1823
1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830
French troops sent by foreign minister François René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, invade Spain to suppress her 3-year-old revolution and restore her Bourbon king Ferdinand VII to his throne (see Congress of Verona, 1822). The traitorous French general Charles-François Dumouriez who saved the republic in 1792 has died in exile at Turville Park, Buckinghamshire, March 14 at age 84 (the British granted him a pension about 20 years ago and Louis XVIII refused to let him back into France in 1814). Admiral of the Fleet John Jervis, Royal Navy (ret)., has died at Rochetts March 14 at age 88.
The vicomte de Chateaubriand is dismissed June 6 in a dispute that largely concerns Greece, but French forces triumph August 31 at the Battle of the Trocadero. They take Cádiz September 23, the rebels hand over Ferdinand VII, and the French return him to power. He ignores advice to introduce a moderate constitutional regime and begins a repressive rule that will continue until his death in 1833.
Former French statesman Lazare Carnot dies in exile at Magdeburg, Saxony, August 2 at age 70. His ashes will later be interred in the Panthéon at Paris.
Greek patriot Marcos Botsaris leads a Souliot guerrilla group of a few hundred men in a surprise attack on the night of August 21 against some 4,000 Albanians encamped at Karpenision (see 1822). The Albanians have been advancing to join in the siege of Missolonghi that began last year, the attack routs them, but Botsaris is killed at age 35 (approximate) and command of his guerrilla force passes to his friend Lord Byron, who organizes 50 of the men into a personal bodyguard (see 1824).
Sir Stamford Raffles retires from his post as resident officer at Singapore and is succeeded by Scottish-born veteran East India Company employee John Crawfurd, 40, whose monumental History of the Indian Archipelago was published 3 years ago (see 1819; Malacca, 1824).
Mexico's Emperor Agustín grants permission January 3 for Stephen F. Austin to found a colony of 300 families on the Rio Brazos River, occupying lands given by the Spanish viceroy to the late Moses Austin (see exploration [Austin], 1821). Virginia-born land speculator Haden (or Hayden) Edwards, 41, has traveled to Mexico City and provides financial support to Austin, but the emperor has further impoverished his country with his lavish spending; unable to govern, he is forced to reconvene congress, abdicates March 19, and flees to Europe, initially to Italy, then to England (see 1822); Agustín elevated Antonio López de Santa Anna to general 2 years ago for driving the Spaniards out of Veracruz, Santa Anna has been among the military leaders supporting the Plan of Casa Mata to overthrow Agustín, he proclaims a republic at Veracruz December 2, and he will dominate Mexican politics for the next 30 years (see 1824).
An assembly convened in June at Guatemala City declares the sovereignty of the United Provinces of Central America July 1. Guatemala agreed last year to join Agustin's empire, but Salvadorans opposed the decision, sought annexation by the United States, and were subdued by Mexican and Guatemalan troops only after a long siege of San Salvador. Mexico recognizes the independence of the United Provinces August 20, a provisional executive triumvirate headed by Manuel José Arce takes power, but the confederation of Guatemala, San Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua will dissolve by 1840 and further attempts at union will fail (see 1824).
The last Spanish royalist forces in Venezuela surrender at Puerto Cabello October 9 (see 1821; 1826).
U.S. forces defeat the Sac and Fox chief Black Hawk (Makataemishklakiak), 56, who has created an alliance with the Winnebago, Pottawotamie, and Kickapoo to resist white incursions into the Illinois country (but see 1832).
The Monroe Doctrine enunciated by President Monroe in his annual message to Congress December 2 states a nationalistic determination to oppose any European influence in the Western Hemisphere and to remain aloof from European conflicts. Written by Monroe's secretary of state John Quincy Adams, it says, "The American continents . . . are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European power."
An antislavery society is established at London under the leadership of William Wilberforce and Sir Thomas Fowell, 37, Baronet Buxton, who has acquired a fortune as a brewer (see 1807; 1833).
Seal hunter-explorer James Weddell makes a third voyage into the Antarctic aboard his brig Jane (see 1822). After surveying the South Shetland and South Orkney Islands, he sails southward in search of new land, finds unusually open ice conditions February 20, and reaches 74°15' South—more than three degrees farther south than the point reached by Captain Cook in 1773. He finds a large body of open water which he names the George IV Sea (it will be renamed the Weddell Sea after 1900; see DuMont d'Urville, 1837).
Congregational minister (and Ohio Company leader) Manasseh Cutler dies at Ipswich Hamlet, Massachusetts, July 28 at age 81; political economist-author David Ricardo at his Gloucestershire estate September 11 at age 51; onetime merchant and dollar-sign inventor Oliver Pollock at St. Francisville, Illinois, December 17 at age 85.
New York's A. T. Stewart Department Store has its beginnings in a small dry-goods shop opened by Irish-born merchant Alexander Turney Stewart, 20, who will create the world's first true department store (see 1846).
The petroleum industry has its beginnings at the Caspian Sea port of Baku on Russia's Apsheron Peninsula, where the "eternal fire" of natural gas holes has been known at least since the time of Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C. Primitive drilling for oil begins at Baku, which will be yielding half the world's petroleum by 1900 (see 1859; 1871).
The New York State legislature at Albany adopts a measure April 23 incorporating the "President, Managers and Company of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company" with a preamble noting the desirability of introducing "stone" coal from Pennsylvania to New York (see energy, 1812). The Pennsylvania legislature has earlier adopted a measure "to improve the Navigation of the Lackawaxen River" which effectively gives coalfields owner Maurice Wurts power to clear and improve the river's channel; establish dams, locks, or canals for a period of 30 years to complete a system of slack-water navigation; and to establish tolls, with various limitations and restrictions (the tolls are not to exceed 8¢ per ton mile for coal and 4¢ for other merchandise) (see 1825).
Connecticut pistol maker Simeon North receives his first rifle contract December 10 (see 1813). It calls for 6,000 rifles to be delivered within 5 years. North will devise a repeating rifle in 1825 that can fire 10 rounds without reloading, and he will supply carbines and rifles to the military until 1850.
Power-loom pioneer Edmund Cartwright dies at Hastings, Sussex, October 30 at age 80.
English physicist William Sturgeon, 40, devises the first electromagnet (see Volta, 1800; Faraday, 1821). He varnishes an iron bar to insulate it, wraps the bar with copper wire, connects the wire to the terminals of a voltaic pile, and creates a crude device that can lift a few pounds of iron (see Henry, 1827).
Michael Faraday liquefies chlorine. The water-soluble poisonous gas will find wide use in water purification and bleaches (see everyday life [Clorox], 1913); it will also be used in warfare (see politics, 1915).
Physicist-mathematician Jacques Charles dies at Paris April 7 at age 76; archaeological excavator Giovanni Battista Belzoni at Gwato, Benin, December 3 at age 45 at the outset of an expedition to Timbuktu.
Asiatic cholera reaches the gateway to Russia at Astrakhan in an epidemic that will affect every nation of the Western world (see 1820; 1829).
Vaccination inventor Edward Jenner dies of a severe stroke at his native Berkeley, Gloucestershire, January 26 at age 73.
The Lancet begins publication October 5 at London under the direction of Devon-born physician Thomas Wakley, 28, who has started the weekly medical journal to advance knowledge and reform British medicine. A fire destroyed Wakley's house in 1820, an insurance company refused to cover the loss on grounds that the fire was started deliberately, Wakley insisted that the fire had been set in an attempt to murder him, he has told journalist William Cobbett about the need to reform the medical profession, Cobbett has encouraged him to publish a journal, and Wakley will use it to crusade against nepotism, the Royal College of Surgeons, and the adulteration of foods (see 1850).
London chemist and physician William Prout isolates hydrochloric acid from stomach juices (see science, 1815). Now 38, he demonstrates late in the year that it is the chief agent of human digestion (see Beaumont, 1822; pepsin, 1835).
The Catholic Association founded May 12 by Irish lawyer Daniel O'Connell, now 47, and writer Richard Lalor Sheil, 31, attracts the support of priests, lawyers, and educated Catholic laymen to support the cause of Catholic Emancipation (see politics [O'Connell], 1798; [Act of Union], 1800). They demand an end to the degradation of Roman Catholics not as a favor but as a right (see Catholic Emancipation Bill, 1829).
Pope Pius VII dies at Rome August 20 at age 71 after a 23-year reign in which he has consecrated the emperor Napoleon at Paris and been held prisoner by Napoleon, but refused to yield to him. He is succeeded September 28 by the ailing Annibale Cardinal della Genga, 63, who will reign until 1829 as Leo XII.
The Oxford Union founded at the English university is a forum for discussion and debate that will survive into the 21st century. It soon becomes the only place where students can enjoy a free exchange of views on political topics without restriction by university authorities (see politics, 1933).
Britain's George III gives the British Museum the right to a copy of every book printed in the country, a right that will continue into the 21st century (see literature, 1757). The museum has received so many bequests and donations since its opening in 1759 that its collection of antiquities and artifacts has far outgrown its facilities; architects Robert and Sydney Smith submit designs in Greek revival style for a museum to be built in London's Great Russell Street to house treasures that include the Elgin Marbles (see art, 1816; 1847).
An electric telegraph offered to the British Admiralty by English inventor Francis Ronalds, 35, employs wires whose ends are attached to a battery at the sending point and to electrodes in acidified water at receiving stations, each electrode being marked with a letter or number (see Nollet, 1746; Chappe semaphore, 1793). Ronalds has set up a complete telegraph system on his estate at Hammersmith using eight miles of wire, but the Admiralty rejects his offer, saying, "Telegraphs of any kind are wholly unnecessary and no other than the one in use [a semaphore installed in 1796] will be adopted" (see Henry, 1831).
British authorities at Calcutta impose censorship on the local press. Reformer Ram Mohun Roy has founded two weekly newspapers which he edits, and he organizes a protest, arguing that freedom of speech and religion are natural rights.
Virginia gentleman-farmer's wife Anne Royall (née Newport), 54, finds herself penniless when her husband dies after 16 years of marriage and his relatives cheat her out of his estate (she met him when her mother went to work as a servant in his house). She petitions Congress for a widow's pension, since her late husband was a prominent Continental Army general, but to earn a living Mrs. Royall begins traveling about the country writing about her experiences, and giving her readers scathing insights into the lives of prominent visitors, such as General Lafayette, and citizens (see 1829).
Nonfiction: Liber Amoris by essayist William Hazlitt, who was divorced last year after 14 years of marriage and has developed a passion for Sarah Walker, the daughter of the tailor with whom he lodges (he will be married next year to Isabella Bridgewater, a widow with an annual income of £300, and travel with her to Italy, but she will leave him on the return voyage).
Fiction: The Pioneers by James Fenimore Cooper begins his Leatherstocking Tales; Valperga by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
Novelist Ann Radcliffe dies at her native London February 7 at age 58.
Poetry: Don Juan by Lord Byron, who is fighting with the Greeks for their independence. He has based his greatest work in part on the account of a 1741 shipwreck off the coast of Chile as described by his grandfather John "Foul-weather Jack" Byron, who made a round-the-world exploratory voyage from 1764 to 1766: "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,/ 'Tis woman's whole existence"; "A Visit from St. Nicholas" is published anonymously December 23 issue of the Troy (New York) Sentinel. New York landowner and lexicographer Clement Clarke Moore, now 44, will later claim authorship of the verses that bring to life the figure depicted by Washington Irving in 1809: " 'Twas the night before Christmas . . . Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet, on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!"
Painting: George Washington by Rembrandt Peale, now 45, who painted Washington from life at age 17 and hopes to supplant Gilbert Stuart's "Athanaeum" head of 1796 as the popularly accepted likeness of the founding father; House of Representatives by Charlestown, Massachusetts-born New portrait painter Samuel F. B. (Finley Breese) Morse, 32, who has included individual portraits of 68 men who include Supreme Court justices, dozens of congressmen, his geographer father, and even janitors; Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishops' Grounds by John Constable. Pierre-Paul Prud'hon dies at Paris February 16 at age 64.
Theater: The Truthful Liar (Le Menteur Véridique) by Eugène Scribe 4/24 at the Théâtre du Gymnase, Paris (16 Scribe comedies are produced, up from 11 last year).
Actor and Drury Lane Theatre manager John P. Kemble dies at Lausanne February 26 at age 66.
Opera: Semiramide 2/3 at Venice's Teatro la Fenice, with a libretto based on a Voltaire tragedy of 1748, music by Gioacchino Rossini; Giuditta Pasta makes her second London debut in April as Desdemona in the Rossini opera Otello and goes on to sing the role of Semiramis in the Rossini opera Semiramide, both times with the composer conducting; Clari, or the Maid of Milan 5/8 at London's Covent Garden Theatre, with Charles Kemble, 48, music by English composer Henry Rowley Bishop, 37, libretto and lyrics by New York actor-playwright John Howard Payne, now 37, arias that include "Home Sweet Home." The opera opens at New York's Park Theater 11/12, 100,000 copies of the song are sold in its first year, the London publishers net 2,000 guineas in profit, and Bishop will become the first musician to be granted knighthood (in 1842); Euryanthe 10/25 at Vienna's Kärntnerthor Theater, with German soprano Henrietta (Henriette Gertrud Walpurgis) Sontag (Sonntag), 17, in the title role, music by Carl Maria von Weber.
First performances: Ballet-Musik aus Rosamunde by Franz Schubert 12/20 at Vienna.
New Hampshire-born Boston cabinetmaker Jonas Chickering, 25, starts a piano company that will become the largest in America (see 1843).
Rugby student William Webb Ellis, 16, allegedly inaugurates a new game whose rules will be codified in 1839. It will later be claimed that he was playing soccer for the 256-year-old college in East Warwickshire, saw that the clock was running out with his team behind, caught the ball, and ran with it in defiance of the rules. The story will prove apocryphal, but Rugby College will adopt rugby football (or rugger) officially in 1841 (see 1839; Association soccer, 1863; football, 1869; football, 1874).
The Royal Thames Yacht Club is founded.
The Macintosh raincoat has its beginnings in a waterproof fabric of rubber bonded to cloth patented by Glasgow-born chemist Charles Macintosh, 57, who applies his research on possible uses of the coal tar distillate naphtha. It is sticky in hot weather and brittle in cold, but the new cloth will make the name Macintosh a British generic for raincoat (see Goodyear, 1839; Aquascutum, 1851; Burberry, 1856).
Britain abolishes the death penalty for more than 100 crimes that have been capital offenses. The mitigation of capital punishment crowns efforts by the late Samuel Romilly (see 1808).
John Nash completes London's Sussex Place. He also completes a new royal pavilion at Bath after 8 years of construction in a "Hindoo" Islamic style to replace a villa built for the prince regent in the late 1780s.
Illinois opens to U.S. corn farmers following the defeat of Black Hawk.
China's monopoly in the tea trade begins to fade as an indigenous tea bush is found growing in northern India's Upper Assam. Acting for the British government, Charles Bruce smuggles knowledgeable coolies out of China and puts them to work transplanting young tea bushes into nursery beds to begin tea plantations that will be more efficiently organized than Chinese plantations (see 1839).
"A Dissertation upon Roast Pig" by Charles Lamb, now 48, appears in the London Magazine.
Michael Faraday pioneers mechanical refrigration with the discovery that certain gases under constant pressure will condense until they cool (see Perkins, 1834; Gorrie, 1842).
A new British excise tax forces illegal Highland distilleries (there are an estimated 14,000 of them) to close down (see 1814). The government lowers the tax, on the premise that it will gain more revenue by collecting smaller taxes from many distillers than larger taxes that are widely evaded) and agrees to license stills with capacities of as little as 40 gallons. Legal distilleries replace them, and the quality of Scotch whisky improves markedly after at least 2 centuries in which whisky making has been a major industry. With lower taxes, Lowland distillers will be encouraged to blend their product (Edinburgh distiller Andrew Usher will introduce the first blended Scotch whisky) and mature it in used sherry casks for 3 or more years while Highlanders will continue making single-malt whiskies. Smugglers scoff at the idea of paying taxes, and distillers who comply with the new law are regarded as traitors (but see Glenlivet, 1824).
Bourbon whiskey distilling increases in Kentucky (see Craig, 1789). Aging in charred oak barrels will not begin until 1860, and whiskey will not take on color until then (the color will generally derive more from added caramel than from wood char).
Old Crow bourbon whiskey has its beginnings in a sour mash produced according to scientific principles by Kentucky distiller James Crow.
1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830
