(Redirected from Nineteenth Century)
The '19th century' (also written XIX century) lasted from
1801 through
1900 in the
Gregorian calendar.
Overview
Historians sometimes define a "Nineteenth Century"
historical era stretching from
1815 (The
Congress of Vienna) to
1914 (The outbreak of the
First World War); alternatively,
Eric Hobsbawm defined the
"Long Nineteenth Century" as spanning the years
1789 (the
French Revolution) to
1914.
During this century, the
Spanish,
Chinese,
Portuguese, and
Ottoman empires began to crumble and the
Holy Roman and
Mughal empires ceased.
Following the
Napoleonic Wars, the
British Empire became the world's leading power, controlling one quarter of the world's population and one third of the land area. It enforced a
Pax Britannica, encouraged trade, and battled rampant
piracy.
Slavery was greatly reduced around the world. Following a successful
slave revolt in Haiti, Britain forced the
Barbary pirates to halt their practice of kidnapping and enslaving Europeans,
banned slavery throughout its domain, and charged its navy with ending the global slave trade. Slavery was then abolished in
America and
Brazil (see
Abolitionism), and
serfdom was abolished in
Russia
Electricity, steel and petroleum fueled a
Second Industrial Revolution which enabled
Germany,
Japan, and the
United States to become
great powers that
raced to create empires of their own. However,
Russia and
Qing Dynasty China failed to keep pace with the other world powers which led to massive social unrest in both empires.
Events

Map of the world from 1897. The British Empire (marked in pink) was the superpower of the 19th century.
1800s
★
1800: The
Royal College of surgons also known as
Medical School opened.
★
1801: The
Kingdom of Great Britain and the
Kingdom of Ireland merge to form the a
United Kingdom.
★
1801-
15:
Barbary War between the
United States and the
Barbary States of
North Africa
★
1803: The
United States buys out
France's territorial claims in
North America via the
Louisiana Purchase. This begins the U.S.'s westward expansion to the Pacific referred to as its
Manifest Destiny which involves
annexing and conquering land from Mexico, Britain, and Native Americans.
★
1804:
Haiti gains independence from
France and becomes the first black republic, culminating the only successful
slave revolt ever.
★
1804:
Austrian Empire founded by
Francis I.
★
1805-
48:
Muhammad Ali modernizes
Egypt.
★
1806:
Holy Roman Empire dissolved as a consequence of the
Treaty of Lunéville.
★
1807:
Kingdom of Great Britain declares the Slave Trade illegal.
★
1808-
09:
Russia conquers
Finland from
Sweden in the
Finnish War.
★
1809:
Napoleon strips the
Teutonic Knights of their last holdings in
Bad Mergentheim.
1810s

1816:
Shaka rises to power over the
Zulu kingdom
★
1810: The
University of Berlin, the world's first research university, is founded. Among its students and faculty are
Hegel,
Marx, and
Bismarck. The German university reform proves to be so successful that its model is copied around the world (see
History of European research universities).
★
1810s-
20s: Most of the Latin American colonies free themselves from the
Spanish and
Portuguese Empires after the
Mexican War of Independence and the
South American Wars of Independence.
★
1812-
15:
War of 1812 between the
United States and the
United Kingdom
★
1813-
1907: The contest between the
British Empire and
Imperial Russia for control of
Central Asia is referred to as
the Great Game.
★
1815: The
Congress of Vienna redraws the
European map. The
Concert of Europe attempts to preserve this settlement, but it fails to stem the tide of liberalism and nationalism that sweeps over the continent.
★
1815:
Napoleon's defeat at
Waterloo brings a conclusion to the
Napoleonic Wars and marks the beginning of a
Pax Britannica which lasts until 1870.
★
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.
1820s
★
1820:
Liberia founded by the
American Colonization Society for freed American slaves.
★
1821-
27: Greece becomes the first country to break away from the Ottoman Empire after the
Greek War of Independence.
★
1823-
87: The British Empire annexed Burma (now called
Myanmar) after three
Anglo-Burmese Wars.
★
1825:
Erie Canal opened connecting the
Great Lakes to the
Atlantic Ocean.
★
1826-
28: After the final
Russo-Persian War, the
Persian Empire took back territory lost to Russia from the previous war.
★
1825-
28: The
Argentina-Brazil War results in the independence of
Uruguay.
1830s
★
1830:
France invades and occupies Algeria.
★
1830: The
Belgian Revolution in the
United Kingdom of the Netherlands led to the creation of
Belgium.
★
1830:
Greater Colombia dissolved and the nations of
Colombia,
Ecuador,
Venezuela, and
Panama took its place.
★
1833:
Slavery Abolition Act bans slavery throughout the
British Empire.
★
1833-
76:
Carlist Wars in
Spain.
★
1834:
Spanish Inquisition officially ends.
★
1835-
36: The
Texas Revolution in
Mexico resulted in the short-lived
Republic of Texas.
★
1837-
1901:
Queen Victoria's reign is considered the apex of the
British Empire and is referred to as the
Victorian era.
★
1838-
40: Civil war in the
Federal Republic of Central America led to the foundings of
Guatemala,
El Salvador,
Honduras,
Nicaragua, and
Costa Rica.
★
1839-
51:
Uruguayan Civil War
★
1839-
60: After two
Opium Wars, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and
Russia gained many concessions from
China resulting in the decline of the
Qing Dynasty.
1840s
★
1840:
New Zealand is founded, as the
Treaty of Waitangi is signed by the
Maori and
European people.
★
1844:
Millerite movement awaits the
Second Advent of
Jesus Christ on October 22. Christ's non-appearance becomes known as the
Great Disappointment.
★
1844 - Persian Prophet the
Báb announces his revelation, founding
Bábísm. He announced to the world of the coming of "
He whom God shall make manifest." He is considered the forerunner of
Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the
Bahá'í Faith.
★
1845-
49: The
Irish Potato Famine led to the
Irish diaspora.
★
1846-
48: The
Mexican-American War leads to
Mexico's cession of much of the modern-day
Southwestern United States.
★
1846-
47:
Mormon migration to
Utah.
★
1848: ''
The Communist Manifesto'' published.
★
1848:
Revolutions of 1848 in
Europe
★
1848-
58:
California Gold Rush
1850s
★
1850: The
Little Ice Age ends around this time.
★
1851-
60s:
Victorian gold rush in
Australia
★
1851-
64: The
Taiping Rebellion in
China is the bloodiest conflict of the century.
★
1854: The
Convention of Kanagawa formally ends
Japan's policy of
isolation.
★
1854-
56:
Crimean War between France, the United Kingdom, the
Ottoman Empire and
Russia
★
1855:
Bessemer process enables
steel to be mass produced.
★
1856: World's first
oil refinery in
Romania
★
1857-
58:
Indian Rebellion of 1857
★
1859:
The Origin of Species published.
1860s
★
1861-
65:
American Civil War between the
Union and seceding
Confederacy
★
1861: Russia
abolishes serfdom.
★
1861-
67:
French intervention in Mexico
★
1863: Formation of the
International Red Cross is followed by the adoption of the
First Geneva Convention in 1864.
★
1864-
66: The
Chincha Islands War was an attempt by Spain to regain its South American colonies.
★
1864-
70: The
War of the Triple Alliance ends Paraguayan ambitions for expansion and destroys much of the Paraguayan population.
★
1865-
77:
Reconstruction in the
United States
★
1866: Successful
transatlantic telegraph cable follows an earlier attempt in
1858.
★
1866:
Austro-Prussian War results in the dissolution of the
German Confederation and the creation of the
North German Confederation and the
Austrian-Hungarian Dual Monarchy.
★
1866-
69: After the
Meiji Restoration,
Japan embarks on a program of rapid
modernization.
★
1867: The
United States purchased Alaska from
Russia.
★
1867:
Canadian Confederation formed.
★
1869:
First Transcontinental Railroad completed in
United States.
★
1869: The
Suez Canal opens linking the
Mediterranean to the
Red Sea.
1870s
★
1870-
71: The
Franco-Prussian War results in the unifications of
Germany and
Italy, the collapse of the
Second French Empire, the breakdown of Pax Britannica, and the emergence of a
New Imperialism.
★
1871-
1914:
Second Industrial Revolution
★
1870s-
90s:
Long Depression in Western Europe and North America
★
1872:
Yellowstone National Park is created.
★
1873: Maxwell's ''
A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism'' published.
★
1874: The
British East India Company is dissolved.
★
1875-
1900: 26 million Indians perished in India due to
famine.
★
1876-
1914: The massive expansion in population, territory, industry and wealth in the United States is referred to as the
Gilded Age.
★
1877:
Great Railroad Strike in the United States may have been the world's first nationwide
labor strike.
★
1877-
78: The
Balkans are freed from the
Ottoman Empire after another
Russo-Turkish War in the
Treaty of Berlin.
★
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.
1880s
★
1880-
1881: the
First Boer War.
★
1881: First electrical
power plant and
grid in
Godalming, Britain.
★
1884-
85: The
Berlin Conference signals the start of the European "
scramble for Africa". Attending nations also agree to ban trade in
slaves.
★
1884-
85: The
Sino-French War led to the formation of
French Indochina.
★
1886:
Russian-Circassian War ended with the defeat and the exile of many
Circassians.
Imam Shamil defeated.
★
1888:
Slavery banned in Brazil.
★
1889:
Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad establishes the
Ahmadi Muslim Community.
★
1889: End of the
Brazilian Empire and the beginning of the
Brazilian Republic
1890s
★
1890: The
Wounded Knee Massacre was the last battle in the American
Indian Wars. This event represents the end of the
American Old West.
★
1894-
95: After the
First Sino-Japanese War,
China cedes
Taiwan to
Japan and grants Japan a free hand in
Korea.
★
1895-
1896:
Ethiopia defeats
Italy in the
First Italo–Ethiopian War.
★
1896:
Olympic games revived in
Athens.
★
1896:
Klondike Gold Rush in Canada.
★
1897:
Gojong, or Emperor Gwangmu, proclaims the short-lived
Korean Empire: lasts until
1910.
★
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.
★
1898-
1902: The One Thousand Days war in
Colombia breaks out between the "Liberales" and "Conservadores," culminating with the loss of
Panama in
1903.
★
1899:
Second Boer War begins (-
1902);
Philippine-American War begins (-
1913).
Significant people
★
Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul and Emperor of
France
★
William Gilbert Grace, English cricketer
★
Baron Haussmann, civic planner
★
Sándor Körösi Csoma, explorer of the
Tibetan
culture
★
Hong Xiuquan inspired China's
Taiping Rebellion, perhaps the bloodiest civil war in human history
★
Fitz Hugh Ludlow, writer and explorer
★
Florence Nightingale, nursing pioneer
★
Ignaz Semmelweis, proponent of
hygienic practices
★
Dr. John Snow, the founder of
epidemiology
★
F R Spofforth, Australian
cricket
★
Sitting Bull, a leader of the
Lakota
★
Chief Joseph, a leader of the
Nez Percé
★
Ned Kelly, Australian folk hero, and outlaw
★
Abraham Lincoln, United States President
★
Jefferson Davis, Confederate States President
★
Elizabeth Kenny, Australian Nurse and found an Innovative Treatment of Polio
Anthropology
★
Lewis H. Morgan
★
Franz Boas
★
Edward Burnett Tylor
★
Karl Verner
★
Brothers Grimm
★
Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai
Painters
The
Realism and
Romanticism of the early 19th century gave way to
Impressionism and
Post-Impressionism in the later half of the century, with
Paris being the dominant art capital of the world. 19th century painters included:
★
Paul Cezanne
★
Edgar Degas
★
Eugène Delacroix
★
Edvard Munch
★
Caspar David Friedrich
★
Antonio de La Gandara
★
Théodore Géricault
★
Vincent van Gogh
★
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
★
Édouard Manet
★
Claude Monet
★
Berthe Morisot
★
Camille Pissarro
★
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
★
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
★
Joseph Mallord William Turner
★
William Morris
★
Mary Cassatt
Music
Sonata form matured during the Classical era to become the primary form of instrumental compositions throughout the 19th century. Much of the music from the nineteenth century was referred to as being in the
Romantic style. Many great composers lived through this era such as
Ludwig van Beethoven,
Franz Liszt,
Frédéric Chopin,
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and
Richard Wagner. Others included:
★
Hector Berlioz
★
Georges Bizet
★
Alexander Borodin
★
Johannes Brahms
★
Anton Bruckner
★
Frédéric Chopin
★
Claude Debussy
★
Antonín Dvořák
★
Gilbert and Sullivan
★
Edvard Grieg
★
Felix Mendelssohn
★
Modest Mussorgsky
★
Niccolò Paganini
★
Camille Saint-Saëns
★
Franz Schubert
★
Robert Schumann
★
Giuseppe Verdi
Literature
Main articles: 19th century in literature
On the literary front the new century opens with
Romanticism, a movement that spread throughout Europe in reaction to 18th-century rationalism, and it develops more or less along the lines of the Industrial Revolution, with a design to react against the dramatic changes wrought on nature by the
steam engine and the
railway.
William Wordsworth and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge are considered the initiators of the new school in
England, while in the continent the German ''
Sturm und Drang'' spreads its influence as far as
Italy and
Spain.
French arts had been hampered by the
Napoleonic Wars but subsequently developed rapidly.
Modernism began.
The Goncourts and
Emile Zola in
France and
Giovanni Verga in Italy produce some of the finest naturalist novels. Italian naturalist novels are especially important in that they give a social map of the new unified Italy to a people that until then had been scarcely aware of its ethnic and cultural diversity. On February 21,
1848,
Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto.
There was a huge literary output during the 19th century. Some of the most famous writers included the Russians
Leo Tolstoy,
Anton Chekov and
Fyodor Dostoevsky; the English
Charles Dickens,
John Keats, and
Jane Austen; the Scottish
Sir Walter Scott; the Irish
Oscar Wilde; the Americans
Edgar Allan Poe and
Mark Twain; and the French
Victor Hugo,
Honoré de Balzac,
Jules Verne and
Charles Baudelaire. Some others of note included:
★
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
★
Charlotte Brontë
★
Emily Brontë
★
Lord Byron
★
Georg Büchner
★
François-René de Chateaubriand
★
Kate Chopin
★
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
★
Emily Dickinson
★
Arthur Conan Doyle
★
Alexandre Dumas, père (1802-1870)
★
George Eliot
★
Ralph Waldo Emerson
★
Gustave Flaubert
★
Margaret Fuller
★
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
★
Nikolai Gogol
★
Manuel González Prada
★
Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda
★
Juana Manuela Gorriti
★
Thomas Hardy
★
Nathaniel Hawthorne
★
Friedrich Hölderlin
★
Heinrich Heine
★
Henrik Ibsen
★
Henry James
★
Jules Laforgue
★
Giacomo Leopardi
★
Alessandro Manzoni
★
Stéphane Mallarmé
★
José Martí
★
Clorinda Matto de Turner
★
Herman Melville
★
Friedrich Nietzsche
★
Aleksandr Pushkin
★
Arthur Rimbaud
★
John Ruskin
★
George Sand (Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin)
★
Mary Shelley
★
Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
★
Robert Louis Stevenson
★
Bram Stoker
★
Harriet Beecher Stowe
★
Paul Verlaine
★
Walt Whitman
★
William Wordsworth
★
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
★
Émile Zola
★
Machado de Assis
★
Mark Twain
Science
The 19th century saw the birth of science as a profession; the term '
scientist' was
coined in 1833 by
William Whewell. Among the most influential ideas of the 19th century were those of
Charles Darwin, who in 1859 published the book ''
The Origin of Species'', which introduced the idea of
evolution by
natural selection.
Louis Pasteur made the first
vaccine against
rabies, and also made many discoveries in the field of chemistry, including the
asymmetry of crystals.
Thomas Alva Edison gave the world light with his invention of the
lightbulb.
Karl Weierstrass and other mathematicians also carried out the
arithmetization of analysis. Other important 19th century scientists included:
★
Amedeo Avogadro, physicist
★
Johann Jakob Balmer, mathematician, physicist
★
Henri Becquerel, physicist
★
Alexander Graham Bell, inventor
★
Ludwig Boltzmann, physicist
★
János Bolyai, mathematician
★
Louis Braille, inventor of
braille
★
Robert Bunsen, chemist
★
Marie Curie, physicist, chemist
★
Pierre Curie, physicist
★
Louis Daguerre, chemist
★
Gottlieb Daimler, engineer, industrial designer and industrialist
★
Christian Doppler, physicist, mathematician
★
Thomas Edison, inventor
★
Michael Faraday, scientist
★
Léon Foucault, physicist
★
Gottlob Frege, mathematician, logician and philosopher
★
Carl Friedrich Gauss, mathematician, physicist, astronomer
★
Josiah Willard Gibbs, physicist
★
Ernst Haeckel, biologist
★
Heinrich Hertz, physicist
★
Alexander von Humboldt, naturalist, explorer
★
Nikolai Lobachevsky, mathematician
★
William Thomson,
Lord Kelvin, physicist
★
Robert Koch, physician, bacteriologist
★
Justus von Liebig, chemist
★
Auguste and Louis Lumière, inventors
★
Wilhelm Maybach, car-engine and automobile designer and industrialist.
★
James Clerk Maxwell, physicist
★
Gregor Mendel, biologist
★
Dmitri Mendeleev, chemist
★
Samuel Morey, inventor
★
Nicéphore Niépce,inventor
★
Alfred Nobel, chemist, engineer, inventor
★
Louis Pasteur, microbiologist and chemist
★
Bernhard Riemann, mathematician
★
Nikola Tesla, inventor
★
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis
Philosophy and religion

The last
shogun 'Tokugawa Yoshinobu' in French military uniform
The 19th century was host to a variety of religious and philosophical thinkers, including:
★
Mikhail Bakunin, anarchist
★
William Booth, social reformer, founder of the
Salvation Army
★
Auguste Comte, philosopher
★
Mary Baker Eddy, religious leader, founder of
Christian Science
★
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, philosopher
★
Søren Kierkegaard, philosopher
★
Karl Marx, political philosopher
★
John Stuart Mill, philosopher
★
Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher
★
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Hindu mystic
★
Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher
★
Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, founder of French
socialism
★
William Morris, social reformer
★
Joseph Smith, Jr. and
Brigham Young, founders of
Mormonism
★
Nikolai of Japan, religious leader, introduced
Eastern Orthodoxy into Japan.
★
Bahá'u'lláh founded the
Bahá'í Faith in Persia
Politics
★
Susan B. Anthony,
U.S. women's rights advocate
★
Otto von Bismarck,
German chancellor
★
Napoleon Bonaparte,
French general, first consul and emperor
★
Napoleon III
★
Cecil Rhodes
★
John C. Calhoun,
U.S. senator
★
Henry Clay,
U.S. senator
★
Jefferson Davis, President of the
Confederate States of America just before and during the
American Civil War.
★
Frederick Douglass,
U.S. abolitionist spokesman
★
Joseph Fouché, French politician
★
Giuseppe Garibaldi, unifier of
Italy and
Piedmontese soldier
★
Gojong of Joseon,
Korean emperor
★
William Lloyd Garrison,
U.S. abolitionist leader
★
William Ewart Gladstone, British prime minister
★
Ulysses S. Grant,
U.S. general and president
★
Theodor Herzl, founder of modern political
Zionism
★
Andrew Jackson,
U.S. general and president
★
Thomas Jefferson,
American statesman, philosopher, and president
★
Lajos Kossuth, Hungarian governor; leader of the war of independence
★
Hong Xiuquan, revolutionary, self-proclaimed
Son of God
★
Benjamin Disraeli, novelist and politician
★
Libertadores,
Latin American liberators
★
Robert E. Lee,
Confederate general
★
Abraham Lincoln,
U.S. president; led the nation during the
American Civil War
★
Sir John A. Macdonald,
Canada, first Prime Minister of Canada
★
Mutsuhito,
Japanese emperor
★
Tokugawa Yoshinobu,
Japanese
Shogun (The Last Shogun)
★
István Széchenyi, aristocrat, leader of the Hungarian reform movement
★
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, French politician
★
Queen Victoria, British monarch
★
Klemens von Metternich, Austrian Chancellor
Inventions, discoveries, introductions
Main articles: Timeline of invention#19th century,
Timeline of scientific discoveries#1800s
Research became institutionalized at research universities such as the
University of Berlin and at corporate laboratories such as Edison's
Menlo Park which accelerated the rate at which discoveries and innovations were made.
★
Telephone
★
Railways
★
The Tube
★
Department stores
★
Epidemiology
★
Mail order businesses
★
Philology
★
Postage stamps
★
★
Subway
★
Steam power
See also
★
Victorian Era
★
List of wars 1800–1899
★
Timeline of 19th century Islamic history
★
France in the nineteenth century
★
Russian history, 1855–1892
★
Mid-nineteenth century Spain
★
Capitalism in the nineteenth century
★
19th-century philosophy
★
Nineteenth century theatre
★
19th century in games
★
19th century in film
Decades and years