19th century


The 19th century began on 1 January 1801, and ended on 31 December 1900. It was the 9th century of the 2nd millennium. It was characterized by vast social upheaval. Slavery was abolished in much of Europe and the Americas. The First Industrial Revolution, though it began in the late 18th century, expanded beyond its British homeland for the first time during the 19th century, particularly remaking the economies and societies of the Low Countries, France, the Rhineland, Northern Italy, and the Northeastern United States. A few decades later, the Second Industrial Revolution led to ever more massive urbanization and much higher levels of productivity, profit, and prosperity, a pattern that continued into the 20th century. The Catholic Church, in response to the growing influence and power of modernism, secularism and materialism, formed the First Vatican Council in the late 19th century to deal with such problems and confirm certain Catholic doctrines as dogma. Religious missionaries were sent from the Americas and Europe to Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
In the Middle East, it was an era of change and reform. The Islamic gunpowder empires fell into decline and European imperialism brought much of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and almost all of Africa under colonial rule. Reformers were opposed at every turn by conservatives who strove to maintain the centuries-old Islamic laws and social order. The 19th century also saw the collapse of the large Spanish, Portuguese, French and Mughal empires, which paved the way for the growing influence of the British, French, German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Italian, and Japanese empires along with the United States.
The defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars marked the end of France’s status as the world superpower. Britain took France’s status as the world superpower, the British and Russian empires expanded considerably, becoming two of the world's leading powers. Russia expanded its territory to the Caucasus and Central Asia. The Ottoman Empire underwent a period of Westernization and reform known as the Tanzimat, vastly increasing its control over core territories in the Middle East. However, it remained in decline and became known as the sick man of Europe, losing territory in the Balkans and North Africa.
The remaining powers in the Indian subcontinent, such as the Maratha and Sikh empires, suffered a massive decline, and their dissatisfaction with the British East India Company's rule led to the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the company's dissolution. India was later ruled directly by the British Crown through the establishment of the British Raj. During the post-Napoleonic era, Britain enforced what became known as the Pax Britannica, which ushered in unprecedented globalization on a massive scale. Britain's overseas possessions grew rapidly in the first half of the century, especially with the expansion of vast territories in Canada, Australia, India, and in the last two decades of the century in Africa. By the end of the 19th century, the British controlled a fifth of the world's land and a quarter of the world's population. After the Napoleonic Wars, France sought to rebuild its colonial empire, having lost most of its major overseas possessions to the British in the 17th and 18th centuries, including territories in North America, French India, and much of the Caribbean. French expansion resumed in the 19th century, beginning with the conquest of Algeria in 1830 and the establishment of influence in Africa. French overseas possessions expanded gradually in the second half of the century, France significantly enlarged its colonial holdings, establishing French Indochina in Southeast Asia, French Polynesia, New Caledonia and the New Hebrides in Oceania and controlling over 40% of Africa. By the end of the 19th century, France possessed the second largest colonial empire in the world after the British Empire, it controlled over 13.5 million km2 or 1/10 of the world’s land area, comprising extensive territories in 40% of Africa, Southeast Asia with French Indochina, and Oceania with French Polynesia, New Caledonia and New Hebrides, and exerted significant influence in East Asia through spheres of influence in China.
By the end of the century, Britain and France had colonized almost all of South Asia, Southeast Asia, 80% of Africa and Oceania. In East Asia, China under the Qing dynasty endured its century of humiliation by foreign powers with Britain and France carving up spheres of influences in China that lasted until the first half of the 20th century. The last surviving man and woman, respectively, verified to have been born in the 19th century were Jiroemon Kimura and Nabi Tajima, both Japanese.

Overview

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.
File:Slaves ruvuma.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|Arab slave traders and their captives along the Ruvuma River, 19th century
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 1833 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 Thirteenth Amendment following their Civil War abolished slavery there in 1865, and in Brazil slavery was abolished in 1888. Similarly, serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861.
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.
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, women's fashion was a very sensitive topic during this time, as 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.

Eras

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of major conflicts from 1803 to 1815 pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European powers formed into various coalitions, financed and usually led by the United Kingdom. The wars stemmed from the unresolved disputes associated with the French Revolution and its resultant conflict.
In the aftermath of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte gained power in France in 1799. In 1804, he crowned himself Emperor of the French.
In 1805, the French victory over an Austrian-Russian army at the Battle of Austerlitz ended the War of the Third Coalition. As a result of the Treaty of Pressburg, the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved.
Later efforts were less successful. In the Peninsular War, France unsuccessfully attempted to establish Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain. In 1812, the French invasion of Russia had massive French casualties, and was a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars.File:Jacques-Louis David - The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|upright=0.7|Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the First French EmpireIn 1814, after defeat in the War of the Sixth Coalition, Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to Elba. Later that year, he escaped exile and began the Hundred Days before finally being defeated at the Battle of Waterloo and exiled to Saint Helena, an island in the South Atlantic Ocean.
After Napoleon's defeat, the Congress of Vienna was held to determine new national borders. The Concert of Europe attempted to preserve this settlement was established to preserve these borders, with limited impact.