1717
Abraham Darby smelts iron using partially burnt coal
1733
John Kay’s flying shuttle
1764
James Hargreaves’s spinning jenny
1769
Richard Arkwright patents the water frame
1774
James Watt patents the first steam engine
1776
Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
1779
First iron bridge completed in Shropshire, England
1785
Power loom invented by Edmund Cartwright
1789
Jeremy Bentham’s Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
1790
Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France
1793
Eli Whitney’s cotton gin
1798
Thomas Malthus’s Essay on Population
1807
British Parliament votes for the end of the slave trade
1807
First passenger train line
March 15, 1815
Napoleon escapes from Elba
May 15, 1815
Battle of Waterloo marks end of the Hundred Days
1815
Napoleon sent into exile on St. Helena
1817
David Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy
1819
Peterloo Massacre in Great Britain
1819
Combination Acts ban union activity
1820
Troppau Protocol (agreement among Eastern Great Powers to oppose revolutionary states)
1820
Rebellion in Spain put down with French support in 1824
1821
Beginning of Greek revolt
1821
Death of Napoleon
1823
Revolt in Naples
1824
Charles X becomes King of France
1825
Decembrist revolt in Russia
1829
George Stephenson invents the early locomotive, the Rocket
1830
Charles X issues July Ordinances
1830
July Revolution topples the last French Bourbon monarch
1830s
Cholera outbreak in Europe
1831
Charles Darwin begins five-year voyage that will take him to the Galápagos Islands
1832
Sadler Committee looks into child labor in Great Britain
1832
Great Reform Bill
1833
Slavery banned within the British empire
1833
Factory Act
1833
English Poor Law
1834
Robert Owen establishes the Grand National Consolidated Union
1835
David Friedrich Strauss’s The Life of Jesus Critically Examined
1835
Daguerreotype (early form of photograph) invented
1837
Beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria
1838
Beginning of the Chartist movement
1839
First in a series of Opium Wars between Great Britain and China
1840
Napoleon’s body brought back to France for reburial
1840
Joseph Proudhon writes the anarchist tract What Is Property?
1842
British gain control over Hong Kong
1846
Repeal of the Corn Laws
1846
Irish potato famine
1847
Liberia established as independent African republic
February 1848
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
February 1848
Overthrow of Louis Philippe
March 1848
Unrest in various German states
March 1848
Nationalist revolts break out throughout Austrian Empire
March 1848
Charles Albert of Savoy goes to war against Austria
May 1848
Meeting of the Frankfurt Parliament
1848
“June Days” uprising in Paris
December 1848
Louis Napoleon elected president of the Second Republic
1851
Louis Napoleon stages coup against the Second Republic Crystal Palace Exhibition
1852
Development of the safety elevator
1852
David Livingstone begins exploring the African interior
1852
Commodore Perry arrives in Japan
1852
Establishment of the Second Empire by Napoleon III
1854
Charles Dickens publishes Hard Times
1854
Start of the Crimean War
1856
Development of Bessemer process for manufacturing steel
1856
Synthetic dyes developed
1857
Flaubert publishes his masterpiece, Madame Bovary
1857
Indian Rebellion
1858
Jews allowed to enter the British Parliament
1859
Darwin’s On the Origins of Species
1859
France and Piedmont-Sardinia go to war against Austria
1859
Garibaldi invades the Kingdom of Two Sicilies
1861
Victor Emmanuel II becomes the first King of Italy
1861
Alexander II emancipates the serfs
1863
Opening of the Salon des Refusés (art rejected by the jury of the Official Paris Salon)
1864
Establishment of the First International in London
1864
Prussia and Austria go to war against Denmark
1866
Italians seize Venetia from Austria
1866
Austro-Prussian War
1867
Establishment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
1867
Alfred Nobel patents dynamite
1869
Suez Canal completed
1869
John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty
1870
Doctrine of Papal Infallibility
1870
Rome becomes capital of Italy
1870
Franco-Prussian War
1870
French Third Republic created
1871
Establishment of the German Empire
1871
End of the French Second Empire
1871
Paris Commune
1871
Darwin’s The Descent of Man
1874
Typewriters invented
1874
Claude Monet paints Impression: Sunrise
1875
Constitution establishes the French Third Republic
1876
Serbia becomes independent
1876
Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone
1877
Thomas Edison’s phonograph
1877
Queen Victoria becomes empress of India
1877
Russo-Turkish War
1878
Congress of Berlin