(18th century - 19th century - 20th century - more centuries)
Events
- 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
Decades and Years