19th century

(18th century - 19th century - 20th century - more centuries)

• The Little Ice Age ended.
• Napoleon conquers much of Europe, is ultimately defeated (1814); some old European regimes are restored, others not.
• Final phase of the Industrial Revolution, including Rail Transport, telegraph, and telephone.
• Discovery of the relationships between magnetism and electricity and light by Hans Christian Ørsted and James Maxwell. (See:electromagnetism)
• Mass migration from Europe to the United States.
• Political revolution and constitutional reform across Europe severely limits powers of monarchs, advances democracy.
• Gold discovered in Australia and throughout the west of the United States, leading to huge increases in national wealth and encouraging mass migration of free settlers there.
• Slavery ended in British colonies and in America. See American Civil War. End of global slave trade enforced by British navy.
• Charles Darwin revolutionizes biology with his theories of evolution, 1858.
• Europeans conquer and colonize large parts of Africa and Asia.
• Karl Marx writes the Communist Manifesto, encouraging workers to revolt against owners.
• Meiji Restoration in 1868 opens Japan to modern influences and returns the emperor to power.
• Germany and Italy are formed as nations.
• Railroads make fast mass transit available to many. First Transcontinental Railroad finished in 1869 linking east to west in the United States.
• The electric telegraph and undersea cables make instant global communication possible for the first time.
• Postage Stamps introduced in Great Britain and soon thereafter, in many other countries.
• Manufactured goods become widely availible by mail order

Significant people

• Ludwig van Beethoven, composer
• Otto von Bismarck, German politician
• Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, critic, thinker
• Charles Darwin, biologist
• Charles Dickens, author
• Benjamin Disraeli, novelist and politician
• Thomas Alva Edison, inventor
• Antonio de La Gandara, painter, pastelist and draughtsman
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, author, thinker
• Victor Hugo, author
• Abraham Lincoln, American president
• Karl Marx, political philosopher and economist
• William Morris, social reformer, one of the first people to detect and warn of the drawbacks of standardisation, the profit motive and the division of producer/consumer interests
• Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher
• Louis Pasteur, biologist
• Edgar Allan Poe , author
• Dr. John Snow, the founder of epidemiology
• Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), author

Inventions, Discoveries, Introductions

• Automobile
• Electric light
• Motion pictures
• Phonograph
• Photography
• Repetition rifle[?]
• Railroad Locomotive
• Steamship[?]
• Telegraph
• Telephone

Decades and Years