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1801 Britain makes Ireland part of a single British kingdom. Parliament in Dublin is abolished. The Anglican Church is to be recognized as the official church in Ireland. No Catholics are to be allowed to hold public office.

1801 Napoleon of France has defeated Austria. In the treaty of Lunéville, Austria renounces claims to the Holy Roman Empire.

1802 The Ottoman Turks, trying to maintain empire, are fighting the Saud family and its Sunni Wahhabi allies. In Mesopotamia the Wahhabis capture the Shiite holy city of Karbala. In Arabia they capture Mecca.

1802 Leader of Haitian independence, Toussaint L'Ouverture, receives a message from the French General Brunet to meet for negotiations. Brunet assures Toussaint that he will be perfectly safe with the French, whom he says are gentlemen. When Toussaint shows up for the meeting, the French take him and ship him to France, to a prison near the Swiss border.

1802 The war-weary British sign a treaty ending their war against France - The Treaty of Amiens.

1803 Troussaint L'Ouverture dies in prison.

1803 A German makes morphine from opium. Physicians are delighted that opium has been tamed. Morphine is lauded for its reliability and safety.

1803 In England, seven Irish rebels are the last sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. In deference to public opinion the sentence is commuted to merely hanging and beheading.

1803 Irish are rebelling against British rule. They are crushed militarily by the British, but unrest among the Irish will remain in Ireland through the rest of the century.

1803 France sells Louisiana Territory to the United States.

1803 Their treaty breaks down. Britain and France return to war.

1803 The Wahhabis do not view the Shia as Muslims. A Shia assassinates the conqueror Abdul Aziz of the House of Saud.

1804 The Royal College of Surgeons is founded in London.

1804 Japan refuses trade with arriving Russian ships.

1804 The Russians visit the Hawaiian islands on their way to Fort Ross in California.

1804 Around 150,000 Hawaiians - nearly half of the population - are dying from the Great Sickness - an unknown disease brought by Europeans.

1804 Serbs revolt against Ottoman authority and win autonomy status - self-rule within the Ottoman Empire - demonstrating Ottoman weakness to Greeks, who remain under Ottoman rule.

1804 Haiti proclaims itself a republic and independent.

1804 In Hausaland (south of the Sahara and west of Lake Chad), Muslim herdsmen war against non-Muslim Hausa chiefdoms and gain power in the region.

1804 In the wartime atmosphere and as a defense against French royalty, the Senate in France votes in favor becoming Napoleon I, "Emperor of the French." Napoleon crowns himself emperor. Beethoven is enraged. He dislikes royalty and tears up the title page for his Symfonia Buonaparte, which will be known as his Symphony No.3.

1804 Spain joins Napoleon's war as an ally against the British.

1805 Russia, Austria and Sweden ally themselves with Britain.

1805 In Milan, Napoleon is crowned King of Italy. He is looking towards an invasion of England. A French fleet sails north to Spain's Atlantic port of Cadiz. Napoleon orders his French and Spanish ships out of Cadiz to do battle with the British. The British win, at the Battle of Trafalgar, frustrating Napoleon's invasion plan.

1805 For two years the British East India Company has been warring against the Maratha Empire - which was allied with Napoleon. The East India Company wins and gains control over Orissa and western Gujarat.

1805 The son of Abdul Aziz, now head of House of Saud, defeats an Ottoman garrison and captures the holy city of Medina.

1806 The Emperor of Austria, Francis I, abdicates his other title: Holy Roman Emperor. The Holy Roman Empire, created in the 800s, is formally dissolved, with Napoleon reorganizing much of it into his Confederation of the Rhine.

1806 Jean Jacque Dessalines, leader of Haiti's revolution and self-declared emperor, is being viewed by his generals as a ridiculous figure. Dessalines announces his plan to march with troops into the south, where he is not popular, and the south explodes in rebellion. Dessalines' generals prepare a trap for him along the way. His horse is shot from under him. He is pinned under his horse, he is shot in the head and his body hacked to pieces with machetes.

1806 Ruling the seas, a British naval force takes control of Cape Colony in South Africa - the Dutch who had been ruling there now being ruled by Britain's enemy, Napoleon.

1807 Extending its power at sea, Britain outlaws slave trading across the Atlantic, for its own ships and for ships from all countries united with Napoleon. Britain turns a presence on the coast of western Africa into a crown colony - Sierra Leone.

1807 The U.S. Congress passes a law that bans the importation of slaves into the U.S., a law to be largely ignored in southern states.

1807 The Geological Society of London is created, the founders expressing their desire to avoid preconceived notions and to collect facts for discussion.

1807 With help from the French, Muhammad Ali Pasha drives the British out of Egypt (a part of the Ottoman Empire).

1807 Napoleon moves to consolidate his position in Europe. He defeats a combined Prussian and Russian force in February. Danzig surrenders to him. He defeats the Russians in June and occupies Königsberg. Alexander of Russia is annoyed with the British and agrees to meet with Napoleon. In August, Napoleon demands that Portugal join the trade boycott against the British and declare war on Britain. Portugal hesitates. Napoleon's ally, Spain, allows French troops to pass through its territory to Portugal. The French captured Lisbon as Portugal's royal family flees to Brazil.

1808 Napoleon intervenes in a quarrel between Spain's king, Charles IV, and the son of Charles, Ferdinand. He makes the two of them prisoners in a comfortable setting and moves his brother Joseph from the Kingdom of Naples to the throne in Spain. Spaniards resent the presence of French troops and Napoleon's interventions. An unusually barbarous war begins within Spain - with Napoleon as usual caring little about hearts and minds. Resistance to the French spreads to Portugal. The British land a force there to help the resistance. It is the beginning of Napoleon's decline.

1808 Spain's authority in its American colonies declines. Armed uprisings occurred from Mexico to Argentina. Without Spain in control, the British are able to do more business in Latin America, rescuing Britain from Napoleon's economic boycott.

1808 John Dalton argues that matter consists of a range of atoms each of which has a distinct weight.

1809 Russia defeats Sweden. Sweden loses Finland, which becomes an autonomous Grand Duchy within Russia's empire. Returning to the Hawaiian Islands from California and hoping for trade, Russians build a fort at Honolulu and try to establish themselves on the island of Kauai. They ignore Hawaiian customs and are driven out.

1809 Napoleon is spread thin. The Austrians defeat him at the Battle of Aspern-Essling, and he loses his reputation for invincibility. The Austrians fail to follow up on their victory. Napoleon organizes an assault and defeats the Austrians. The Austrians make peace with Napoleon.

1809 Napoleon's economic blockade is not working. Britain's exports reach an all-time high.

1810 Allied with the Portuguese against Napoleon, the British negotiate an agreement with the Portuguese calling for the gradual abolition of the slave trade across the South Atlantic.

1810 People have been migrating from the United States into West Florida. These settlers rebel and declare independence from Spain. Recognizing Spain's weakened condition from occupation by Napoleon, the U.S. President James Madison and Congress declare the region for the United States - a move not recognized internationally.

1810 The ruler of Kauai cedes his island to Kamehameha. Kamehameha is now ruler of all of the Hawaiian Islands. In accordance with Hawaiian tradition he is considered divine and commoners prostrate themselves before him.

1811 The French are driven from Portugal.

1811 Independence is declared in Caracas (Venezuela), La Paz (Bolivia) and New Grenada (Colombia). Fighting erupts between those favoring independence and Spanish authority in Latin America.

1811 In Egypt, Viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha exterminates Mameluke warlords. He invites them to a banquet and has them slaughtered.

1811 A 60-year-old Spanish priest, Hildago, who was influenced by the Enlightment, is executed after leading an uprising in behalf of the well being of Indians and mestizos.

1812 For the Ottoman empire, Muhammad Ali Pasha drives the Wahhabi and Saudis out of Medina and Mecca.

1812 In England, a few workers in various cities in the spinning and cloth finishing industries have been destroying new machinery. They are called Luddites. Some are executed.

1812 Priests in Caracas claim that an earthquake is God's anger against the sins of the new government. Spain's military is able to regain control of the city.

1812 At sea, Britain has a counter-blockade against France. Britain's new prime minister, Lord Liverpool, instructs the British navy to treat U.S. trading ships with new tact and to avoid clashes with Americans. This does not deter those in the U.S. who want war, and Congress declares war against Britain on June 18, 1812.

1812 Napoleon's march into Russia exposes his recklessness and shallow strategic thinking. He returns to Paris without his army.

1813 Napoleon's move against Russia has delayed Russia's ability to protect their fellow Orthodox Christians, the Serbs, who have been rebelling against Ottoman rule. The Ottoman Empire moves against rebel Serb areas, and Albanian troops plunder Serb villages.

1813 Napoleon has failed to win enough friends. In Spain, British and Spanish forces defeat his military. Napoleon withdraws from Germany after the Russians, Prussians, Austrians and Swedes defeat him there. His Confederation of the Rhine falls into history's trash bin.

1813 Laura Secord walks 20 difficult miles to warn of a surprise attack by an invading U.S. force. She is to be a Canadian heroine.

1814 A negotiated treaty ends the War of 1812-14 and restores "peace, friendship, and good understanding" between the United States and "His Britannic Majesty."

1814 Russian and Prussian forces enter Paris. Napoleon is exiled to the island of Elba. The terms of peace between the victors and France are settled in another Treaty of Paris. The victors over Napoleon gather at Vienna - the Congress of Vienna - to create a stable Europe to their liking.

1815 Napoleon returns to France, inspires men to reach again for glory, and his final military defeat comes at Waterloo.

1815 At the Congress of Vienna, the British, Spain, Portugal, a politically new France, and the Netherlands are meeting to discuss the world without Napoleon, and they agree to eventually abolish the slave trade.

1816 In France, the income of working people in terms of what it buys (real wages) begins a four-decade decline.

1816 The British return to the Dutch their empire in Indonesia.

1816 Spain's military drives Simón Bolivar from New Grenada. Bolivar flees to Jamaica and then to Haiti.

1817 Bolivar and a small force return to Venezuela and establish a base inland in the rain forest along the Orinoco River.

1817 In Britain, real wages have been declining at least since the late 1790, as Britain has been burdened by war against France. From this year on and into the next century real wages in Britain will be rising.

1817 The British sign a Maratha kingdom, Nagpur, into its system of alliances. Those opposed sack and burn the British residence at Poona (Pune). 27,000 attack a British force of 2,800 a few miles north of Poona - the beginning of the Third Anglo-Maratha War.

1818 The Third Anglo-Maratha War ends with the break-up of the Maratha Empire and the British in control of most of India.

1818 For the Ottoman Empire, Egyptians are taking control of the Arabian Peninsula. They destroy the mud-brick town of Diriyah (thirteen miles from the center of what today is Riyadh) which had been the home base of the Saud family and Wahhabis.

1819 In England, 60,000 gather in a field and listen to a call for universal suffrage. A magistrate sends a force to arrest the main speaker, Henry Hunt. People riot. Eleven are killed and others injured. A movement for reform gathers strength.

1820 The combined area of Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi and Alabama has six times the number of people of European heritage that it had in 1800.

1820 A liberal uprising begins in Spain, beginning with soldiers, is joined by others who want a constitutional monarchy, or a republic. A few who are poor and illiterate attack and set fire to churches.

1820 Per capita world Gross Domestic Product (according to today's economic historian Angus Maddison) is $667, measured in 1990 dollars. This (according to Maddison) is up from $435 in the year 1000. Western Europe, which was lower than the world in general in the year 1000, at $400, is at $1,232.

1821 The stability for Europe sought at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 is coming undone. Following Serb rebellions against Ottoman rule in previous years, the Greeks in March rise simultaneously against Ottoman rule, including in Macedonia, Crete and Cyprus. The Turks respond by hanging the Patriarch of Constantinople, Gregorios V. The Greeks liberate the Peloponnesian Peninsula in September. There, in the city of Tripolitsa, a center of Turkish authority, Muslims in the thousands are massacred for three days and nights.

1821 Napoleon Bonaparte dies at the age of fifty-one under British authority on the island of St. Helena, the reported cause: stomach cancer. The English poet, John Keats, dies of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-six.

1821 A treaty is signed between the United States and the declining power of Spain. The U.S. buys Florida for 5 million dollars, money the U.S. government gives to U.S. citizens with claims against Spain. Spain receives an established line separating the U.S. from its territory in North America.

1821 Caracas falls to Bolivar's force. Venezuela is now free of Spanish rule. Peru and Mexico declare independence. In Guatemala independence is declared for its provinces: Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, San Salvador and Chiapas.

1821 Michael Faraday, son of a blacksmith, has overcome the conceit of aristocrats and, as a scientist, has been promoted in Britain's Royal Institution. His interest in a unified force in nature and work in electro-magnetism produces the foundation for electric motors and contributes to what will be "field theory" in modern physics, which includes its most basic formula: E=MC2.

1822 A member of Portugal's royal family is in power in Brazil. He has lifted duties paid on the importation of books, abolished censorship and ordered the teaching of law at the universities of São Paula and Olinda. His rule is being challenged from Portugal, and from his royal palace he declares "Independence or death!" At the age of 24 he his proclaimed Emperor of Brazil: Pedro I.

1822 Officials of the American Colonization society have purchased a strip of land they call Christopolis, at Cape Mesurado on the Atlantic Coast in western Africa. Eighty-six freed blacks have arrived.

1822 In Vienna the accordion is invented.

1822 The British reduce the penalty for more than crimes that had been capital offenses.

1822 The Ottoman Turks respond to rebellion on the island of Chios by slaughtering five-sixths of the islands 120,000 inhabitants.

1823 Austria, Russia and Prussia authorize French troops to enter Spain to destroy the liberal revolution there and re-establish the rule of Ferdinand VII. Ferdinand begins revenge killings that will revolt those who returned him to power.

1823 Steam powered shipping begins between Switzerland and France on Lake Geneva.

1823 Mexico, interested in populating Texas, allows Stephen F. Austin to sell plots of land to settlers so long as they are of good character.

1824 The Frenchman, Eugène Delacroix, paints The Massacre of Chios. Britain's romantic poet, Lord Byron, who has written "We are all Greeks," has gone to Greece and dies of "marsh fever."

1824 Britain and the U.S. negotiate a treaty establishing procedures for suppressing the slave trade, but the U.S. Senate undercuts the treaty's powers and the British refuse to sign.

1825 Louis XVIII has died and is succeeded by his reactionary brother, Charles X.

1825 Russian military officers, who had been exposed to the Enlightenment during Russia's occupation of France, attempt to replace authoritarian rule with a representative democracy. Their coup, called the Decembrist Rising, fails and they are crushed.

1826 In Spain the Inquisition had been ended by the Revolution in 1820 that had overthrown King Ferdinand VII, but with Ferdinand's return it is revived. A Jew burned is burned at the stake, also a Spanish Quaker schoolmaster who replaced "Hail Mary" with "Praise be to God" in school prayer. It is to be the last of such executions.

1827 Britain, Russia, France break with Austria regarding the Greek war of independence - Austria still feeling threatened by any revolt against empire while the Russians want to protect their fellow Orthodox Christians. Egypt, a part of the Ottoman Empire, is helping the Turks, but a combined British, French and Russian fleet sink an Egyptian and Turkish fleet at Navarino Bay, on the west coast of the Peloponnesian Peninsula. This weakens Ottoman power in Greece and in Arabia.

1827 In Vienna, Austria, over 10,000 mourners attend the burial of Beethoven.

1827 New York passes a state law emancipating slaves.

1829 In London, parliament extends tolerance, passing the Catholic Emancipation Bill, making it possible for Catholics to hold public office.

1829 The Treaty of Adrianople ends war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire grants Greece independence. Russian authority in Georgia is recognized. The Russians are allowed access through the narrow straits from the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea. Autonomy is extended to Serbia and to the Romanians of Moldavia and Walachia, under Russian protection.

1829 Scotch tape is invented.

1829 Mexico abolishes slavery in its territories, hoping to discourage migration into Texas from the United States.

1830 With China's great population growth, unemployment has risen and there has been a shortage of land, creating peasant unrest. China is still the leader in manufacturing output (real rather than per capita), but its share is slipping from 32.8 percent in 1750 to 29.8 percent. India's share since 1750 has fallen from 24.5 percent to 17.6 percent. Britain, with a fraction of the population of either China or India, has increased its share in this period from 1.9 to 4.3 percent. The U.S. share is 2.4 percent.

1830 France has reneged in paying its bill for wheat bought from Algeria. A new era of European imperialism begins with Charles X sending an invasion force of 36,000 troops to Algeria, claiming that he was responding to the insult to his ambassador. The invasion is described as a civilizing mission and a mission to abolish slavery and piracy - a response to Algeria's reputation in France for having attacked the ships of Christian nations during past centuries and for an estimated 25,000 European slaves in Algeria, including women in the harems.

1830 Businessmen and common people loath Charles X, who has returned to absolutism, including dissolving parliament. The barricades go up in the streets of Paris. Charles X is frightened and rather than fight goes into exile, back to Britain. Parliament returns, creates a constitutional monarchy and elects a new king, Louis-Philippe.

1830 Violence erupts across Germany. Rent, tax and military records are burned. People want bread or are annoyed by higher prices for food, military conscription and in places by feudal dues. In Brunswick, Grand Duke Karl flees and a liberal constitution is created. The king of Saxony grants his subjects a liberal constitution. In Hesse-Kassel a constitution and a unicameral legislature are created.

1830 In Britain, the first edition of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology is published.

1830 The first railway station opens in the United States - in Baltimore Maryland.

1830 President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act, which rips the Cherokee and other eastern tribes from their homes and banishes them to areas west of the Mississippi River.

1830 Joseph Smith Jr. of New York organizes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

1830 In England the lawn mower is invented.

1830 A Frenchman patents a sewing machine.

1830 Simón Bolivar dies disappointed and regretting that Spain did not allow people in its American colonies to develop self-government within a framework of institutions as had Britain with its colonists.

1831 Various uprising are taking place on the Italian peninsula, including the papal states. Pope Gregory XVI is opposed to democracy at any level and calls for help from Austria. Austria's army marches across the peninsula, crushing revolts and revolutionary movements.

1831 In Warsaw, Polish soldiers revolt against Russian rule. Crowds take control of the city. Austria and Prussia want the revolt crushed. Freedom for the Poles is a popular cause in Britain and in France, but little help arrives and Nicholas I, who considers himself both the Tsar of Russia and King of Poland, sends troops that overwhelms the rebellion.

1831 In England, parliament's lower body, the House of Commons, passes a reform bill. Britain's new Prime Minister, Earl Grey, wants to end undue representation to towns that have shrunk (rotten boroughs) and to give Britain's growing industrial towns representation in the House of Commons. The bill is defeated in the House of Lords, dominated by aristocratic conservatives. Rioting erupts in various cities, most seriously in Bristol from April 15 to May 4.

1831 A severe flood and plague devastate Baghdad. Mumeluke rule ends there as Mahmud II, sultan, reasserts Ottoman control over Mesopotamia

1831 Charles Darwin, 22, has complete his B.A. at Cambridge and sails as an unpaid naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle to South America, New Zealand, and Australia.

1831 In Boston, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrisons begins publishing an anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator.

1831 In Jamaica, a black Baptist deacon, Sam Sharpe, has gathered from the Bible that all men are created equal. He has learned from newspapers that people in England want an end to slavery. He organizes a sit-down strike timed for harvest time. Local planters move to crush the revolt and a group of slaves become violent, set fire to buildings and to cane fields. The planters crush the rebellion and hang Sam Sharpe.

1832 Egypt takes advantage Russia's defeat of the Ottoman Turks and declares independence.

1832 The Whigs acquire more power momentarily. They are largely aristocrats with liberal leanings. They want to make Britain's political system fairer and to placate working people without giving in to all their demands. The Great Reform Act, denied in 1831, is passed into law.

1832 In Illinois, a state since 1818, the Fox Indians, led by Black Hawk, are defeated militarily. In his surrender speech Black Hawk acknowledges defeat. He says he has done nothing shameful.

1833 Carl von Clausewitz' On War (vom Kriege) is published two years after his death. Clausewitz saw violence as the only proper defense against the violence of others, and he saw war as a political act for political goals.

1833 Too much rain produces crop failures and what is called the Tempo famine. (The previous famine was around fifty years before.) Prosperity comes to a temporary end. The famine is to last three years and an estimated 300,000 are to die.

1834 Britain's Abolition Slavery Act goes into effect, with the British government prepared to compensate financially those who lose slaves. In Canada many slaves had been freed years before. The remaining 781,000 slaves are freed, but no claims for compensation are submitted.

1834 The Queen Mother, Maria Christina, fourth wife of Ferdinand VII, who died in 1833, officially ends Spain's Inquisition.

1835 In Britain, vaccination becomes mandatory.

1835 Britain and Spain renew agreement against the slave trade. British sea captains are authorized to arrest suspected Spanish slavers and bring them before mixed commissions established at Sierra Leone and Havana. Vessels carrying specified “equipment articles” (extra mess gear, lumber, foodstuffs) are declared prima-facie to be slavers.

1835 In the southern states of the United States, abolitionists are expelled and mailing anti-slavery literature is forbidden.

1835 Steamships appear on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

1835 Samuel Colt of Connecticut receives a patent for his revolver in Europe.

1836 Sam Colt receives a patent for his revolver in the United States.

1836 Britain has been emancipating slaves in its Cape Colony. Boers in the colony dislike it. From 10,000 to 14,000 Boers begin their Great Trek away from British rule and for new African lands to occupy.

1836 Pope Gregory XVI bans railways in his Papal States, calling them "ways of the devil."

1836 Anglo Texans are defeated at the Alamo. They declare Texas independent and go on to defeat Mexico's forces.

1837 The United States officially recognizes Texas an independent.

1837 Britain invites the U.S. and France to participate in international patrols to interdict slave ships. The U.S. declines to participate.

1837 Sam Morse invents the telegraph.

1837 A revolt by the French and some Anglos in Canada fails.

1837 The United States recognizes Texas as independent of Mexico. Mexico does not.

1837 In wake of the famine in Japan, the city of Osaka, rebellion and fire destroy one-fourth of the city before it is crushed. At Edo a U.S. ship arrives to repatriate shipwrecked Japanese sailors, to establish trade and land missionaries. The ship is fired upon and driven away.

1838 Cherokee Indians are forced off their farms and out of the homes and sent on what will become known as the "Trail of Tears" to Oklahoma.

1838 In Britain this year, 58 children under the age of 13 have died in mining accidents, and 64 between the ages of 13 and 18.

1838 Building on a theory about geology by Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin develops a theory of evolutionary selection and specialization.

1839 In Britain, conservatives kill another reform package, and there are riots in Wales and such cities as Glasgow, Newcastle and Birmingham.

1839 The British fear Russian influence in Afghanistan and want "a trustworthy ally" there - on India's western frontier. There they have sent a force of 12,000 British and Indian troops, with elephants, 38,000 camels and a horde of followers, including families, prostitutes, and sellers of opium, rum and tobacco.

1839 The British have claimed lands in the valley of the Aroostook River, an area claimed by the state of Maine. A land agent arrives from the U.S. to expel them. British lumberjacks seize him. Maine sends 10,000 troops to the area. A British militia in New Brunswick is called up. Neither side wants war and the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 is created, creating a recognized border dividing the area between the U.S. and Canada.

1839 U.S. authorities take custody of a slave trading ship, the Amistad, a Cuban schooner. It has 53 Africans on board who had taken control and were trying to sail the ship back to Africa. A trial was held to decide whether the Africans would be free to return home or whether they would be treated as property and face a life of slavery.

1839 Charles Goodyear invents vulcanization, for making rubber.

1839 Egyptians defeat the Ottoman Turks at the battle of Nisibin, near the Turkish-Syrian border.

1839 After a decade of anti-opium campaigns, China's government creates tougher laws and seizes 20,000 chests of British opium. The party in power in London, the Whigs, did not want to be accused of failing to protect Britain's commercial interests. It sends a punitive expedition, starting the first Anglo-Chinese war.

1839 France becomes the first European power to recognize Texas as independent of Mexico. Great Britain, Holland and Belgium do so months later.

1840 Europe's four big powers, including Britain, force Egypt to relinquish control over Syria. Britain occupies the port of Aden (in south Yemen) to protect itself from the Egyptians.

1840 Science applied to farming is described by Justus Liebig, in his published work Chemistry in Its Application to Agriculture and Physiology. This is to transform agriculture, and agriculture is to make possible coming advances in industrialization.

1840 The population of the United States has increased 36 percent in the last ten years - from 13 to almost 18 million. Railway track has grown from 100 to 3,500 miles. The U.S. now has 1,200 cotton factories, two-thirds of them in New England.

1841 Britain makes New Zealand a colony.

1841 The President of the Republic of Texas sends an army into New Mexico, hoping to annex it and other territory, including California. A Mexican force drives the invaders back to Texas.

1841 Britain's political resident at Kabul is hacked to death and an uprising in the city leaves 300 of a British detachment dead.

1841 Naval guns have been firing unexploding cannonballs. A time-delay mechanism invented by the French navy now allows exploding shells to be fired safely by high-powered, flat trajectory guns. The navies of Britain, the United States and Russia will have such gun before the decade ends.

1842 The Russians withdraw from Fort Ross in Northern California.

1842 The British are forced to withdraw from Afghanistan.

1843 Britain and France announce their recognition of the Hawaii Islands as an independent state.

1843 England outlaws gibbeting - displaying bodies of the executed for the purpose of deterring crime - the last of this having occurred in 1832.

1843 In the United States, Charles Thurber advances a effort that began in the early 1700s in Britain. He invents a typewriter.

1844 In New Zealand the Maori rebel.

1844: In Australia, a "Protection of Children Act" allows Church missionaries to kidnap aboriginal children in order to "civilize" them - a policy that is to last to the 1960s.

1844 In the United States, Samuel Morse invents the telegraph.

1845 The Congress of the United States approves the annexation of Texas. Mexico breaks relations with the United States. President Polk sends troops to Texas.

1845 The faster shipment of potatoes from the Americas across the Atlantic to Europe allows the survival of mold arriving with the potatoes. The mold creates potato crop failures across Europe and starvation in Ireland.

1846 Poles in Krakow revolt against Russian rule. Austrian and Russian troops enter Krakow and Austria annexes the city.

1846 Pope Gregory XVI dies and is replaced by Pius IX, who deviates from Gregory's policies by introducing railways and gas streetlights to the Papal States. Gregory had thought them departures from God's intentions.

1846 In India the British are appearing weak after their Afghanistan debacle. A coalition of Sikhs attack the British. In three months of fighting the British forces prevail and the Sikhs sign a treaty obliging them to disband most of their military.

1846 In the United States, Elias Howe invents a "lock-stitch" sewing machine.

1846 A patient in Boston is given ether as an anesthetic, a revolution in surgical practice.

1846 In Belgium, Adolphe Sax invents the saxaphone.

1846 In Italy, Ascanio Soberero discovers how to make nitroglycerin.

1846 Cholesterol is discovered in blood. It will be more than a hundred years before it is a widespread concern.

1847 Members of the Donner Party are starving in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, and they turn to cannibalism.

1847 Liberia becomes an independent republic.

1847 Three years of fighting in Tahiti ends with the French crushing Tahitian resistance to French domination.

1847 Britain's parliament passes the "Ten Hours Bill," which limits to sixty-three the hours of work per week for women and children.

1848 The war between Mexico and the United States ends with the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The United States wins recognition of its possession of Alto California, New Mexico and Texas to the Rio Grande. Mexico is given a guarantee of rights for the people who had been living in these areas and loyal to Mexico.

1848 The economies of Europe have been suffering from a recent economic downturn. In France and Germany there has been a longer range decline in income as measured by what income can buy (real wages). Karl Marx is going to use figures from such decline to theorize about capitalism making working people more and more miserable and about capitalism's decline and eventual overthrow.

1848 In Milan there is taxation without representation. In Milan in January, sixty-one people are killed protesting against a rise in taxes by Austria's authorities. In January in Palermo, Sicily, people riot. In February in Paris people go to the barricades. The monarchy quits and the Second Republic is born. Revolution in Paris inspires uprisings in Germany and Austria. And Hungarians demand independence.

1848 In the summer, economic recovery begins across Europe.

1848 Revolutionaries in Paris, upset by elections that did not go in their favor, stage another uprising, and they are crushed. The middle class in Germany joins the aristocracy against disorder, and revolution there is crushed. The political left in Vienna has alienated the liberal center and reaction there replaces revolution. Austria crushes Czech and Italian nationalism. With help from Russia, Austria crushes Hungarian resistance to its rule.

1848 Switzerland's civil war ends. Federalism and unity win against the separatism wanted by the Catholic Church and Austria.

1848 A gold rush begins in Central California.

1848 At a women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, a call is made for equal treatment of women and men under the law and voting rights for women.

1848 Ownership of land in the Hawaiian Islands is individualized, seen by Hawaii's leaders as advantageous for Hawaiians as well as enabling foreigners to buy land. It is called the Great Mahele (land division).

1848 An ancient human-like skull is discovered in a quarry on the island of Gibraltar that in eight years will be identified as Neanderthal.

1849 Karl Marx is ordered out of Paris and goes to London.

1849 Conservative rule in Prussia is devoted to improving education and science, seen there as contributing to the nation's power.

1849 The British have defeated a second Sikh rising. The British formally annex the Punjab and territory to Peshawar and the Khyber Pass.

1849 In New York, Walter Hunt invents a safety pin. Poor sanitation in New York City creates a cholera epidemic, killing 5,000 poor people, most of them poor and Irish. Some believe the epidemic is God's punishment.

1850 A Chinese Christian in China sees himself as the son of God ordered to save the world. He has started a movement for sharing wealth, land distribution and the Ten Commandments. He favors chastity and an end to foot-binding for women and opposes opium smoking. He creates what is to be known as the Taiping Rebellion. It sweeps across central-eastern China, intending to drive away "Manchu demons" and rival faiths.

1850 In Prussia, new freedoms won by peasants are maintained, and a decree moves 640,000 peasants to free farming.

1850 In the United States, Congress passes another Fugitive Slave Act, which mandates government support for the capture of escaped slaves. Protests occur in the northern states.

1850 In Britain, the Public Libraries Act is passed, which will widen reading. In the carrying capacity of its ships, five percent has passed from sail-powered to steam-powered.

1851 Thousands rush to gold in Australia, including Chinese prospectors and prospectors from California. There are tent cities with populations as large as 40,000. Food growers have a greater market for their produce, stimulating Australia's economy. An agricultural revolution is beginning using a mechanical harvester, called Ridley's Stripper, that had been invented in Australia.

1851 In Siam, King Mongkut ascends the throne. He invites European diplomats to his coronation. He becomes known for speaking English, French, and Latin.

1852 The novel Uncle Tom's Cabin is published. In the South complaints arise that the novel is exaggeration. In the South, owning a copy of the book is made illegal.

1852 The British arrive in lower Burma and bring opium from India for sale to the Burmese.

1852 In the United States, Francis Wolle invents and patents a machine that makes paper bags.

1852 Britain recognizes the right of Boers to administer their own affairs beyond its Cape Colony border so long as the Boers end slavery.

1852 Louis-Napoleon (Bonaparte's nephew), President of France's Second Republic, has consolidated conservative support and dissolves parliament. He crushes an uprising, establishes a dictatorship and holds a plebiscite to justify his move. Peasants and the religiously devout give him the votes he wants.

1853 Louis-Napoleon is declared Emperor Napoleon III. He would like to create a dynasty. France is no longer a republic. It is called the Second Empire.

1853 The Frenchman Joseph Gobineau has two volumes of his work published, a work of about the fall of civilizations that he believes is based on science. Degeneration he claims came with conquerors mixing with those they had conquered, polluting the purity of the conquerors' race. Jews he holds had once been biologically pure but they had become "bestialized" and a threat by having mixed with Africans.

1853 Commodore Matthew Perry arrives in Japan with 967 men on four ships, including two steam-powered vessels, which intimidates the Japanese. He demands that Japan open its ports to trade with the United States. He declares that he will return the following year to receive Japan's response.

1853 Tsar Nicholas I of Russia goes to war against the Ottoman Turks over what he sees as his right to defend Orthodox Christians in Turkey and in Jerusalem (then under the authority of the Ottoman Empire).

1854 The Japanese government signs a treaty with the United States that offers "peace and friendship," the opening to two ports (Shimoda and Hakodate), help for U.S. ships wrecked off Japan's coast, protection for shipwrecked persons, and permission for U.S. ships to buy provisions.

1854 In London, construction of the Clock Tower (Big Ben) is finished. Urbanization and the new industrial age have been producing a new era of tick, tick, tick.

1854 Imperial Britain and France are afraid of Russian expansion. At a Turkish port on the Black Sea, the Russian navy, using exploding shells for the first time, sets a Turkish fleet afire. The British respond with horror to the devastation. The British declare war, and Queen Victoria writes of "the great sinfulness" of Russia having "brought about this War" - the Crimean War.

1854 Pope Pius IX addresses a question about differences between Jesus Christ and others. He proclaims the infallible doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (virgin birth) of Jesus Christ, that Jesus was born exempt from all stain of original sin.

1854 Elisha Graves Otis has invented an elevator brake and has started a company to manufacture elevators that will hoist freight. He demonstrates the elevator at the World's Fair in New York City.

1854 The scientist John Snow had been claiming that cholera was carried in water or food and could be ingested. Colleagues have dismissed his idea. A cholera epidemic has broken out in London, in an area around a water pump. Snow takes a sample of the water from the pump and through a microscope finds it contaminated. He removes the pump's handle and the cholera comes to a quick end.

1855 Much of Japan's capital, Edo (Tokyo), is destroyed by earthquake, tsunami and fire.

1855 King Mongkut of Siam signs a trade agreement with Britain. He builds roads, sets up printing presses, creates a currency and sets out to reform slavery.

1855 Chicago adopts a plan for the first comprehensive city sewer in United States.

1856 The first railway bridge across the Mississippi River is completed, at Rock Island Illinois and Davenport Iowa, three miles away.

1856 Tsar Nicholas I of Russia dies. His son, Alexander II, makes peace with Britain and France, The Crimean War ends. Russia's humiliation inspires Alexander's desire for reform.

1856 A ship owned by a Chinese, registered with the British in Hong Kong, and docked at Guangzhou (Canton), is searched by Manchu government agents looking for a notorious pirate. The British send an expedition of ships seeking redress and are joined by the French, who want to avenge the Manchu execution of a French missionary. There is also dissatisfaction with Chinese compliance to agreements made at the end of the first Opium War. The Second Opium War begins.

1857 Elisha Graves Otis installs the first passenger-safe elevator in a department store in New York City.

1857 Giuseppe Garibaldi, who has been on Staten Island, New York, for five years, founds the Italian National Association to fight for the unification of Italy.

1857 Madame Bovary, by French novelist Gustave Flaubert, is partially published. It is about a woman who has adulterous affairs and it creates a scandal. Flaubert has to go to court to have the entire novel published.

1857 The Supreme Court of the United States, in the Dred Scott case, rules that African Americans, free or slave, are not citizens and have no recourse in federal courts.

1858 The Second Opium War ends. China is forced to pay Britain and France indemnities and to open more ports. The opium trade is legalized. Christians are to be allowed to proselytize and guaranteed protection, and Westerners are to be allowed to hold property in China. Russian and the United States rush in to gain benefit from the British and French victory.

1858 In Vietnam, a French and Spanish expedition seizes the port city of Tourane (today Da Nang). The French are interested in ending Vietnamese persecution of Christian missionaries and in trade with Indochina.

1859 In Vietnam, the French take over Saigon (today Ho Chi Minh City.)

1859 John Brown wants to begin a war for the liberation of all slaves in the United States. An armed rising by him and his eighteen supporters is crushed. Brown is tried, convicted and hanged.

1859 Charles Darwin has been sitting on his Origin of the Species for 21 years. He has it published.

1859 The first successful oil well in the United States is drilled, in northern Pennsylvania.

1859 Rabbits are brought to Australia, which will produce an ecology disaster.

1860 Taiping rebels fail to take Shanghai, repelled by a force led by an Englishman, Frederick Townsend Ward.

1860 In the United States, George Crum has created what is to be known as the potato chip. He opens his own restaurant, featuring potato chips in a basket placed on every table.

1860 J.J.E. Lenoir of France develops an internal, non-compression, combustion engine.

1860 Jews in Britain are allowed to vote.

1860 International trade has been increasing. World exports are 4.53 times what they were in 1800.

1861 Tsar Alexander II issues his proclamation emancipating Russia's serfs.

1861 Abraham Lincoln takes office as the President of the United States. He tries to reassure southern states, announcing that he does not intend to interfere, directly or indirectly, with the institution of slavery. But southern politicians have allowed themselves exaggerations and panic. Some southern states proclaim secession. Shooting erupts in the South over who will possess federal forts.

1861 Whale oil has been the primary fuel for lamps. In Pennsylvania an oil well has begun producing more than 3,000 barrels per day, and oil refining has begun, producing an alternative fuel for lamps. In the U.S. Civil War, the Union is using whaling ships for naval blockades, contributing to the decline in whaling.

1861 China's Manchu emperor, Xianfeng, has been weakened by debauchery and drugs and dies at the age of thirty. The son of his consort succeeds him. The former consort, Cixi, becomes the boy's regent and acquires the title Dowager Empress.

1861 In Germany, workers making mirrors have lost all of their teeth. A professor of medicine discovers they are victims of mercury poisoning. His findings lead to government regulations requiring alternative mirror making processes.

1861 In Britain a government commission begins to investigate non-textile industries employing children. Occupational diseases among children are discovered.

1862 In Prussia, the largest of the German states, a member of the landed aristocracy, Otto von Bismarck, becomes minister-president. Representing the king, he declares that his government is to rule without parliament.

1862 In the king's court in Siam, women being taught English by Christian missionaries are turned off by their sermons. Anna Leonowens arrives in Bangkok to teach English in their place. She is the English woman to be depicted in The King and I.

1862 Miners have begun invading the Rocky Mountains and plains and clashing with Indians. The Lakota Sioux massacre or capture almost 1,000 people on the Minnesota frontier.

1862 In the United States the first paper money is issued.

1863 Thirty-eight Lakota Sioux are hanged before a crowd of angry whites in the town of Mankato Minnesota.

1863 President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation becomes law.

1863 Slavery ends in Dutch ruled Indonesia.

1863 Cambodia become a French protectorate, with the approval of its king, Norodom.

1863 In Britain, legislators respond to air pollution from the chemical industry by creating the Alkali Act for reducing hydrogen chloride emissions during alkali production.

1863 In London, the first underground (subway) passenger system opens.

1863 The U.S. civil war has cut Russia off from its primary source of cotton. Cotton growing in Central Asia has become of greater importance to the Russians, and Russia sends its military into Central Asia, where people are sparse, largely tribal, economically undeveloped, and Muslim.

1863 A devout Baptist, John D. Rockerfeller, age 24, enters the oil refining business.

1864 The Dutch in Java and Sumatra experiment with rubber cultivation.

1864 An atronomer calculates the distance to the sun as 147 million kilometers - short 2.6 million kilometers.

1864 In China, the leader of the Taiping Rebellion, Hong Xiuchuan, proclaims that God will defend his city, Tianjin (southeast of Beijing). When government forces approach he swallows poison and dies. The monarchy re-establishes control over most areas of China. The Taiping rebellion is all but defeated.

1864 A few hand-cranked Gatling guns, designed by Richard Gatling in 1861, are in use in the U.S. Civil War.

1865 Miners have been invading Colorado Territory, dislocating and angering Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians. A Cheyenne-Arapaho war against whites has erupted. An Indian chief of a band of Cheyenne and Arapaho has chosen peace. They have settled temporarily at Sand Creek. A military commander, Colonel Chivington, is intent on killing Indians and leads 700 men in a massacre at Sand Creek that includes women and children.

1865 The U.S. Civil War ends with General Robert E. Lee and his officers surrendering their swords. President Lincoln is assassinated.

1865 The Winnebago Indians have been removed from Iowa, Minnesota and that part of Dakota Territory that is to be South Dakota. And they are put on a reservation in Nebraska.

1865 The Central Pacific Railroad Company hires Chinese to work on the transcontinental railroad.

1865 In what today is Uzbekistan, Russians capture the city of Tashkent, which is to become a Russian administrative center.

1865 Over-reaction in crushing a rebellion in Jamaica produces an investigation in England. The island's governor is widely condemned and called to London. Some demand that he be tried for murder. He is removed from office but a grand jury refuses to indict him.

1866 In New Zealand, British regulars, white settlers and Maori loyalists defeat another Maori rebellion.

1866 In the Hawaiian Islands the first plantation workers have arrived, eighty-five percent of them are from China (470 males and 52 females). From Japan, 148 laborers have arrived.

1866 The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is founded.

1866 A Russian student, acting alone, tries to assassinate Tsar Alexander II. The government becomes hostile to all students. A new minister of education takes charge of the universities and applies stricter controls.

1867 One in five adult males in England and Wales can vote. Demonstrations erupt across Britain. A demonstration in London's Hyde Park is banned by the government, but the crowd is s are so huge that the government does not attack. The Reform Act of 1867 is passed, extending the vote to those individuals in whose name homes are owned or rented. This doubles the number of males in Wales and England who can vote. Politicians must account themselves to the increased electorate, but the upper classes can better afford the increased campaigning, which helps conservative candidates.

1867 The government of Tsar Alexander II is seeking consolidation of its the frontier. It sells Alaska to the United States.

1867 The United States Congress abolishes peonage in the territory of New Mexico.

1867 In the United States, the Republican Party has gained more seats in Congress, and Congress overrides President Andrew Johnson's veto of the "Reconstruction Act." An army, including a black militia, is sent to the South to enforce the law.

1867 In Vienna, the Blue Danube Waltz, by Johann Strauss, premiers.

1867 In the U.S., five all-black colleges are founded: Howard University in Washington D.C., Morgan State College in Maryland, Talladega College in Alabama, St. Augustine's College and Johnson C. Smith College in North Carolina.

1867 The Jesse James gang robs a bank in Savannah, Missouri, killing one person.

1867 Dating trees by their annual rings begins.

1867 In Sweden, Alfred Nobel finds that when nitroglycerin is combined with an absorbent substance it becomes safer and more convenient to manipulate. His mixture is patented as dynamite.

1867 E. Remington and Sons, manufacturers of guns and sewing machines, develop and manufacture the first commercial typewriter.

1867 Crown Prince Mutsuhito, age 14 ascends throne as Emperor Meiji.

1868 Feudal lords and others have been conspiring against the Tokugawa rule. A rallying cry is, "Honor the Emperor; expel the barbarian." Despite the anti-barbarian slogan, U.S., British, French and Dutch forces join against the shogunate, shelling costal fortresses and sinking the shogun's ships. Tokugawa rule is declared over. The capital, Edo, is renamed Tokyo. The emperor rules nominally while civil war continues. Attacks on foreigners continue, but people with influence and power do not want to provoke intervention by the Western Powers and move to end such attacks.

1868 In the United States the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution is ratified. This overturns the Dred Scott case. It entitles all persons born or naturalized in the United States to citizenship and equal protection under the law. Civil rights aree not extended to Indians or anyone who has held office in the Confederacy.

1868 George Custer and his Seventh Cavalry follow tracts of a small raiding party to a Cheyenne village on the Washita River, in western Oklahoma, within the borders of the Cheyenne reservation. There they slaughter Black Kettle, his family and others of the Cheyenne tribe.

1868 Reconstructed governments had been set up in Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina.

1869 Tokugawa forces that have attempted to establish rule in Hokkaido are defeated. Leaders of the military victory over the Tokugawa begin associating Emperor Meiji with Shinto ideology. Shinto shrines are common on Buddhist temple grounds, and, in an effort to free Shinto from Buddhist domination, violence and the breaking of images is committed against Buddhism. Buddhist temple lands are confiscated.

1869 The transcontinental railroad is completed, ending six years of work. Track from west and east meet in Utah.

1869 The Suez Canal opens. It is largely French owned but eager for international business. Access is promised ships from all nations, for a fee. The canal is to reduce travel time between Europe and Asia. Giuseppe Verdi has written an opera for the opening celebration - Aida.

1869 One-third of the population of Savu (in the Indonesian Archipelago) dies from smallpox.

1869 The Territory of Wyoming allows women to vote.

1870 The Territory of Utah allows women to vote.

1870 Pius IX convenes the First Vatican Council, at which papal infallibility is proclaimed on matters of faith and morals.

1870 Diamond deposits have been discovered in southern Africa, at Kimberley in the land of the Griqua, or Griqualand, on the northern frontier of the British colony. Diamond diggers are rushing there - Africans, whites from Europe, Australia and the Americas.

1870 Australia now has a substantial number of Germans and Catholic Irish, who worshiped freely. The Irish have found Australia to be without the oppressions they had known in Ireland.

1870 In Pennsylvania a coal mine fire suffocates 179 men. The state responds by passing mine safety laws.

1870 Joseph Lister believes that microorganisms transmit disease. He reports success in sterilizing tools used in surgery.

1870 Bismarck believes that war will arouse nationalist fervor and serve to unite the independent German states with Prussia. France opposes such unity. Bismarck wants a showdown with France and tricks the French into starting war. The Franco-Prussian War begins in July. In September the Prussians defeat the French decisively at Sedan and capture the French emperor, Napoleon III. The emperor is deposed. France's Second Empire ends and Third Republic begins.

1870 In Britain, France, Germany, Austria and in Scandinavian countries, trade relative to population size has increased four to five times what it was in 1830. In Belgium and the Netherlands the increase is about three times.

1871 The war between Prussia and France officially ends with the Treaty of Frankfurt. Bismarck's success has enhanced respect among Germans for his authoritarianism as opposed to the liberalism of his critics. Bavaria agrees to unify with Prussia. France cedes to Germany Alsace and Lorraine, and it is not popular among the people there. French forces crush the Paris Commune, and as many as 30,000 "Communards" and innocent Parisians are summarily executed.

1871 The Meiji government sends a few men to Europe and to the U.S., hoping to secure abolition of the Unequal Treaties and to examine Western technology, banking and agricultural techniques - the Iwakura Mission.

1871 Life expectancy at birth in England has risen from 36 years in 1700 to 41 years. (Calculated in a study in the 1980s by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure.)

1872 In Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Charles Taze Russell begins what will become the Jehovah's Witnesses.

1872 Speaking to Union Leaders in Holland, Karl Marx speaks of the possibility of victory for the working class through electoral politics.

1872 All former Confederate States have returned to the Union (the United States). An Amnesty Act restores the vote to those whites in the South who have been denied it.

1873 Japan's mission to Europe and the United States returns hopeful that Japan can catch up with the West in modernization. The Meiji government declares religious freedom and ends Confucianism as official state ideology.

1873 Russia's government orders students in Switzerland to return to Russia. The returning students launch a "To the People" movement, which they hope will revolutionize society.

1874 Germany is suffering a small pox epidemic. Vaccination becomes mandatory.

1874 In the United States, barbed wire has been invented. It is sold to farmers to keep passing herds of cattle off their land.

1874 Britain makes a colony of coastal territory 100 kilometers deep and 400 kilometers wide in what today is Ghana. During fighting there a British commander has his troops wear brown jackets and khaki trousers rather than the traditional red coats - a move toward camouflage.

1875 In Canada the light bulb is invented. Thomas Edison buys the patent.

1875 Britain has bought into part ownership of the Suez Canal enterprise.

1875 Southern Africa has became the largest diamond producing area in the world.

1875 Prospectors discover gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota, an area that the U.S. government has promised the Sioux would be theirs forever.

1875 An attempt by Ottoman agents to collect taxes in Herzegovina leads to a popular uprising, and the rebellion spreads to Bosnia.

1876 Rebellion against Ottoman rule has spread to Bulgaria. A reformist group in Turkey deposes Sultan Abd al-Aziz. Murad V becomes sultan but is declared insane. Abd al-Hamid becomes sultan and he accepts the new constitution.

1876 Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone

1876 In the former Confederate states, conservatives have gained power and are running what they called "redeemed" governments. Some of these governments are inventing ways to limit voting by blacks: complicated ballot boxes, literacy tests and poll taxes.

1876 The Russians have conquered all of Uzbekistan and occupy the northern part of Kyrgyzstan.

1876 German physician Robert Koch establishes an procedure that proves the germ theory of disease and boosts microbiology and the identification of microorganisms.

1876 Colorado becomes a state. Sioux and Cheyenne warriors annihilate Lieutenant Colonel George Custer and 210 or so of his Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn River. White Americans are outraged and demand retribution. The U.S. government redraws Indian reservation boundaries.

1876 A three-year-old Niño-caused drought has devastated India, China and Brazil, causing as many as 30 million deaths from starvation and disease.

1876 Japan forces the Koreans to accept a trade agreement similar to Commodore Perry's demands to the Japanese government back in 1853.

1877 A punitive expedition under Colonel Nelson Miles defeats the Sioux and Cheyenne. The Crow and Blackfoot Indians are ejected from their reservations. In Colorado, holdings of the Ute Indians are confiscated and opened to settlement. Gold is discovered on the Salmon River in Idaho, and whites begin invading territory that was promised to the peaceful Nez Perce Indians. War erupts, and the U.S. Army defeats the Nez Perce.

1877 The U.S. economy has been on a down swing, and labor unrest has spread across the country. Three million men, roughly 27 percent of the working population are unemployed. In San Francisco there is bitterness over wealthy people hiring Chinese. A popular orator, Denis Kearney, is haranguing the crowds with his slogan, "The Chinese must go."

1877 Thomas Edison develops the gramophone and phonograph.

1877 The last of union troops are withdrawn from former Confederates states.

1877 In Japan, agrarian and samurai revolts against government reforms have been defeated militarily, the largest being the Satsuma Rebellion, involving several thousand men. A society is founded similar to the Red Cross. The fighting drains the national treasury and leads to inflation.

1877 The British intend to protect the Boers (Afrikaners of Dutch, French and German descent) from the Zulus and to repair the Boer Republic financially. They suppose that a majority of Boers favor British rule and they annex the republic.

1877 Supporting their fellow Orthodox Christians in the Balkans, the Russians are marching toward Constantinople.

1878 The defeated Nez Perce nation is sent to a reservation in Oklahoma.

1878 Sultan Abd al-Hamid has dismissed the new liberal constitution and reformist politicians. The first attempt in modern times to graft western political ideas onto Islamic society has failed. All opposition is suppressed and all governmental power transferred to the Sultan's palace.

1878 The British fear Russia's expansion southward. The word jingoism is on the way, rising from a popular song in Britain that begins: "We don’t want to fight, but by jingo if we do We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men and got the money too!"

1878 European powers get together in Berlin to settle problems regarding revolts and war against the Ottoman Empire. They create problems for the future that will lead to the disastrous war Great War of 1914. They settle matters to some degree in accordance with national determination, recognizing Bulgarian and Romanian independence and giving independence to Montenegro and Serbia, but they also defer to old fashioned empire: the Habsburg monarchy in Vienna is given approval of its takeover in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Vienna's army, carrying symbols of Roman Catholicism is crushing Orthodox Serb resistance.

1878 Cyprus transfers from Ottoman to British control.

1878 Fearing Russia's advances into Turkistan and Samarqand, the British occupy Kabul. The "Second Afghan War" has begun.

1878 Vera Zasulich, a member of the youthful radical group "Land and Liberty," seeks revenge for the beating that one of her activist friends has received in prison. She shoots and wounds the military governor of St. Petersburg and is tried by a jury, which fails to convict her. The government responds by ending jury trials for people charged with politically motivated crimes. The government also steps up its arrest and exile of persons suspected of supporting terrorism.

1878 The British order the King of the Zulus, Cetshwayo, to disband his army of four to six thousand. He refuses. The Zulus defeat the British at Isandhwana, killing 800 British and capturing 1,000 rifles, with ammunition.

1879 With the help of Gatling guns, the British overpower the Zulus, at the Battle of Ulundi. Queen Victoria urges "kind and generous treatment of Cetshwayo," who is exiled to Cape Town. By now the hand-cranked Gatling gun could fire 1,200 rounds per minute - 400 rounds per minute said to be more reasonable.

1879 A yellow-fever epidemic begins in New Orleans.

1879 A territorial dispute between Bolivia and Chile erupts into war. The prize is nitrate deposits. Chile makes war also against Peru.

1879 In Constantinople, Turkish authorities forbid Armenian performances.

1879 Interested in peace among Europe's powers, Bismarck joins his Germany with Austria-Hungary in a defensive alliance.

1879 St. Petersburg had its first significant strike by industrial workers.

1880 After many failed attempts to assassinate Alexander II, radicals fail again, blowing up the dining room at the tsar's palace, killing eleven and wounding fifty-six. The tsar was late for dinner. Police arrest many members of the radical group "Will of the People," almost destroying the organization.

1880 In Europe, the industrialization of food has begun with new technology replacing the stone grinding of grains. The oil in flour will now quickly turn rancid, so it is removed. The new flour is without valuable nutrients, which is unknown to those processing the grains. Vitamins will not be discovered until the 1930s.

1880 John D. Rockefeller’s empire controls 95 percent of U.S. oil refining. In less than eighty years, the whaling industry on the Pacific ocean has collapsed.