19th century
{{otheruses}}{{Centurybox|19}}The
19th century began on January 1, 1801 and ended on December 31, 1900, according to the
Gregorian calendar.During the 19th century, the
Spanish,
Portuguese,
Chinese, and
Ottoman empires began to crumble, the
Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, and the
Mughal empire collapsed.
After 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. During this time the 19th century was an era of widespread invention and discovery, with significant developments in the understanding or manipulation of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, electricity, and metallurgy largely setting the groundworks for the comparably overwhelming and very rapid technological innovations which would take place the following century. Modest advances in medicine and the understanding of human anatomy and disease prevention were also applicable to the 1800s, and were partly responsible for rapidly accelerating population growth in the western world. The introduction of
railroads provided the first major advancement in land transportation for centuries, and their placement and application radically altered the ways people could live and rapidly and reliably obtain necessary commodities, fueling major
urbanization movements in countries across the globe. Numerous cities worldwide surpassed populations of 1,000,000 or more during this century. The last remaining undiscovered landmasses of Earth, largely pacific island chains and atolls, were discovered during this century, and with the exception of the extreme zones of the Arctic and Antarctic, accurate and detailed maps of the globe were available by the 1890s.
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Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Slave Market c.1884
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. Britain abolished slavery in 1834, America's
13th Amendment following their
Civil War abolished slavery there in 1865, and in
Brazil slavery was abolished in 1888 (see
Abolitionism). Similarly,
serfdom was abolished in
Russia.The 19th century was remarkable in the widespread formation of new settlement foundations which were particularly prevalent across North America and
Australasia, with a significant proportion of the two continents' largest cities being founded at some point in the century.
Eras
Events
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Map of the world from 1897. The British Empire (marked in pink) was the superpower of the 19th century.
1800–1809
1810s
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1816: Shaka rises to power over the Zulu kingdom
1820s
1830s
- 1830: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is established on April 6, 1830.
- 1830: July Revolution in France.
- 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 (including modern-day Panama), Ecuador, and Venezuela took its place.
- 1831: France invades and occupies Algeria.
- 1833: Slavery Abolition Act bans slavery throughout the British Empire.
- 1833–76: Carlist Wars in Spain.
- 1834: Spanish Inquisition officially ends.
- 1834–59: Imam Shamil's rebellion in Russian-occupied Caucasus.
- 1835–36: The Texas Revolution in Mexico resulted in the short-lived Republic of Texas.
- 1836: The Battle of the Alamo.
- 1837–1838: Rebellions of 1837 in Canada.
- 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.
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Samuel Morse
1840s
1850s
1860s
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The first vessels sail through the Suez Canal
1870s
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Alexander Graham Bell speaking into prototype model of the telephone
- 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.
- 1871-1872: Famine in Persia is believed to have caused the death of 2 million.
- 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 Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, and Graveurs, better known today as the Impressionists organize and present their first public group exhibition at the Paris studio of the photographer Nadar.
- 1874: The British East India Company is dissolved.
- 1874-1875: First Republic in Spain.
- 1875-1900: 26 million Indians perished in India due to famine.
- 1876: The Bulgarian revolt against Ottoman rule.
- 1876-1879: 13 million Chinese died of famine in northern China.
- 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 Treaty of Berlin recognizes formal independence of the Principality of Serbia, Montenegro and Romania. Bulgaria becomes autonomous.
- 1878: First commercial telephone exchange in New Haven, Connecticut.
- 1879: Anglo-Zulu War in South Africa.
1880s
1890s
Significant people
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Sitting Bull, 1885
- Clara Barton, nurse, pioneer of the American Red Cross
- Sitting Bull, a leader of the Lakota
- John Burroughs, Naturalist, conservationist, writer
- Davy Crockett, King of the wild frontier, folk hero, frontiersman, soldier and politician
- Jefferson Davis, Confederate States President
- William Gilbert Grace, English cricketer
- Baron Haussmann, civic planner
- Franz Joseph I of Austria, Emperor of Austria
- Chief Joseph, a leader of the Nez Percé
- Ned Kelly, Australian folk hero, and outlaw
- Elizabeth Kenny, Australian Nurse and found an Innovative Treatment of Polio
- Sándor Körösi Csoma, explorer of the Tibetan culture
- Abraham Lincoln, United States President
- Fitz Hugh Ludlow, writer and explorer
- John Muir, Naturalist, writer, preservationist
- Florence Nightingale, nursing pioneer
- Napoleon I, First Consul and Emperor of the French
- Commodore Perry, U.S. Naval commander, opened the door to Japan
- Sacagawea, Important aide to Lewis&Clark
- Ignaz Semmelweis, proponent of hygienic practices
- Dr. John Snow, the founder of epidemiology
- F R Spofforth, Australian cricketer
- Queen Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom
- William Wilberforce, Abolitionist, Philanthropist
- Hong Xiuquan inspired China's Taiping Rebellion, perhaps the bloodiest civil war in human history
Show business and Theatre
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Sarah Bernhardt, 1877
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Ellen Terry, c.1880
- David Belasco, actor, playwright, theatrical producer
- Sarah Bernhardt, actress
- Edwin Booth, actor
- Dion Boucicault, playwright
- Mrs Patrick Campbell, actress
- Anton Chekhov, playwright
- Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild West legend, and showman
- Eleonora Duse, actress
- Henrik Ibsen, playwright
- Edmund Kean, actor
- Charles Kean, actor
- Jenny Lind, opera singer called the Swedish Nightingale
- Céleste Mogador, dancer
- Lola Montez, exotic dancer
- Adelaide Neilson, actress
- Annie Oakley, Wild West, sharp-shooter
- George Bernard Shaw, playwright
- Edward Askew Sothern, actor
- Ellen Terry, actress
Athletics
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|John L Sullivan in his prime, c.1882.
- Cap Anson, baseball player
- Gentleman Jim Corbett, heavyweight boxer
- Big Ed Delahanty, baseball player
- Bob Fitzsimmons, heavyweight boxer
- Pud Galvin, baseball player
- Olympic Games, 1894 the IOC is formed, and the first Summer Olympics games are held in Athens, Greece in 1896
- Peter Jackson, heavyweight boxer
- James J. Jeffries, heavyweight boxer
- Old Hoss Radbourn, baseball player
- Tom Sharkey, heavyweight boxer
- John L. Sullivan, heavyweight boxer
- John Montgomery Ward, baseball player
- Evangelos Zappas, Founder of the International Modern Olympic Games
Business
- John Jacob Astor III, Real Estate
- Andrew Carnegie, Industrialist, philanthropist
- Jay Cooke, Finance
- Henry Clay Frick, Industrialist, art collector
- Jay Gould, Railroad developer
- Meyer Guggenheim Family patriarch, mining
- Daniel Guggenheim (copper)
- E. H. Harriman, Railroads
- Henry O. Havemeyer (sugar), art collector
- George Hearst, Gold
- James J. Hill (railroads) - The Empire Builder
- Andrew W. Mellon, Industrialist, philanthropist, art collector
- J.P. Morgan, banker, art collector
- George Mortimer Pullman (railroads)
- Charles Pratt Oil, founder of the Pratt Institute
- John D. Rockefeller, Oil, Business tycoon, philanthropist
- Levi Strauss, clothing manufacturer
- Cornelius Vanderbilt, Shipping, Railroads
Famous and infamous personalities
- William Bonney aka Henry McCarty aka Billy the kid, Wild West, outlaw
- John Wilkes Booth, assassin
- James Bowie, Soldier, Texan who died at the Alamo, invented the Bowie knife
- Jim Bridger, Wild West, Mountain man
- John Brown, a fanatical abolitionist who led an armed insurrection at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859.
- Kit Carson, Wild West, frontiersman
- Cochise, Chiricahua Apache leader
- George Armstrong Custer, soldier, whose last stand was in the Wild West
- Wyatt Earp, Wild West, lawman
- Pat Garrett, Wild West, lawman
- Charles J. Guiteau, assassin
- Jack The Ripper, Serial Killer whose identity remains unknown.
- Geronimo, Chiricahua Apache leader
- Wild Bill Hickock, Legendary Wild West, lawman
- Doc Holliday, Legendary Wild West, gambler, gunfighter
- Crazy Horse, War leader of the Lakota
- Frank James, Wild West, outlaw, older brother of Jesse
- Jesse James, Legendary Wild West, outlaw
- Calamity Jane, Frontierswoman
- Bat Masterson, Wild West, lawman, gambler, newspaperman
- Allan Pinkerton, spy, founded the Pinkerton Agency, first detective agency in the United States
- William Poole aka Bill the Butcher, member of the New York City gang, the Bowery Boys, a bare-knuckle boxer, and a leader of the Know Nothing political movement.
- Belle Starr Legendary Wild West, female outlaw
- Nat Turner, led a slave rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia during August 1831.
Anthropology, archaeology, scholars
- Churchill Babington, Archaeology
- Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier, Archaeology
- Franz Boas, Anthropology
- Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, Archaeology
- Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Ornithology
- George Bird Grinnell, Anthropology
- Joseph LeConte, Scholar, preservationist
- Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai, Anthropology
- Clinton Hart Merriam, Zooligy
- Lewis H. Morgan, Anthropology
- Jules Etienne Joseph Quicherat, Archaeology
- Robert Ridgway, Ornithology
- Edward Burnett Tylor, Anthropology
- Karl Verner, Linguist
Journalists, missionaries, explorers
- Roald Amundsen, explorer
- Samuel Baker, explorer
- Thomas Baines, artist, explorer
- Richard Francis Burton, explorer
- The Lewis&Clark expedition, exploration
- Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh, explorer
- Percy Fawcett, adventurer, explorer, proto-Indiana Jones
- Horace Greeley, journalist
- Peter Jones (missionary), Canadian Methodist minister, and go-between between Christians and his fellow Mississaugas and other Indian tribes.
- Adoniram Judson, missionary
- Sir John Kirk, explorer, physician, companion of David Livingston
- Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, botanist, explorer, friend of Charles Darwin
- Sir William Jackson Hooker, botanist, explorer, father of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker
- David Livingstone, missionary
- Thomas Nast, journalist, caricaturist and editorial cartoonist
- Robert Peary, explorer
- John Hanning Speke, explorer
- Henry M. Stanley, journalist
- John L. O'Sullivan, journalist who coined Manifest Destiny
Photography
{{see also|History of photography|List of photojournalists|Photojournalism|Daguerreotype}}
- Ottomar Anschütz, chronophotographer
- Mathew Brady, documented the American Civil War
- Edward S. Curtis, documented the American West notably Native Americans
- Louis Daguerre, inventor of daguerreotype process of photography, chemist
- George Eastman, inventor of the roll of film
- Hércules Florence, pioneer inventor of photography
- Auguste and Louis Lumière, pioneer filmmakers, inventors
- Étienne-Jules Marey, pioneer motion photographer, chronophotographer
- Eadweard Muybridge, pioneer motion photographer, chronophotographer
- Nadar aka Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, portrait photographer
- Nicéphore Niépce, pioneer inventor of photography
- Louis Le Prince, motion picture inventor and pioneer filmmaker
- William Fox Talbot, inventor of the negative / positive photographic process.
Visual artists, painters, sculptors
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. In the United States the
Hudson River School was prominent. 19th century painters included:
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,
Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and
Richard Wagner. The list includes:
Literature
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Mark Twain, 1894
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Jane Austen
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Arthur Rimbaud c.1872
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Emile Zola, c.1900
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,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, and
Mark Twain; and the French
Victor Hugo,
Honoré de Balzac,
Jules Verne and
Charles Baudelaire. Some other important writers of note included:
Science
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Mme. Marie Curie, c.1898
The 19th century saw the birth of science as a profession; the term
scientist was
coined in 1833 by
William Whewell(1). 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
optical isomerism>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. But the most important step in science at this time was the ideas formulated by
Michael Faraday and
James Clerk Maxwell. Their work changed the face of physics and made possible for new technology to come about. 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
- 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
- Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis
- Carl Friedrich Gauss, mathematician, physicist, astronomer
- Josiah Willard Gibbs, physicist
- Ernst Haeckel, biologist
- Heinrich Hertz, physicist
- Alexander von Humboldt, naturalist, explorer
- Robert Koch, physician, bacteriologist
- Justus von Liebig, chemist
- Nikolai Lobachevsky, mathematician
- James Clerk Maxwell, physicist
- Wilhelm Maybach, car-engine and automobile designer and industrialist
- Gregor Mendel, biologist
- Dmitri Mendeleev, chemist
- Samuel Morey, inventor
- Alfred Nobel, chemist, engineer, inventor
- Louis Pasteur, microbiologist and chemist
- Santiago Ramón y Cajal, biologist
- Bernhard Riemann, mathematician
- William Emerson Ritter, biologist
- Nikola Tesla, inventor
- William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, physicist
Philosophy and religion
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The last shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu in French military uniform
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One of the first photographs, produced in 1826 by Nicéphore Niépce
The 19th century was host to a variety of religious and philosophical thinkers, including:
- Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claimed to be the promised Messiah and Mahdi, founded the Ahmadiyya.
- Bahá'u'lláh founded the Bahá'í Faith in Persia
- Mikhail Bakunin, anarchist
- William Booth, social reformer, founder of the Salvation Army
- Auguste Comte, philosopher
- Mary Baker Eddy, religious leader, founder of Christian Science
- Friedrich Engels, political philosopher
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, philosopher
- Søren Kierkegaard, philosopher
- Karl Marx, political philosopher
- John Stuart Mill, philosopher
- William Morris, social reformer
- Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher
- Nikolai (Nicholas) of Japan, religious leader, introduced Eastern Orthodoxy into Japan
- Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Hindu mystic
- Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon, founder of French socialism
- Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher
- Joseph Smith, Jr. and Brigham Young, founders of Mormonism
- Ayya Vaikundar, initiator of the belief system of Ayyavazhi
- Ellen White religious author and co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church
Politics and the Military
- Susan B. Anthony, U.S. women's rights advocate
- Otto von Bismarck, German chancellor
- Napoleon Bonaparte, French general, first consul and emperor
- John C. Calhoun, U.S. senator
- Henry Clay, U.S. statesman, "The Great Compromiser"
- Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America just before and during the American Civil War.
- Benjamin Disraeli, novelist and politician
- Frederick Douglass, U.S. abolitionist spokesman
- Ferdinand VII of Spain
- Joseph Fouché, French politician
- John C. Frémont, Explorer, Governor of California
- Giuseppe Garibaldi, unifier of Italy and Piedmontese soldier
- Isabella II of Spain
- 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
- George Hearst, U.S. Senator and father of William Randolph Hearst
- 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
- Robert E. Lee, Confederate general
- Libertadores, Latin American liberators
- Abraham Lincoln, U.S. president; led the nation during the American Civil War
- Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada, first Prime Minister of Canada
- Klemens von Metternich, Austrian Chancellor
- Mutsuhito, Japanese emperor
- Napoleon III
- Cecil Rhodes
- Theodore Roosevelt, Explorer, Naturalist, future President of The United States
- William Tecumseh Sherman, Union general during the American Civil War
- Leland Stanford, Governor of California, U.S. Senator, entrepreneur
- István Széchenyi, aristocrat, leader of the Hungarian reform movement
- Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, French politician
- Harriet Tubman, African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, played a part in the Underground Railroad
- William M. Tweed, aka Boss Tweed, influential New York City politician, head of Tammany Hall
- Queen Victoria, British monarch
- Hong Xiuquan, revolutionary, self-proclaimed Son of God
- Tokugawa Yoshinobu, Japanese Shogun (The Last Shogun)
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A 1954 Postage stamps and postal history of the United States|U.S. stamp
featuring
George EastmanGeorge EastmanWorst Person
In the
BBC's history poll of
worst people in history, the 19th century's worst in Britain was the infamous
Serial killer Jack The Ripper, an unidentified killer who murdered many
Prostitutes, five, in the autumn of 1888.
See also
Eras, Epochs, Decades and years
{{Romanticism}}{{DecadesAndYears}}{{Centuries}}
References
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[WEB, 2008-03-03,weblink William Whewell]