19th century

Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical)

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

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 its roots 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.
• 1810-21: Mexican War of Independence
• 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.
• 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
• Gilbert and Sullivan, playwright, composer
• 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

Decades and years