The 19th century (1 January 1801 – 31 December 1900) was the century marked by the collapse of the Spanish, Napoleonic, Holy Roman and Mughal empires. This paved the way for the growing influence of the British Empire, the Russian Empire, the United States, the German Empire, the French colonial empire and Meiji Japan, with the British boasting unchallenged dominance after 1815. After the defeat of the French Empire and its allies in the Napoleonic Wars, the British and Russian empires expanded greatly, becoming the world's leading powers. The Russian Empire expanded in central and far eastern Asia. The British Empire grew rapidly in the first half of the century, especially with the expansion of vast territories in Canada, Australia, South Africa and heavily populated India, and in the last two decades of the century in Africa. By the end of the century, the British Empire controlled a fifth of the world's land and one quarter of the world's population. During the post-Napoleonic era, it enforced what became known as the Pax Britannica, which had ushered into unprecedented globalisation, industrialisation, and economic integration on a massive scale.
The first electronics appeared in the 19th century, with the introduction of the electric relay in 1835, the telegraph and its Morse code protocol in 1837, the first telephone call in 1876, and the first functional light bulb in 1878.
The 19th century was an era of rapidly accelerating scientific discovery and invention, with significant developments in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, electricity, and metallurgy that laid the groundwork for the technological advances of the 20th century. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain and spread to continental Europe, North America and Japan. The Victorian era was notorious for the employment of young children in factories and mines, as well as strict social norms regarding modesty and gender roles. Japan embarked on a program of rapid modernization following the Meiji Restoration, before defeating China, under the Qing Dynasty, in the First Sino-Japanese War. Advances in medicine and the understanding of human anatomy and disease prevention took place in the 19th century, and were partly responsible for rapidly accelerating population growth in the western world. Europe's population doubled during the 19th century, from approximately 200 million to more than 400 million. The introduction of railroads provided the first major advancement in land transportation for centuries, changing the way people lived and obtained goods, and fuelling major urbanization movements in countries across the globe. Numerous cities worldwide surpassed populations of a million or more during this century. London became the world's largest city and capital of the British Empire. Its population increased from 1 million in 1800 to 6.7 million a century later. The last remaining undiscovered landmasses of Earth, including vast expanses of interior Africa and Asia, were explored 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. Liberalism became the pre-eminent reform movement in Europe.
Slavery was greatly reduced around the world. Following a successful slave revolt in Haiti, Britain and France stepped up the battle against the Barbary pirates and succeeded in stopping their enslavement of Europeans. The UK's Slavery Abolition Act charged the British Royal Navy with ending the global slave trade. The first colonial empire in the century to abolish slavery was the British, who did so 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 Australia, with a significant proportion of the two continents' largest cities being founded at some point in the century. Chicago in the United States and Melbourne in Australia were non-existent in the earliest decades but grew to become the 2nd largest cities in the United States and British Empire respectively by the end of the century. In the 19th century approximately 70 million people left Europe, with most migrating to the United States of America.
The 19th century also saw the rapid creation, development and codification of many sports, particularly in Britain and the United States. Association football, rugby union, baseball and many other sports were developed during the 19th century, while the British Empire facilitated the rapid spread of sports such as cricket to many different parts of the world. Also, ladywear was a very sensitive topic during this time, where women showing their ankles was viewed to be scandalous.
It also marks the fall of the Ottoman rule of the Balkans which led to the creation of Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Romania as a result of the second Russo-Turkish War, which in itself followed the great Crimean War.
Industrial revolution
European Imperialism
British Regency, Victorian era (UK, British Empire)
Bourbon Restoration, July Monarchy, French Second Republic, Second French Empire, French Third Republic (France)
Belle Époque (Europe)
Edo period, Meiji period (Japan)
Qing Dynasty (China)
Joseon Dynasty (Korea)
Tanzimat, First Constitutional Era (Ottoman Empire)
Russian Empire
American Manifest Destiny, The Gilded Age
1801: Giuseppe Piazzi discovers the dwarf planet Ceres. - Italy
1801: Thomas Jefferson elected President of the United States by the House of Representatives, following a tie in the Electoral College - United States
1801: The Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland merge to form the United Kingdom.
1801: Ranjit Singh crowned as King of Punjab.
1801: Napoleon signs the Concordat of 1801 with the Pope.
1801: Cairo falls to the British.
1801: Assassination of Tsar Paul I of Russia.
1801: British defeat French at the Second Battle of Abukir
1801–1815: the First Barbary War and the Second Barbary War between the United States and the Barbary States of North Africa
1802: Treaty of Amiens between France and the United Kingdom ends the War of the Second Coalition.
1802: Ludwig van Beethoven performs his Moonlight Sonata for the first time.
1803: William Symington demonstrates his Charlotte Dundas, the "first practical steamboat".
1803: The United States more than doubles in size when it buys out France's territorial claims in North America via the Louisiana Purchase. This begins the U.S.'s westward expansion to the Pacific referred to as its Manifest Destiny which involves annexing and conquering land from Mexico, Britain, and Native Americans.
1803: The Wahhabis of the First Saudi State capture Mecca and Medina.
1803: War breaks out between Britain and France; this is considered by some to be the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars.
1803: First phase of Padri War. (to 1825)
1804: Haiti gains independence from France and becomes the first black republic.
1804-1813: Russo-Persian War.
1804: Austrian Empire founded by Francis I.
1804: Napoleon crowns himself Emperor of the French.
1804: World population reaches 1 billion.
1804: First steam locomotive begins operation.
1804: Morphine first isolated.
1804–1810: Fulani Jihad in Nigeria.
1804–1815: Serbian revolution erupts against the Ottoman rule. Suzerainty of Serbia recognized in 1817.
1805: The Battle of Trafalgar eliminates the French and Spanish naval fleets and allows for British dominance of the seas, a major factor for the success of the British Empire later in the century.
1805: Napoleon decisively defeats an Austrian-Russian army at the Battle of Austerlitz.
1805–1848: Muhammad Ali modernizes Egypt.
1806: Holy Roman Empire dissolved as a consequence of the Treaty of Pressburg.
1806: Cape Colony becomes part of the British Empire.
1806-1812: Russo-Turkish War, Treaty of Bucharest.
1807: Britain declares the Slave Trade illegal.
1807: Potassium and Sodium are individually isolated by Sir Humphry Davy.
1808: Beethoven performs his Fifth Symphony
1808–1809: Russia conquers Finland from Sweden in the Finnish War.
1808–1814: Spanish guerrillas fight in the Peninsular War.
1808: Herman Willem Daendels the Governor-general of the Dutch East Indies (1808–1811) begin the construction of Java Great Post Road.
1809: Napoleon strips the Teutonic Knights of their last holdings in Bad Mergentheim.
1810: The University of Berlin was founded. Among its students and faculty are Hegel, Marx, and Bismarck. The German university reform proves to be so successful that its model is copied around the world (see History of European research universities).
1810: The Grito de Dolores begins the Mexican War of Independence.
1810: The trumpet gets valves.
1810s–1820s: Most of the Latin American colonies free themselves from the Spanish and Portuguese Empires after the Latin American wars of independence.
1810s–1820s: Punjab War between the Sikh Empire and British Empire.
1812: The French invasion of Russia is a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars.
1812: British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval is assassinated.
1812–1815: War of 1812 between the United States and Britain; ends in a draw, except that Native Americans lose power
1813: Jane Austen publishes Pride and Prejudice
1813–1837: Afghan-Sikh Wars.
1814: Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba.
1814: Elisha Collier invents the Flintlock Revolver.
1814–16: Anglo-Nepalese War between Nepal (Gurkha Empire) and British Empire.
1815: The Congress of Vienna redraws the European map. Reaction and conservatism dominate all of Europe. The Concert of Europe attempts to preserve this settlement, but the forces of liberalism and nationalism make for dramatic changes. It marks the beginning of a Pax Britannica which lasts until 1914.
1815: Napoleon escapes exile and begins the Hundred Days before finally being defeated at the Battle of Waterloo and exiled to St Helena. His defeat brings a conclusion to the Napoleonic Wars
1815: April, Mount Tambora in Sumbawa island erupts, becoming the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history, destroying Tambora culture, and killing at least 71,000 people, including its aftermath. The eruption created global climate anomalies known as "volcanic winter".
1815: Jane Austen publishes Emma in December.
1816: Year Without a Summer: Unusually cold conditions wreak havoc throughout the Northern Hemisphere, likely influenced by the 1815 explosion of Mount Tambora.
1816: Independence of Argentina.
1816–1828: Shaka's Zulu Kingdom becomes the largest in Southern Africa.
1817: Principality of Serbia becomes suzerain from the Ottoman Empire. Officially independent in 1867.
1817: First Seminole War begins in Florida.
1817: Russia commences its conquest of the Caucasus.
1817: Princess Charlotte of Wales dies following childbirth.
1818: Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein.
1818: Independence of Chile.
1819: John Keats writes his odes of 1819.
1819: Peterloo massacre in England.
1819: The modern city of Singapore is established by the British East India Company.
1819: Théodore Géricault paints his masterpiece The Raft of the Medusa, and exhibits it in the French Salon of 1819 at the Louvre.
1820: Missouri Compromise.
1820: Regency period ends in the United Kingdom.
1820: Discovery of Antarctica.
1820: Liberia founded by the American Colonization Society for freed American slaves.
1820: Dissolution of the Maratha Empire.
1820–1835: At least 5000 Mexicans die in Apache raids, and 100 settlements are destroyed.
1821: Napoleon Bonaparte dies in exile on the island of Saint Helena.
1821: Mexico gains independence from Spain with the Treaty of Córdoba.
1821: Peru declares its independence from Spain.
1821: Navarino Massacre.
1821–1830: Greece becomes the first country to break away from the Ottoman Empire after the Greek War of Independence.
1822–1823: First Mexican Empire, as Mexico's first post-independent government, ruled by Emperor Agustín I of Mexico.
1822: Prince Pedro of Brazil proclaimed the Brazilian independence on 7 September. On 1 December, he was crowned as Emperor Dom Pedro I of Brazil.
1823–1887: The British Empire annexed Burma (now also called Myanmar) after three Anglo-Burmese Wars.
1823: Monroe Doctrine declared by US President James Monroe.
1824: Premiere of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
1824: Cadbury is established in Birmingham.
1825: Erie Canal opened connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean.
1825: First isolation of aluminum.
1825: Independence of Bolivia.
1825: The Stockton and Darlington Railway, the first public railway in the world, is opened.
1825: The Decembrist revolt.
1825–1828: The Cisplatine War results in the independence of Uruguay.
1825: Java War. (to 1830)
1826: Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine.
1826–1828: After the final Russo-Persian War, the Persian Empire took back territory lost to Russia from the previous war.
1827: Death of William Blake, Ludwig van Beethoven
1828–1832: Black War in Tasmania leads to the near extinction of the Tasmanian aborigines
1829: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust premieres.
1829: First electric motor built.
1829: Sir Robert Peel founds the Metropolitan Police Service, the first modern police force.
1830: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is established on 6 April 1830.
1830: Anglo-Russian rivalry over Afghanistan, the Great Game, commences and concludes in 1895.
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.
1830: November Uprising in Poland against Russia.
1830: End of the Diponegoro war. The whole area of Yogyakarta and Surakarta Manca nagara Dutch seized. 27 September, Klaten Agreement determines a fixed boundary between Surakarta and Yogyakarta and permanently divide the kingdom of Mataram was signed by Sasradiningrat, Pepatih Dalem Surakarta, and Danurejo, Pepatih Dalem Yogyakarta. Mataram is a de facto and de yure controlled by the Dutch East Indies.
1831: France invades and occupies Algeria.
1831: Ioannis Kapodistrias, the First Governor of Greece is murdered at Nauplion.
1831: The Belgian constitution is ratified and Leopold I is crowned as first "King of the Belgians".
1831: Great Bosnian uprising against Ottoman rule occurs.
1831–1836: Charles Darwin's journey on the HMS Beagle.
1831: November Uprising ends with crushing defeat for Poland in the Battle of Warsaw.
1831-1833: Egyptian–Ottoman War.
1831: Second phase of Padri War. (to 1838)
1832: The British Parliament passes the Great Reform Act.
1833: Slavery Abolition Act bans slavery throughout the British Empire.
1833–1876: Carlist Wars in Spain.
1834: The German Customs Union is formed.
1834: Spanish Inquisition officially ends.
1834: Britain amends the Poor Law demanding that any paupers requesting assistance must go to a workhouse.
1834–1859: Imam Shamil's rebellion in Russian-occupied Caucasus.
1835–1836: The Texas Revolution in Mexico resulted in the short-lived Republic of Texas.
1836: Battle of the Alamo ends with defeat for Texan separatists.
1836: Battle of San Jacinto leads to the capture of General Santa Anna.
1836: Samuel Colt popularizes the revolver and sets up a firearms company to manufacture his invention of the Colt Paterson revolver a six bullets firearm shot one by one without reloading manually.
1837: Telegraphy patented.
1837: Charles Dickens publishes Oliver Twist.
1837: Death of Alexander Pushkin.
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: By this time, 46,000 Native Americans have been forcibly relocated in the Trail of Tears.
1838–1840: Civil war in the Federal Republic of Central America led to the foundings of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.
1839: Kingdom of Belgium declared.
1839–1851: Uruguayan Civil War.
1839–1860: After the First and Second Opium Wars, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and Russia gain many trade and associated concessions from China resulting in the start of the decline of the Qing dynasty.
1839–1919: Anglo-Afghan Wars lead to stalemate and the establishment of the Durand line
1840: New Zealand is founded, as the Treaty of Waitangi is signed by the Māori and British.
1840: Upper and Lower Canada are merged into the Province of Canada.
1841: The word "dinosaur" is coined by Richard Owen
1842: Treaty of Nanking cedes Hong Kong to the British.
1842: Anaesthesia used for the first time.
1843: The first wagon train sets out from Missouri.
1843: Short stories A Christmas Carol and The Tell-Tale Heart published.
1844: Persian Prophet the Báb announces his revelation on 23 May, founding Bábísm. He announced to the world of the coming of "He whom God shall make manifest". He is considered the forerunner of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith.
1844: First publicly funded telegraph line in the world—between Baltimore and Washington—sends demonstration message on 24 May, ushering in the age of the telegraph. This message read "What hath God wrought?" (Bible, Numbers 23:23)
1844: Millerite movement awaits the Second Advent of Jesus Christ on 22 October. Christ's non-appearance becomes known as the Great Disappointment.
1844: The great auk is rendered extinct.
1844: Dominican War of Independence from Haiti.
1844: Heinrich Heine coins the term "Lisztomania" in regards to the public's frenzied reaction to the pianist Franz Liszt.
1845: Unification of the Kingdom of Tonga under Tāufaʻāhau (King George Tupou I).
1845: Lunacy Act 1845 passes through Parliament.
1845–1846: First Anglo-Sikh War.
1845–1872: The New Zealand Land Wars.
1845–1849: The Irish Potato Famine leads to the Irish diaspora.
1846–1848: The Mexican-American War leads to Mexico's cession of much of the modern-day Southwestern United States.
1846–1847: Mormon migration to Utah.
1847: The Brontë sisters publish Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey.
1847–1901: The Caste War of Yucatán.
1848–1849: Second Anglo-Sikh War
1848: The Communist Manifesto published.
1848: Revolutions of 1848 in Europe.
1848: Seneca Falls Convention is the first women's rights convention in the United States and leads to the battle for women's suffrage.
1848–1858: California Gold Rush.
1848: William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
1849: The first boatloads of gold prospectors arrive in California, giving them the nickname 49ers.
1849: Roman Republic's constitutional law becomes the first to abolish capital punishment.
1849: The safety pin and the gas mask are invented.
1849: Earliest recorded air raid, as Austria employs 200 balloons to deliver ordnance against Venice.
1850: The Little Ice Age ends around this time.
1850: Alfred Tennyson is appointed Poet Laureate after the death of William Wordsworth.
1850–1864: Taiping Rebellion is the bloodiest conflict of the century, leading to the deaths of 20 million people.
1851: The Great Exhibition in London was the world's first international Expo or World Fair.
1851: Louis Napoleon assumes power in France in a coup.
1851–1852: The Platine War ends and the Empire of Brazil has the hegemony over South America.
1851–1860s: Victorian gold rush in Australia
1851: Herman Melville publishes Moby-Dick.
1852: Frederick Douglass delivers his speech "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro" in Rochester, New York.
1853: William Wells Brown (1814–1884) wrote first novel published by an African American, Clotel
1853: Twelve Years a Slave is a memoir and slave narrative by American Solomon Northup as told to and edited by David Wilson.
1853: United States Commodore Matthew C. Perry threatens the Japanese capital Edo with gunships, demanding that they agree to open trade.
1853–1856: Crimean War between France, the United Kingdom, the Ottoman Empire and Russia
1854: Battle of Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade.
1854: The Convention of Kanagawa formally ends Japan's policy of isolation.
1854: SS Arctic disaster: The steamship SS Arctic collides with the SS Vesta and sinks off the coast of Newfoundland.
1854–1855: Siege of Sevastapol; city falls to French and British forces.
1855: Bessemer process enables steel to be mass-produced.
1855: Walt Whitman publishes the first edition of Leaves of Grass.
1855: Cocaine is isolated by Friedrich Gaedcke.
1856: Rana dynasty of Nepal established by Jung Bahadur Rana.
1856: World's first oil refinery in Romania
1856: Neanderthal man first identified. Age still unknown.
1857: Sir Joseph Whitworth designs the first long-range sniper rifle.
1857–1858: Indian Rebellion of 1857. The British Empire assumes control of India from the East India Company.
1858-1947: British Empire in India lasts for 90 years.
1858: Invention of the phonautograph, the first true device for recording sound.
1858: Construction of Big Ben is completed.
1859: Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.
1859–1869: Suez Canal is constructed.
1860: Giuseppe Garibaldi launches the Expedition of the Thousand.
1860: The Pony Express started.
1861–1865: American Civil War between the Union and seceding Confederacy.
1861: Russia abolishes serfdom.
1861–1867: French intervention in Mexico and the creation of the Second Mexican Empire, ruled by Maximilian I of Mexico and his consort Carlota of Mexico.
1861: Death of Prince Albert.
1861: James Clerk Maxwell publishes On Physical Lines of Force, formulating the four Maxwell's Equations.
1862: The Pony Express ended.
1862: Victor Hugo publishes Les Misérables.
1862: French gain first foothold in Southeast Asia.
1862–1877: Muslim Rebellion in north-west China.
1863: United States President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln issued a preliminary on September 22, 1862 warning that in all states still in rebellion (Confederacy) on January 1, 1863, he would declare their slaves “then, thenceforward, and forever free.” The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1865, officially abolished slavery in the entire country.
1863: Bahá'u'lláh declares his station as "He whom God shall make manifest". This date is celebrated in the Bahá'í Faith as The Festival of Ridván.
1863: Formation of the International Red Cross is followed by the adoption of the First Geneva Convention in 1864.
1863: First section of the London Underground opens.
1863: France annexes Cambodia.
1863: Édouard Manet exhibits his painting The Luncheon on the Grass, sparking public outrage.
1863: Gordon_(slave) Gordon, or "Whipped Peter", was an enslaved African American who escaped from a Louisiana plantation in March 1863
1863–1865: Polish uprising against the Russian Empire.
1864: Circassian Genocide.(21 May 1864)
1864–1866: The Chincha Islands War was an attempt by Spain to regain its South American colonies.
1864–1870: The Paraguayan War ends Paraguayan ambitions for expansion and destroys much of the Paraguayan population.
1864: June, The first railway track in Indonesia was laid between Semarang and Tanggung, Central Java by the Dutch colonial government.
1865–1877: Reconstruction in the United States; Slavery is banned in the United States by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
1865-9 April 1865: Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia (26,765 troops) to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War.
1865-14 April 1865: United States President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by actor and Confederate sympathiser John Wilkes Booth, while attending a performance at Ford's Theater, Washington, D.C.. He dies approximately nine hours after being shot on 15 April 1865.
1865: Gregor Mendel formulates his laws of inheritance.
1865: Lewis Carroll publishes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
1866: Successful transatlantic telegraph cable follows an earlier attempt in 1858.
1866: Austro-Prussian War results in the dissolution of the German Confederation and the creation of the North German Confederation and the Austrian-Hungarian Dual Monarchy.
1866–1868: Famine in Finland.
1866–1869: After the Meiji Restoration, Japan embarks on a program of rapid modernization.
1867: The United States purchases Alaska from Russia.
1867: Canadian Confederation formed.
1867: Alfred Nobel invents dynamite.
1867: The Principality of Serbia passes a Constitution which defines its independence from the Ottoman Empire. International recognition followed in 1878.
1867: The Luxembourg Crisis: diplomatic confrontation between France and Prussia on the status of Luxembourg and the towns fortifications are torn down.
1868: The Expatriation Act of 1868 is approved by the U.S. Congress, one of the early blows which would eventually lead to the death of the common law doctrine of perpetual allegiance
1868: The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is approved.
1868: Cro-Magnon man first identified.
1868: Michael Barrett is the last person to be publicly hanged in England.
1868–1878: Ten Years' War between Cuba and Spain.
1868: The Batavian Museum (today National Museum of Indonesia) was officially opened by Dutch East Indies government.
1869: Leo Tolstoy publishes War and Peace.
1869: First Transcontinental Railroad completed in United States on 10 May. - United States
1869: Dmitri Mendeleev created the Periodic table.
1869: The Suez Canal opens linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.
1870: Rasmus Malling-Hansen's invention the Hansen Writing Ball becomes the first commercially sold typewriter.
1870–1871: The Franco-Prussian War results in the unifications of Germany and Italy, the collapse of the Second French Empire and the emergence of a New Imperialism.
1870: Official dismantling of the Cultivation System and beginning of a 'Liberal Policy' of deregulated exploitation of the Netherlands East Indies.
1870-1890: Long Depression in Western Europe and North America.
1871-1878: In Germany, Otto von Bismarck attacks the privileges of the Catholic Church in the Kulturkampf ("Culture War")
1871–1872: Famine in Persia is believed to have caused the death of 2 million.
1871–1914: Second Industrial Revolution
1871: Royal Albert Hall opens in London.
1871: The Paris Commune briefly rules the French capital.
1871: The feudal system is dismantled in Japan.
1871: Henry Morton Stanley meets Dr. David Livingstone near Lake Tanganyika.
1872: Yellowstone National Park, the first national park, is created.
1872: The first recognised international soccer match, between England and Scotland, is played.
1873: The Panic of 1873 starts the "Long Depression".
1873: Maxwell's A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism published.
1873: The samurai class is abolished in Japan.
1873: Blue jeans and barbed wire are invented.
1873: The beginning of the bloody Aceh War for Dutch occupation of the province.
1874: The Société Anonyme Coopérative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, and Graveurs, better known as the Impressionists, organize and present their first public group exhibition at the Paris studio of the photographer Nadar.
1874: The Home Rule Movement is established in Ireland.
1874: The British East India Company is dissolved.
1874–1875: First Republic in Spain.
1875: HMS Challenger surveys the deepest point in the Earth's oceans, the Challenger Deep
1875–1900: 26 million Indians perish in India due to famine.
1875: Georges Bizet's opera Carmen premiers in Paris.
1876: Bulgarians instigate the April Uprising against Ottoman rule.
1876: Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle is first performed in its entirety.
1876: Queen Victoria becomes Empress of India.
1876: Battle of the Little Bighorn leads to the death of General Custer and victory for the alliance of Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho
1876–1879: 13 million Chinese die 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 labour strike.
1877: Crazy Horse surrenders and is later killed
1877: Asaph Hall discovers the moons of Mars
1877: Thomas Edison invents the phonograph
1877–1878: Following the Russo-Turkish War, 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. - South Africa
1879: Thomas Edison tests his first light bulb.
1879–1880: Little War against Spanish rule in Cuba leads to rebel defeat.
1879–1883: Chile battles with Peru and Bolivia over Andean territory in the War of the Pacific.
1879-1884: Belgium is engulfed in a political crisis, dubbed the First School War, over the role of religion in state education.
1879: 21 April, Kartini was born in Jepara, today the date is commemorated as women's emancipation day in Indonesia.
1880–1881: the First Boer War.
1881: Tsar Alexander II is assassinated.
1881: Wave of pogroms begins in the Russian Empire.
1881: Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Sitting Bull surrenders.
1881: First electrical power plant and grid in Godalming, Britain.
1881: President James A. Garfield is assassinated.
1881-1882: The Jules Ferry laws are passed in France establishing free, secular education.
1881–1899: The Mahdist War in Sudan.
1882: The British invasion and subsequent occupation of Egypt
1883: Krakatoa volcano explosion, one of the largest in modern history.
1883: The quagga is rendered extinct.
1883: Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island is published.
1884: Siege of Khartoum.
1884: Germany gains control of Cameroon.
1884: Mark Twain publishes The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
1884: Sir Hiram Maxim invents the first self-powered Machine gun.
1884–1885: The Berlin Conference signals the start of the European "scramble for Africa". Attending nations also agree to ban trade in slaves.
1884–1885: The Sino-French War led to the formation of French Indochina.
1885: Louis Pasteur creates the first successful vaccine against rabies for a young boy who had been bitten 14 times by a rabid dog.
1885: King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo Free State as a personal fiefdom.
1885: Britain establishes a protectorate over Bechuanaland (modern Botswana).
1885: Singer begins production of the 'Vibrating Shuttle'. which would become the most popular model of sewing machine.
1885: Rock Springs massacre: White miners rioted, killing at least 28 Chinese immigrant miners.
1886: "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson is published.
1886: Burma is presented to Queen Victoria as a birthday gift.
1886: Karl Benz sells the first commercial automobile.
1886: Construction of the Statue of Liberty; Coca-Cola is developed.
1887: The British Empire takes over Balochistan.
1887: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle publishes his first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet.
1888: Louis Le Prince records the Roundhay Garden Scene, the earliest surviving film.
1888: Jack the Ripper murders occur in Whitechapel, London.
1888: Slavery banned in Brazil.
1888: Founding of the shipping line Koninklijke Paketvaart-Maatschappij (KPM) that supported the unification and development of the colonial economy.
1889: The Mayerling Incident: Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and Baroness Mary Vetsera are found dead in an apparent murder-suicide.
1889: Eiffel Tower is inaugurated in Paris.
1889: Mirza Ghulam Ahmad establishes the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, a reform sect of Islam.
1889: End of the Brazilian Empire and the beginning of the Brazilian Republic.
1889: Vincent van Gogh paints Starry Night.
1889: Aspirin patented.
1889: Moulin Rouge opens in Paris.
1890: The Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota was the last battle in the American Indian Wars. This event represents the end of the American Old West.
1890: Italy annexes Eritrea.
1890: First use of the electric chair as a method of execution.
1890: Independence of Luxembourg.
1890: Death of Vincent van Gogh.
1890: The cardboard box is invented.
1891: Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, founder of the Ahmadiyya movement, claims to be Promised Messiah and Imam Mahdi.
1891: 1891 Chilean Civil War.
1891: Wrigley Company is founded in Illinois.
1891 Pope Leo XIII launches the encyclical Rerum Novarum, the first major catholic document on social justice
1892: Basketball is invented.
1892: The World's Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago celebrating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World.
1892: Fingerprinting is officially adopted for the first time.
1892: Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite premières in St Petersberg.
1892: John Froelich develops and constructs the first gasoline/petrol-powered tractor.
1893: US forces overthrow the government of Hawaii.
1893: The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation is formed.
1893: New Zealand becomes the first country to enact women's suffrage.
1893: The Coremans-de Vriendt law is passed in Belgium, creating legal equality for French and Dutch languages.
1894: First commercial film release by Jean Aimé Le Roy.
1894: First gramophone record.
1894: Karl Elsener invents the Swiss Army knife.
1894: France and the Russian Empire form a military alliance.
1894–1895: After the First Sino-Japanese War, China cedes Taiwan to Japan and grants Japan a free hand in Korea.
1894–1906: Dreyfuss Affair in France.
1894: Lombok War The Dutch looted and destroyed the Cakranegara palace of Mataram. J. L. A. Brandes, a Dutch philologist discovered and secured Nagarakretagama manuscript in Lombok royal library.
1895: Taiwan is ceded to the Empire of Japan as a result of the First Sino-Japanese war.
1895: Volleyball is invented.
1895: Trial of Oscar Wilde and premiere of his play The Importance of Being Earnest.
1895: French troops capture Antananarivo in Madagascar.
1895: Wilhelm Röntgen identifies x-rays.
1895–1896: Abyssinia defeats Italy in the First Italo–Ethiopian War.
1895–1898: Cuban War for Independence results in Cuban independence from Spain.
1896: Olympic Games revived in Athens.
1896: Philippine Revolution ends declaring Philippines free from Spanish rule.
1896: Ethiopia defeated Italy at the Battle of Adwa.
1896: Klondike Gold Rush in Canada.
1896: Henri Becquerel discovers radioactivity; J. J. Thomson identifies the electron, though not by name.
1897: Gojong, or Emperor Gwangmu, proclaims the short-lived Korean Empire: lasts until 1910.
1897: Benin Expedition of 1897 loots and burns Benin.
1897: Greco-Turkish War.
1897: Bram Stoker writes Dracula.
1898: The United States gains control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines after the Spanish–American War.
1898: Empress Dowager Cixi of China engineers a coup d'état, marking the end of the Hundred Days' Reform; the Guangxu Emperor is arrested.
1898: H. G. Wells publishes The War of the Worlds
1898: Empress Elisabeth of Austria is assassinated by anarchist Luigi Lucheni.
1898–1900: The Boxer Rebellion in China is suppressed by an Eight-Nation Alliance.
1898–1902: The Thousand Days' War in Colombia breaks out between the "Liberales" and "Conservadores", culminating with the loss of Panama in 1903.
1898: General van Heutz becomes chief of staff of Aceh campaign. Wilhelmina becomes queen of the Netherlands.
1899–1902: Second Boer War begins.
1899–1913: Philippine–American War begins.
1899–1900: Indian famine kills over 1 million people.
Hawaii becomes an official U.S. territory.
Galveston Hurricane in Texas kills 8000 people.
L. Frank Baum publishes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
King Umberto I of Italy is assassinated.
Exposition Universelle held in Paris, prominently featuring the growing art trend Art Nouveau.
Eight nations invaded China at the same time and ransacked Forbidden City.
Alexander II, Emperor of Russia, King of Poland
Clara Barton, nurse, pioneer of the American Red Cross
Sitting Bull, a leader of the Lakota
John Burroughs, Naturalist, conservationist, writer
Benito Juárez, Mexican President
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 and brother of Mexican Emperor
Chief Joseph, a leader of the Nez Percé
Kamehameha I, founder of the Kingdom of Hawaii died in May 1819
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
Ranjit Singh, Maharaja of the Sikh Empire
Napoleon I, First Consul and Emperor of the French
Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish political leader
Commodore Perry, U.S. Naval commander, opened the door to Japan
José Rizal, Filipino polymath, physician, nationalist, novelist, poet, liberator
Sacagawea, Important aide to the Lewis and Clark Exploration
Giuseppe Garibaldi, was an Italian general and politician, a central figure in the Italian Risorgimento
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
Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto, promoted change in the labor system of Europe
Nikola Karev commander and leader of the Ilinden Uprising in Ottoman-Macedonia.
Henry George, economist and author of Progress and Poverty, one of the most influential books of the 19th century in the United States
Show business and theatre
P. T. Barnum, showman
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
Baptiste Deburau, Bohemian–French actor and mime.
Sergei Diaghilev, art critic, ballet impresario
Eleonora Duse, actress
Henrik Ibsen, playwright
Edmund Kean, actor
Charles Kean, actor
Olga Knipper, actress
Lillie Langtry, actress, socialite
Frédérick Lemaître, actor
Jenny Lind, opera singer called the Swedish Nightingale
William Macready, actor
Céleste Mogador, dancer
Lola Montez, exotic dancer
Adelaide Neilson, actress
Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, playwright, theatre director, co-founder of Moscow Art Theatre
Annie Oakley, Wild West, sharp-shooter
Alexander Ostrovsky, playwright
Lillian Russell, singer, actress
George Bernard Shaw, playwright
Mikhail Shchepkin, actor
Constantin Stanislavski, actor, theatre director, co-founder of Moscow Art Theatre
Edward Askew Sothern, actor
Ellen Terry, actress
Maria Yermolova, actress
Cap Anson, baseball player
Gentleman Jim Corbett, heavyweight boxer
Big Ed Delahanty, baseball player
Bob Fitzsimmons, heavyweight boxer
Pud Galvin, baseball player
Dr William Gilbert 'WG' Grace, cricketer
Peter Jackson, heavyweight boxer
James J. Jeffries, heavyweight boxer
Ivan Poddubny, wrestler
Old Hoss Radbourn, baseball player
Tom Sharkey, heavyweight boxer
John L. Sullivan, heavyweight boxer
John Montgomery Ward, baseball player
Evangelis Zappas, Founder of the International Modern Olympic Games
John Jacob Astor III, Real Estate
Andrew Carnegie, Industrialist, philanthropist
Robert Reed Church, a freedman who became the South's first black millionaire, real estate
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
Savva Mamontov, Industrialist, philanthropist
Andrew W. Mellon, Industrialist, philanthropist, art collector
J.P. Morgan, Banker, art collector
George Mortimer Pullman (railroads)
Ludvig Nobel, Oil
Charles Pratt Oil, founder of the Pratt Institute
Cecil Rhodes diamonds, mining magnate, founder of De Beers and benefactor of the Rhodes Scholarship.
John D. Rockefeller, Oil, Business tycoon, philanthropist
Levi Strauss, clothing manufacturer
Pavel Tretyakov, Businessman, art collector, philanthropist, founder of Tretyakov Gallery
Cornelius Vanderbilt, Shipping, Railroads
William Chapman Ralston, Businessman, Financier, founder of Bank of California.
Madam C.J. Walker, African American entrepreneur, philanthropist, political and social activist. Eulogized as first female self-made millionaire in America.
Famous and infamous personalities
William Bonney a.k.a. Henry McCarty a.k.a. Billy the Kid, Wild West, outlaw
John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of president Abraham Lincoln
James Bowie, Soldier, Texan who died at the Alamo, invented the Bowie knife
Jim Bridger, Wild West, mountain man
John Brown, a fanatical American 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.
H.H. Holmes, first documented American serial killer.
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
Ignacy Hryniewiecki, assassin of Tsar Alexander II of Russia
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
Solomon Northrup, A free-born African American from New York, he was the son of a freed slave and free woman of color. A farmer and professional violinist, a landowner, American abolitionist and the primary author of the memoir Twelve Years a Slave.
Allan Pinkerton, spy, founded the Pinkerton Agency, first detective agency in the United States
William Poole a.k.a. 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.
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, Zoology
Lewis H. Morgan, Anthropology
Jules Etienne Joseph Quicherat, Archaeology
Robert Ridgway, Ornithology
Edward Burnett Tylor, Anthropology
Karl Verner, Linguist
Roald Amundsen, explorer
Samuel Baker, explorer
Thomas Baines, artist, explorer
Heinrich Barth, explorer
Henry Walter Bates, naturalist, explorer
Faddey Bellingshausen, explorer
Jim Bridger, explorer
Richard Francis Burton, explorer
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, exploration
Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh, explorer
Percy Fawcett, adventurer, explorer, proto-Indiana Jones
Vladimir Gilyarovsky, journalist
Horace Greeley, journalist
Peter Jones (missionary), Canadian Methodist minister, and go-between for 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
Otto von Kotzebue, explorer
Pyotr Kozlov, explorer
Mikhail Lazarev, fleet commander, explorer
Meriwether Lewis, explorer
David Livingstone, missionary
Stepan Makarov, explorer, oceanographer
Thomas Nast, journalist, caricaturist and editorial cartoonist
Robert Peary, explorer
Marcelo H. del Pilar, writer, journalist, editor of La Solidaridad.
Nikolai Przhevalsky, explorer
Frederick Selous, explorer
Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky, explorer, geographer
John Hanning Speke, explorer
Henry M. Stanley, journalist, explorer
John McDouall Stuart, explorer
John L. O'Sullivan, journalist who coined Manifest Destiny
Chokan Valikhanov, explorer ethnographer, historian
Carter G. Woodson, African-American historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.
Ferdinand von Wrangel, explorer
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
Thomas Eakins, pioneer motion photographer
George Eastman, inventor of roll film
Hércules Florence, pioneer inventor of photography
Auguste and Louis Lumière, pioneer film-makers, inventors
Étienne-Jules Marey, pioneer motion photographer, chronophotographer
Eadweard Muybridge, pioneer motion photographer, chronophotographer
Nadar a.k.a. Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, portrait photographer
Nicéphore Niépce, pioneer inventor of photography
Louis Le Prince, motion picture inventor and pioneer film-maker
Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, chemist and photographer
William Fox Talbot, inventor of the negative / positive photographic process.
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:
Ivan Aivazovsky
Léon Bakst
Albert Bierstadt
William Blake
Arnold Bocklin
Rosa Bonheur
William Burges
Mary Cassatt
Camille Claudel
Paul Cézanne
Frederic Edwin Church
Thomas Cole
Jan Matejko
John Constable
Camille Corot
Gustave Courbet
Honoré Daumier
Edgar Degas
Eugène Delacroix
Thomas Eakins
Caspar David Friedrich
Paul Gauguin
Théodore Géricault
Vincent van Gogh
Francisco Goya
Ando Hiroshige
Hokusai
Winslow Homer
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres
Isaac Levitan
Édouard Manet
Claude Monet
Gustave Moreau
Berthe Morisot
Edvard Munch
Mikhail Nesterov
Camille Pissarro
Augustus Pugin
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Ilya Repin
Auguste Rodin
Albert Pinkham Ryder
John Singer Sargent
Valentin Serov
Georges Seurat
Ivan Shishkin
Vasily Surikov
James Tissot
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Viktor Vasnetsov
Eugene Viollet-le-Duc
Mikhail Vrubel
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi
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 19th 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, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Richard Wagner. The list includes:
Mily Balakirev
Ludwig van Beethoven
Hector Berlioz
Georges Bizet
Alexander Borodin
Johannes Brahms
Anton Bruckner
Frédéric Chopin
Claude Debussy
Antonín Dvořák
Mikhail Glinka
Edvard Grieg
Scott Joplin
Franz Liszt
Gustav Mahler
Felix Mendelssohn
Modest Mussorgsky
Jacques Offenbach
Niccolò Paganini
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Gioachino Rossini
Anton Rubinstein
Camille Saint-Saëns
Antonio Salieri
Franz Schubert
Robert Schumann
Alexander Scriabin
Arthur Sullivan
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Giuseppe Verdi
Richard Wagner
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 Émile 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 21 February 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 Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Fyodor Dostoyevsky; the English Charles Dickens, John Keats, Alfred, Lord Tennyson 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, Alexandre Dumas and Charles Baudelaire. Some other important writers of note included:
Leopoldo Alas
Louisa May Alcott
Hans Christian Andersen
Machado de Assis
Jane Austen
Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda
Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Anne Brontë
Charlotte Brontë
Emily Brontë
Georg Büchner
Ivan Bunin
Lord Byron
Lewis Carroll
Rosalía de Castro
François-René de Chateaubriand
Anton Chekhov
Kate Chopin
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
James Fenimore Cooper
Stephen Crane
Eduard Douwes Dekker
Emily Dickinson
Charles Dickens
Arthur Conan Doyle
Alexandre Dumas, père (1802–1870)
Paul Dunbar
José Maria Eça de Queirós
José Echegaray
George Eliot
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Gustave Flaubert
Margaret Fuller
Elizabeth Gaskell
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nikolai Gogol
Manuel González Prada
Juana Manuela Gorriti
Brothers Grimm
Henry Rider Haggard
Ida Gräfin Hahn-Hahn (1805–1880)
Thomas Hardy
Francis Bret Harte
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Friedrich Hölderlin
Heinrich Heine
Henrik Ibsen
Washington Irving
Henry James
John Keats
Rudyard Kipling
Caroline Kirkland
Jules Laforgue
Giacomo Leopardi
Mikhail Lermontov
Stéphane Mallarmé
Alessandro Manzoni
José Martí
Clorinda Matto de Turner
Herman Melville
Friedrich Nietzsche
José María de Pereda
Benito Pérez Galdós
Marcel Proust
Aleksandr Pushkin
Fritz Reuter (1810–1874)
Arthur Rimbaud
John Ruskin
George Sand (Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin)
Mary Shelley
Percy Shelley
Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Robert Louis Stevenson
Bram Stoker
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Henry David Thoreau
Leo Tolstoy
Ivan Turgenev
Mark Twain
Juan Valera y Alcalá-Galiano
Paul Verlaine
Jules Verne
Lew Wallace
H. G. Wells
Walt Whitman
Oscar Wilde
William Wordsworth
Émile Zola
José Zorrilla
The 19th century saw the birth of science as a profession; the term scientist was coined in 1833 by William Whewell, which soon replaced the older term of (natural) philosopher. Among the most influential ideas of the 19th century were those of Charles Darwin (alongside the independent researches of Alfred Russel Wallace), who in 1859 published the book The Origin of Species, which introduced the idea of evolution by natural selection. Another important landmark in medicine and biology were the successful efforts to prove the germ theory of disease. Following this, Louis Pasteur made the first vaccine against rabies, and also made many discoveries in the field of chemistry, including the asymmetry of crystals. In chemistry, Dmitri Mendeleev, following the atomic theory of John Dalton, created the first periodic table of elements. In physics, the experiments, theories and discoveries of Michael Faraday, Andre-Marie Ampere, James Clerk Maxwell, and their contemporaries led to the creation of electromagnetism as a new branch of science. Thermodynamics led to an understanding of heat and the notion of energy was defined. Other highlights include the discoveries unveiling the nature of atomic structure and matter, simultaneously with chemistry - and of new kinds of radiation. In astronomy, the planet Neptune was discovered. In mathematics, the notion of complex numbers finally matured and led to a subsequent analytical theory; they also began the use of hypercomplex numbers. Karl Weierstrass and others carried out the arithmetization of analysis for functions of real and complex variables. It also saw rise to new progress in geometry beyond those classical theories of Euclid, after a period of nearly two thousand years. The mathematical science of logic likewise had revolutionary breakthroughs after a similarly long period of stagnation. But the most important step in science at this time were the ideas formulated by the creators of electrical science. Their work changed the face of physics and made possible for new technology to come about: Thomas Alva Edison gave the world a practical everyday lightbulb. Nikola Tesla pioneered the induction motor, high frequency transmission of electricity, and remote control. Other new inventions were electrical telegraphy and the telephone.
The list of important 19th-century scientists includes:
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
Charles Darwin, biologist
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
Francis Galton, English Victorian polymath
Josiah Willard Gibbs, physicist
Ernst Haeckel, biologist
William Rowan Hamilton, physicist and mathematician
Oliver Heaviside, electrical engineer, physical mathematician
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
Ilya Mechnikov, biologist
Gregor Mendel, biologist
Dmitri Mendeleev, chemist
Samuel Morey, inventor
Alfred Nobel, chemist, engineer, inventor
Louis Pasteur, microbiologist and chemist
Ivan Pavlov, physiologist
Santiago Ramón y Cajal, biologist
Franz Reuleaux mechanical engineer
Bernhard Riemann, mathematician
William Emerson Ritter, biologist
Vladimir Shukhov, inventor
Nikola Tesla, inventor
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, physicist
Thomas Young, English polymath.
Philosophy and religion
The 19th century was host to a variety of religious and philosophical thinkers, including:
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad founded the Ahmadiyya Islamic movement in India.
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
Allan Kardec, systematizer of the Spiritist Doctrine
Søren Kierkegaard, philosopher
Peter Kropotkin, anarchist
Karl Marx, political philosopher
Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Mutualist anarchist
John Stuart Mill, philosopher
Krste Petkov Misirkov, philosopher and historian
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
Vladimir Solovyov, philosopher
Herbert Spencer, "The Great philosopher"
Charles Spurgeon, Baptist preacher and writer
Leo Tolstoy, anarchist
Ayya Vaikundar, initiator of the belief system of Ayyavazhi
Ellen White religious author and co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church
St. Therese of Lisieux, French discalced Carmelite nun
Politics and the Military
John Quincy Adams, U.S. congressman, lawyer, and president
Alexander I of Russia
Alexander III of Russia
Susan B. Anthony, U.S. women's rights advocate
Pyotr Bagration, Russian general
Otto von Bismarck, German chancellor
Napoleon Bonaparte, French general, first consul and emperor
William Wells Brown, was a prominent African-American abolitionist lecturer, novelist, playwright, and historian in the United States
John C. Calhoun, U.S. senator
Henry Clay, U.S. statesman, "The Great Compromiser"
Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America
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
Alexander Gorchakov, Russian Chancellor
Isabella II of Spain
Gojong of Joseon, Korean emperor
William Lloyd Garrison, U.S. abolitionist leader
Mikhail Loris-Melikov, Russian statesman
William Ewart Gladstone, British prime minister
Ulysses S. Grant, U.S. general and president
Theodor Herzl, founder of modern political Zionism
Andrew Jackson, U.S. general and president
Thomas Jefferson, American statesman, philosopher, and president
John Mitchell, Jr., American businessman, newspaper editor, African American civil rights activist, and politician in Richmond, Virginia
Ioannis Kapodistrias, Russian and Greek statesman
Lajos Kossuth, Hungarian governor; leader of the war of independence
Mikhail Kutuzov, Russian general
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
Karl Nesselrode, Russian Chancellor
Nicholas I of Russia
Pedro II of Brazil
Cecil Rhodes
Theodore Roosevelt, Explorer, Naturalist, future President of The United States
William Tecumseh Sherman, Union general during the American Civil War
Dred Scott, enslaved African American man in the United States unsuccessfully sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857
Fulwar Skipwith, the first and only president of the short lived Republic of West Florida
Mikhail Skobelev, Russian general
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
Sojourner Truth, was an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist
William M. Tweed, a.k.a. Boss Tweed, influential New York City politician, head of Tammany Hall
Abdülmecid I, 31st Sultan and 110th Caliph of Islam of the Ottoman Empire
Queen Victoria, British monarch
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, British General and prime minister
Sergei Witte, Russian statesman
Hong Xiuquan, revolutionary, self-proclaimed Son of God
Aleksey Yermolov, Russian general
Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last Japanese Shogun
Sultan Abu Bakar of Johor, Johore Sultan
Among the people whose ages are verified by the Gerontology Research Group, as of 13 May 2016 there are three people (all female) still alive who were born in the 19th century. These people are Emma Morano from Italy (born 1899), Violet Brown from Jamaica and Nabi Tajima from Japan (1900). The last known living man born in the 19th century was Japan's Jiroemon Kimura (born 1897) who died on 12 June 2013, aged 116 years and 54 days.
