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The 19th century lasted from 1801 through 1900 in the Gregorian calendar. Others (the supporters of the so-called year zero) prefer the definition 1800 to 1899. Historians sometimes define a "Nineteenth Century" historical era stretching from 1815 (The Congress of Vienna) to 1914 (The outbreak of the First World War);[citation needed] alternatively, Eric Hobsbawm defined the "Long Nineteenth Century" as spanning the years 1789 (the French Revolution) to 1914.[citation needed] Some other scholars even include the preceding period, starting a Very long 19th century at the American Declaration of Independence.[citation needed]
Following the Napoleonic Wars, the British Empire became the world's leading power, controlling one quarter of the world's population and one third of the land area. It enforced a Pax Britannica, encouraged trade, and battled rampant piracy. Slavery was greatly reduced around the world. Following a successful slave revolt in Haiti, Britain forced the Barbary pirates to halt their practice of kidnapping and enslaving Europeans, banned slavery throughout its domain, and charged its navy with ending the global slave trade. Slavery was then abolished in America and Brazil (see Abolitionism), and serfdom was abolished in Russia Electricity, steel, and petroleum fueled a Second Industrial Revolution which enabled Germany, Japan, and the United States to become great powers that raced to create empires of their own. However, Russia and Qing Dynasty China failed to keep pace with the other world powers which led to massive social unrest in both empires.
EventsImage:British Empire 1897.jpg Map of the world from 1897. The British Empire (marked in pink) was the superpower of the 19th century. 1800s
1810s
1820s
1830s
1840s
1850s
1860sImage:SuezCanalKantara.jpg The first vessels sail through the Suez Canal
1870s
1880s
1890s
Significant people
AnthropologyImage:FranzBoas.jpg Franz Boas one of the pioneers of modern anthropology
Painters
MusicSonata form matured during the Classical era to become the primary form of instrumental compositions throughout the 19th century. Much of the music from the nineteenth century was referred to as being in the Romantic style. Many great composers lived through this era such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Richard Wagner. Others included:
LiteratureOn the literary front the new century opens with Romanticism, a movement that spread throughout Europe in reaction to 18th-century rationalism, and it develops more or less along the lines of the Industrial Revolution, with a design to react against the dramatic changes wrought on nature by the steam engine and the railway. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are considered the initiators of the new school in England, while in the continent the German Sturm und Drang spreads its influence as far as Italy and Spain. French arts had been hampered by the Napoleonic Wars but subsequently developed rapidly. Modernism began. The Goncourts and Emile Zola in France and Giovanni Verga in Italy produce some of the finest naturalist novels. Italian naturalist novels are especially important in that they give a social map of the new unified Italy to a people that until then had been scarcely aware of its ethnic and cultural diversity. On February 21, 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto. There was a huge literary output during the 19th century. Some of the most famous writers included the Russians Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekov and Fyodor Dostoevsky; the English Charles Dickens, John Keats, and Jane Austen; the Irish Oscar Wilde; the Americans Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain; and the French Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, Jules Verne and Charles Baudelaire. Some others of note included:
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