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The 1800s (pronounced "eighteen-hundreds") was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on 1 January 1800, and ended on 31 December 1809.
The term "eighteen-hundreds" could also mean the entire century from 1 January 1800 to 31 December 1899 (the years beginning with "18"), and is almost synonymous with the 19th century (1801–1900).
The decade was a period of drastic change. The advancements of the previous three decades towards the end of the 18th century had propelled the Industrial Revolution into a global movement, with entire wars fought with the newly developed technologies – creating an impetus to imperialist campaigns across Africa and Asia, as well as the counter-movement on Latin America later on.
The European political landscape was dominated by the Napoleonic Wars, a series of conflicts declared against Napoleon's First French Empire and changing sets of European allies by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionized European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to the application of modern mass conscription. French power rose quickly, conquering most of Europe by the end of the decade. The decade brought hard times.
On 9 November 1799 (18 Brumaire), Napoleon overthrew the French government, replacing it with the Consulate, in which he was First Consul. On 2 December 1804, after a failed assassination plot, he crowned himself Emperor. In 1805, Napoleon planned to invade Britain, but a renewed British alliance with Russia and Austria (Third Coalition), forced him to turn his attention towards the continent, while at the same time failure to lure the superior British fleet away from the English Channel, ending in a decisive French defeat at the Battle of Trafalgar (in this battle, British Admiral Horatio Nelson was fatally wounded [1] ) on 21 October put an end to hopes of an invasion of Britain. On 2 December 1805, Napoleon defeated a numerically superior Austro-Russian army at Austerlitz, forcing Austria's withdrawal from the coalition (see Treaty of Pressburg ) and dissolving the Holy Roman Empire. In 1806, a Fourth Coalition was set up, on 14 October Napoleon defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, marched through Germany and defeated the Russians on 14 June 1807 at Friedland. The Treaties of Tilsit divided Europe between France and Russia and created the Duchy of Warsaw.
The War of the Fifth Coalition, fought in the year 1809, pitted a coalition of the Austrian Empire and the United Kingdom against the French Empire and Bavaria. Major engagements between France and Austria, the main participants, unfolded over much of Central Europe from April to July, with very high casualty rates. Britain, already involved on the European continent in the ongoing Peninsular War, sent another expedition, the Walcheren Campaign, to the Netherlands in order to relieve the Austrians, although this effort had little impact on the outcome of the conflict. After much campaigning in Bavaria and across the Danube valley, the war ended favorably for the French after the bloody struggle at Wagram in early July, resulting in the Treaty of Schönbrunn . Although fighting in the Iberian Peninsula continued, the War of the Fifth Coalition was the last major conflict on the European continent until the French invasion of Russia in 1812 sparked the Sixth Coalition.
This decade marked the greatest increase of the Atlantic slave trade to the United States. During the period of 1798 and 1808, approximately 200,000 slaves were imported from Africa to the United States. [2] Still, the abolitionist movement began to gain ground in this period. Britain enacted the Slave Trade Act 1807, which barred the trade of slaves in Great Britain (though slavery was still legal). The United States enacted a similar ban in 1808. [3] However, Napoleon revoked the French Empire's ban on slavery with the Law of 20 May 1802.
On 30 August 1800, under the cloak of religious meetings, Gabriel Prosser and Jack Bowler planned a slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia. The rebellion was postponed due to poor weather and was ultimately unsuccessful because of unnamed two slaves betraying the cause. [4]
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This decade contained some of the earliest experiments in electrochemistry. In 1800 Alessandro Volta constructed a voltaic pile, the first device to produce a large electric current, later known as the electric battery. Napoleon, informed of his works, summoned him in 1801 for a command performance of his experiments. He received many medals and decorations, including the Légion d'honneur.
Also in 1800, William Nicholson and Johann Wilhelm Ritter succeeded in decomposing water into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis. Soon thereafter Ritter discovered the process of electroplating. He also observed that the amount of metal deposited and the amount of oxygen produced during an electrolytic process depended on the distance between the electrodes. By 1801 Ritter observed thermoelectric currents and anticipated the discovery of thermoelectricity by Thomas Johann Seebeck.
In 1806, Humphry Davy decomposed potash and soda, employing a voltaic pile of approximately 250 cells, showing that these substances were respectively the oxides of potassium and sodium, which metals previously had been unknown. Employing a battery of 2,000 elements of a voltaic pile and charcoal enclosed in a vacuum, Davy gave the first public demonstration of the electric arc lamp in 1809. [6]
Steam transportation started to become viable during this decade. In 1803, William Symington's Charlotte Dundas , generally considered to be the world's first practical steamboat, made her first voyage. Later, in 1807, Robert Fulton's North River Steamboat , the world's first commercially successful steamboat, made her maiden voyage.
In 1801, Richard Trevithick ran a full-sized steam 'road locomotive' on the road in Camborne, England, [7] followed by his 10-seater London Steam Carriage in 1803. [7] In 1804, Trevithick built a prototype steam-powered railway locomotive.
The first railway began operating during this time. The Surrey Iron Railway in Great Britain was established by the British Parliament in 1801, [8] and began operation on 26 July 1803. The railway relied on horse-drawn haulage than powered locomotives.
In 1807, Isaac de Rivas made a hydrogen gas-powered vehicle, the first vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine. [9] James Watt creates first steam engine based on Newcomen's design.
Fashion in this period in European and European-influenced countries saw the final triumph of undress or informal styles over the brocades, lace, periwig, and powder of the earlier eighteenth century.
Fashionable women's clothing styles were based on the Empire silhouette — dresses were closely fitted to the torso just under the bust, falling loosely below. Inspired by neoclassical tastes, the short-waisted gowns sported soft, flowing skirts and were often made of white, almost transparent muslin, which was easily washed and draped loosely like the garments on Greek and Roman statues. No respectable woman would leave the house without a hat or bonnet. The antique head-dress, or Queen Mary coif , Chinese hat, Oriental inspired turban, and Highland helmet were popular. As for bonnets, their crowns and brims were adorned with increasingly elaborate ornamentations, such as feathers and ribbons. [11] In fact, ladies of the day embellished their hats frequently, replacing old decorations with new trims or feathers.
1800–1809 was the height of dandyism in men's fashion in Europe, following the example of Beau Brummell. Older men, military officers, and those in conservative professions such as lawyers and physicians retained their wigs and powder into this period, but younger men of fashion wore their hair in short curls, often with long sideburns. This period saw the final abandonment of lace, embroidery, and other embellishment from serious men's clothing outside of formalized court dress. Instead, cut and tailoring became much more important as an indicator of quality. [12]
The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803. This consisted of most of the land in the Mississippi River's drainage basin west of the river. In return for fifteen million dollars, or approximately eighteen dollars per square mile, the United States nominally acquired a total of 828,000 sq mi now in the Central United States. However, France only controlled a small fraction of this area, most of which was inhabited by Native Americans; effectively, for the majority of the area, the United States bought the preemptive right to obtain Indian lands by treaty or by conquest, to the exclusion of other colonial powers.
The 18th century lasted from 1 January 1701 to 31 December 1800 (MDCCC). During the 18th century, elements of Enlightenment thinking culminated in the Atlantic Revolutions. Revolutions began to challenge the legitimacy of monarchical and aristocratic power structures. The Industrial Revolution began during mid-century, leading to radical changes in human society and the environment. The European colonization of the Americas and other parts of the world intensified and associated mass migrations of people grew in size as part of the Age of Sail. During the century, slave trading expanded across the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, while declining in Russia and China.
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of conflicts fought between the First French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte (1804–1815) and a fluctuating array of European coalitions. The wars originated in political forces arising from the French Revolution (1789–1799) and from the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) and produced a period of French domination over Continental Europe. The wars are categorised as seven conflicts, five named after the coalitions that fought Napoleon, plus two named for their respective theatres: the War of the Third Coalition, War of the Fourth Coalition, War of the Fifth Coalition, War of the Sixth Coalition, War of the Seventh Coalition, the Peninsular War, and the French invasion of Russia.
The Napoleonic era is a period in the history of France and Europe. It is generally classified as including the fourth and final stage of the French Revolution, the first being the National Assembly, the second being the Legislative Assembly, and the third being the Directory. The Napoleonic era begins roughly with Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'état, overthrowing the Directory, establishing the French Consulate, and ends during the Hundred Days and his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. The Congress of Vienna soon set out to restore Europe to pre-French Revolution days. Napoleon brought political stability to a land torn by revolution and war. He made peace with the Roman Catholic Church and reversed the most radical religious policies of the Convention. In 1804 Napoleon promulgated the Civil Code, a revised body of civil law, which also helped stabilize French society. The Civil Code affirmed the political and legal equality of all adult men and established a merit-based society in which individuals advanced in education and employment because of talent rather than birth or social standing. The Civil Code confirmed many of the moderate revolutionary policies of the National Assembly but retracted measures passed by the more radical Convention. The code restored patriarchal authority in the family, for example, by making women and children subservient to male heads of households.
Johann I Joseph was Prince of Liechtenstein between 1805 and 1806 and again from 1814 until 1836. He was the last Liechtenstein prince to rule under the Holy Roman Empire between 1805 and 1806 and as regent of Liechtenstein from 1806 until 1814. He was the fourth son of Franz Joseph I, Prince of Liechtenstein.
Thomas Jefferson served as the third president of the United States from March 4, 1801, to March 4, 1809. Jefferson assumed the office after defeating incumbent John Adams in the 1800 presidential election. The election was a political realignment in which the Democratic-Republican Party swept the Federalist Party out of power, ushering in a generation of Jeffersonian Republican dominance in American politics. After serving two terms, Jefferson was succeeded by Secretary of State James Madison, also of the Democratic-Republican Party.
These are lists of battles of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815).
The Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813 was one of the many wars between the Persian Empire and Imperial Russia, and, like many of their other conflicts, began as a territorial dispute. The new Persian king, Fath Ali Shah Qajar, wanted to consolidate the northernmost reaches of his kingdom—modern-day Georgia—which had been annexed by Tsar Paul I several years after the Russo-Persian War of 1796. Like his Persian counterpart, the Tsar Alexander I was also new to the throne and equally determined to control the disputed territories.
The military history of the United Kingdom covers the period from the creation of the united Kingdom of Great Britain, with the political union of England and Scotland in 1707, to the present day.
The First French Empire or French Empire and also known as Napoleonic France, was the empire ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte, who established French hegemony over much of continental Europe at the beginning of the 19th century. It lasted from 18 May 1804 to 4 April 1814 and again briefly from 20 March 1815 to 7 July 1815, when Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena.
The 19th century began on 1 January 1801, and ended on 31 December 1900 (MDCCCXCX). 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, 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.
The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, sometimes called the Great French War, were a series of conflicts between the French and several European monarchies between 1792 and 1815. They encompass first the French Revolutionary Wars against the newly declared French Republic and from 1803 onwards the Napoleonic Wars against First Consul and later Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. They include the Coalition Wars as a subset: seven wars waged by various military alliances of great European powers, known as Coalitions, against Revolutionary France – later the First French Empire – and its allies between 1792 and 1815:
Thomas Jefferson took office in 1801 after defeating incumbent President John Adams in the 1800 presidential election. By July 1801, Jefferson had assembled his cabinet, which consisted of Secretary of State James Madison, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin, Secretary of War Henry Dearborn, Attorney General Levi Lincoln Sr., and Secretary of the Navy Robert Smith. Jefferson sought to make collective decisions with his cabinet, and each member's opinion was elicited before Jefferson made major decisions. Gallatin and Madison were particularly influential within Jefferson's cabinet; they held the two most important cabinet positions and served as Jefferson's key lieutenants. During Jefferson's administration, the key foreign policy concerns revolved around relationships with the major European powers, particularly the United Kingdom, France, and Spain—each of which continued to hold substantial territories in North America—and with conflicts with the Barbary pirates.