Sample chronology

The nineteenth century

This is a list of important events and people in the history of the nineteenth century. Political and cultural topics are most prominent, and Great Britain is the main point from which they are viewed.

1792. Denmark is first country to abolish slavery.

1793. Louis XVI beheaded. France becomes a republic.

1794. First slave revolution led by Toussaint L'Ouverture in Haiti.

1800. Parliamentary union of Great Britain and Ireland.

1803. Insurrection in Ireland. Britain at war with France.

1804. Napoleon declares himself Emperor. Spain declares war against Great Britain.

1805. Battle of Trafalgar - Nelson's victory and death.

1807. Slave trade abolished in British Empire. Occupation of Portugal by the French.

1808. Occupation of Spain by the French.

1812. Napoleon's retreat from Moscow

1815. Battle of Waterloo

1817. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine founded

1819. Peterloo massacre. Seditious Publications Act (copy tax on periodicals containing news).

1821. Mechanics Institutes formed in Glasgow and London

1824. G. Combe, Elements of Frenology.

1825. Stockton-Darlington railway opened

1827. University College London founded.

1829. The Governesses' Mutual Society is founded in response to public concern over the situation of unemployed governesses.

1830. Petitions to both Houses of Parliament on the abolition of slavery

1833. Slavery abolished in the British Empire. Shaftesbury's Factory Act limits hours of children's employment.

1834. First colony established in South Australia. Tolpuddle martyrs exiled there.

1838. Chartist petitions published.

1839. Custody of Infants Act. (For the first time a woman living apart from her husband was able to apply for custody of children under seven.)

1840. Marriage of Victoria and Albert. Penny post established in UK.

1841. Governesses' Benevolent Institute founded (see also 1829).

1842. Mines Act forbids use of children and women in mines. Chartist riots.

1843. Colonization of Africa includes Gambia, Natal, Basutoland.

1844. First telegraph line, between Paddington and Slough.

1845. Boom in railway building speculation. Bronte sisters invest.

1846. Repeal of the Corn Laws. Famine in Ireland.

1848. Revolutions throughout Europe. Queen's College for Women founded in London. A. BronteThe Tenant of Wildfell Hall; Gaskell, Mary Barton; Flaubert, Madame Bovary; Thackery, Vanity Fair; Dickens, Dombey and Son; Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto.

1849. Bedford College for Women founded.

1850. Death of Wordsworth. Tennyson becomes Poet Laureate. Parliament imposes a sixty hour week.

1851. Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. Religious Census.

1854. Britain and France declare war against Russia to begin Crimean war. Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception promulgated.

1855. Newspaper Tax abolished. Death of Charlotte Bronte.

1857. Indian 'Mutiny'. Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte. Divorce Act facilitates divorce for those who can afford it.

1859. Darwin, Origin of Species; Eliot, Adam Bede; Samuel Smiles, Self-Help.

1861. American civil war begins with eleven states breaking away to form southern confederacy. Emancipation of serfs in Russia. Mrs Beeton, The Book of Household Management.

1863. Polish rising against Russian occupation.

1865. Slavery abolished in United States.

1867. Russia sells Alaska to America for $7 million.

1869. Suez canal opened. J.S. Mill, The Subjection of Women (written in 1860).

1870. Papal infallibility announced. French declare war against Prussia - and are heavily defeated. Paris occupied. Married Women's Property Act. Forster's Education Act (compulsory full-time schooling for under tens).

1871. Paris commune declared - then crushed (by the French). Limited voting introduced in Britain.

1874. Parliament reduces the working week to 56.5 hours.

1876. Bell invents the telephone.

1877. Victoria declared Empress of India. J

1886. Daimler produces first motor car.

1894. Manchester ship canal opens. Dreyfus affair fanned by anti-Semitism in France.

1896. Abyssinians defeat occupying Italian forces - first defeat of colonising power by natives.

1899. Boer War begins.

1900. Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity,

1903. First flight in heavier-than-air machine by Wright brothers in USA.