19th century - Definition and Overview

Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical)

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

As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. In the sense of the Common Era the century lasted from 1800-1899. 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).

Events

• The Little Ice Age ended.
• Napoleon, who conquers much of Europe, is ultimately defeated in 1815; some old European regimes are restored, others not.
• The modern city of Singapore is established when Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles of the British East India Company acquires land on the island from the Sultan of Johore in 1819.
• The Libertadores lead most of Latin America to independence.
• The Industrial Revolution continues and spreads, developments include the Rail Transport, telegraph, and telephone.
• The rebellion of Greece begins in 1821 which ultimately leads to its independence
• Belgium becomes independent in 1830 after a massive uprising against the Dutch. Leopold becomes the first king of Belgium. Belgium will be the second industrial power in the world by the middle of the 19th century.
• The European Revolutions of 1848 happen as an escalation of various problems due to changes in the societies of European countries. The Spring of Nations involves France, the German states, Habsburg Monarchy and the Italian states.
• Leopold II, son of Leopold, becomes the second king of Belgium. He buys the gigantic territory of Congo in Africa with his own fortune and will later (1908) offer it to Belgium.
• Discovery of the relationships between magnetism and electricity and light by Hans Christian Ørsted and James Clerk Maxwell. (See:electromagnetism)
• Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary is formed in 1867.
• The fall of the Ottoman Empire continues with numerous rebellions and wars with liberated countries in the Balkans, as well as four more Russo-Turkish Wars. The Great Powers get involved in the Crimean War (1854-1856) where the United Kingdom and France aid the Ottomans against the Russians, as well as in the Congress of Berlin that produces the Treaty of Berlin, 1878.
• Mass migration from Europe to the United States and British colonies.
• During the reign of Queen Victoria, the United Kingdom is the leading economic power in the world giving the term Victorian Age to much of the century.
• Political revolution and constitutional reform across Europe severely limits powers of monarchs, advances democracy.
• The religious revival of the Second Great Awakening in the eastern United States and Canada gives rise to unique, American, Christian religions during the era of Restorationism
• Gold is discovered in several places in Australia and New Zealand and throughout the west of the United States, leading to huge increases in national wealth and encouraging mass migration of free settlers there.
• Slavery is ended in British colonies and in America. See American Civil War, 1861 to 1865. End of global slave trade is enforced by the British navy.
• Charles Darwin revolutionizes biology with his theories of evolution, 1858.
• Europeans conquer and colonize most of Africa and parts of 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, uniting from groups of small kingdoms and city states.
• Railroads make fast mass transit available to many. Transcontinental railroads built, including the Panama Railway in 1855, the US Transcontinental Railroad finished in 1869 linking to west in the United States, and the Canadian National Railway in 1885.
• The Suez Canal is opened, connecting Europe and the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and Asia in 1869.
• The British begin their so-called "forward movement" to extend control over the Malay States with the signing of the Pangkor Treaty in 1874.
• The quick defeat of Spain by the United States in 1898, in the Spanish-American War, removes Spain from the list of major world powers for good and gives rise to the United States as a major world military power.
• The electric telegraph and undersea cables make instant global communication possible for the first time.
• Postage Stamps and diamond-shaped paper sheets which folded to form envelopes for carrying letters devised and introduced in Britain, and soon thereafter in many other countries, leading to establishment of the Universal Postal Union.
• The Taiping Rebellion, from 1851 to 1864, a conflict between Imperial China and the followers of a Hakka self-proclaimed mystic and Christian convert Hong Xiugan, took the lives of about 20 million people.
• Manufactured goods become widely available by mail order

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
• Johannes Brahms, composer
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet, critic, thinker
• Charles Darwin, biologist
• Charles Dickens, author
• Benjamin Disraeli, novelist and politician
• Fyodor Dostoevsky, novelist, philosopher/theologian
• Antonin Dvorak, composer
• Thomas Alva Edison, inventor
• 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
• Victor Hugo, poet, politician/theologian, and author
• Søren Kierkegaard, philosopher
• Karl Marx, political philosopher and economist
• James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish physicist
• Gregor Mendel, biologist
• 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
• 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
• Brigham Young, Mormon religious leader

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

• Automobile
• Electric light
• Motion pictures
• Modern submarine
• Phonograph
• Photography
• Railroad locomotive
• Semi-automatic rifle
• Steamship
• Telegraph
• Telephone
• Torpedo

Decades and years