreak
of the First World War).
Overview
The 19th century continued and expanded the industrial revolution which
had begun in the preceding century. It was a century of widespread invention
and discovery, and one in which social, cultural, and economic systems
were heavily affected by science and technology and the business models
built on them, such as a shift from independent artisans and craftspersons
to wage laborers employed by large factories as the primary means of production.
It was the heyday of capitalism, but it was also the century in which
the major opposing ideologies, socialism and communism, arose. The successes
up to that time in building mechanical devices and in discovering the
natural laws of the universe led to a widespread belief by the end of
the century that the world ran predictably as by clockwork and that all
of its mysteries would soon be solved by modern science; and, similarly,
all of the social problems of human society could be solved too by application
of scientific principles.
The religious revival of the Second Great Awakening in the eastern United
States and Canada gave rise to unique, American, Christian religions during
the era of Restorationism.
Events
* 1801: The Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland merge
to form the United Kingdom.
* 1803: The United States buys out France's territorial claims in North
America via the Louisiana Purchase.
* 1805-48: Muhammad Ali modernizes Egypt.
* 1806: Holy Roman Empire dissolved.
* 1810s-20s: South American Wars of Independence
* 1812-15: War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain
* 1815: Congress of Vienna redraws the European map.
* 1815: Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo brings a conclusion to the Napoleonic
Wars.
* 1816: Year Without a Summer
* 1816-28: Shaka's Zulu kingdom becomes the largest in Southern Africa.
* 1819: The modern city of Singapore is established by the British East
India Company.
* 1820: Liberia founded by the American Colonization Society for freed
American slaves.
* 1821-32: Greek War of Independence
* 1830: France invades and occupies Algeria.
* 1830: Belgian Revolution
* 1833: Slavery Abolition Act bans slavery throughout the British Empire.
* 1833-76: Carlist Wars in Spain.
* 1834: Spanish Inquisition officially ends.
* 1835-36: Texas Revolution in Mexico
* 1837-1901: Queen Victoria's reign is considered the apex of the British
Empire and is referred to as the Victorian era.
* 1839-60: After two Opium Wars, Great Britain, France, the United States
and Russia gain many concessions from China.
* 1845-49: Irish Potato Famine
* 1848: The Communist Manifesto published.
* 1848: Revolutions of 1848 in Europe
* 1848-58: California Gold Rush
* 1851-60s: Victorian gold rush in Australia
* 1851-64: The Taiping Rebellion in China
* 1854: The Convention of Kanagawa formally ends Japan's policy of Sakoku.
* 1854-56: Crimean War between Great Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire
and Russia
* 1857-58: Indian rebellion of 1857
* 1859: The Origin of Species published.
* 1861-65: American Civil War
* 1866: Successful transatlantic telegraph cable follows an earlier attempt
in 1858.
* 1866: Austro-Prussian War results in Dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary.
* 1866-69: Meiji Restoration in Japan
* 1867: The United States purchased Alaska from Russia.
* 1869: First Transcontinental Railroad completed in United States.
* 1869: The Suez Canal opens linking the Mediterranean Sea to the Red
Sea.
* 1870-71: Franco-Prussian War results in the unifications of Germany
and Italy.
* 1872: Yellowstone National Park created.
* 1874: The British East India Company is dissolved.
* 1877: The first recording by Thomas Edison, which was of Mary Had a
Little Lamb.
* 1878: First commercial telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut.
* 1879: Anglo-Zulu War in South Africa.
* 1879-84: War of the Pacific between Peru, Bolivia and Chile.
* 1880-1902: Great Britain conquers Dutch settlers in South Africa in
two Boer Wars.
* 1882: First electrical power plant and grid in Manhattan.
* 1884-85: The Berlin Conference signals the start of the European Scramble
for Africa. Attending nations also agree to ban trade in slaves.
* 1890: The Wounded Knee Massacre is the last battle in the American Indian
Wars.
* 1894-95: After the First Sino-Japanese War, China cedes Taiwan to Japan
and grants Japan a free hand in Korea.
* 1898: The United States gains control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the
Philippines after the Spanish-American War.
* 1898-1900: The Boxer Rebellion in China is suppressed by an Eight-Nation
Alliance.
* 1899-1913: The Philippine-American War
Significant people
* Báb, Persian prophet and founder of Bábísm
* Bahá'u'lláh, Persian religious leader and founder of Bahá'í
Faith
* Charles Baudelaire, poet
* Henri Becquerel, physicist
* Ludwig van Beethoven, composer
* Napoleon Bonaparte, French first consul and emperor
* Johannes Brahms, composer
* Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, critic, thinker
* Charles Darwin, biologist
* Charles Dickens, author
* Emily Dickinson, poet
* Benjamin Disraeli, novelist and politician
* Fyodor Dostoevsky, novelist, philosopher/theologian
* Antonin Dvorak, composer
* Thomas Alva Edison, inventor
* Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer
* Michael Faraday, scientist
* Gottlob Frege, mathematician, logician and philosopher
* Antonio de La Gandara, artist
* Carl Friedrich Gauss, mathematician, physicist, astronomer
* Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, author, thinker
* Vincent van Gogh, painter
* Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer
* Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, philosopher
* Hong Xiuquan, revolutionary, self-proclaimed Son of God
* Victor Hugo, poet, politician/theologian, and author
* Søren Kierkegaard, philosopher
* Libertadores, Latin America liberators
* Abraham Lincoln, U.S. president
* Fitz Hugh Ludlow, writer and explorer
* Karl Marx, political philosopher and economist
* James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish physicist
* Gregor Mendel, biologist
* Florence Nightingale, nursing pioneer
* John Stuart Mill, philosopher
* William Morris, social reformer
* Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher
* Nikolai of Japan, religious leader who introduced Eastern Orthodoxy
into Japan.
* Louis Pasteur, biologist
* Edgar Allan Poe, poet, short-story writer
* Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Hindu mystic
* Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher
* Joseph Smith, Jr., religious leader, founder of Mormonism
* Dr. John Snow, the founder of epidemiology
* Leo Tolstoy, novelist, philosopher/theologian, social reformer
* Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), author
* Giuseppe Verdi, composer
* Jules Verne, writer
* Richard Wagner, composer
* Walt Whitman, poet
* Oscar Wilde, poet, writer, playwright
* Brigham Young, Mormon religious leader
Inventions, discoveries, introductions
List of 19th century inventions
* Electromagnetism
* Epidemiology
* Philology
* Department store
* Mail order businesses
* Postage stamps
* Public busses
* Subway
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