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A new British ministry takes office January 25 under the duke of Wellington, who succeeds the unsuitable Frederick J. Robinson, Viscount Goderich, and is replaced as commander in chief of the army by General Sir Rowland Hill, now 55. Wellington sides with reactionaries and alienates liberal Tories, who resign from his cabinet. Former prime minister Robert B. Jenkinson, 2nd earl of Liverpool, dies at Fife House, Whitehall, in his native London December 4 at age 58.
The Treaty of Turkmanchai signed February 22 ends a 3-year Russo-Persian War that began with Russian seizure of disputed territory (see 1827). Persia cedes two territories that include part of Armenia and agrees to pay a huge indemnity; the Russians obtain Kars and exclusive rights to maintain a navy on the Caspian Sea, but the Sufi leader Ghazi Muhammad remains at large (see 1832).
Russia declares war on the Ottoman Empire April 26, naval officer Frank A. Hastings dies at Zacynthus in the Ionian Islands June 1 at age 33 of wounds sustained at Anatolikón while trying to capture Missolonghi (see 1827), Russia sends troops across the Danube June 8, but garrisons at the south-bank fortresses Shurrila, Silistria, and Varna stop the Russians. Varna falls to the Russians October 12, and the invaders go into winter quarters (see 1829).
Former Austrian army commander Karl Freiherr Mack von Leiberich dies at Sanct Pölten, Austria, October 22 at age 76.
Portugal's regent Dom Miguel stages a coup d'état in May, abolishes the constitution drafted by Pedro IV in 1826, and has himself proclaimed king July 4. His niece Maria II, now 9, is taken to England by her protectors, and a 6-year civil war begins (see 1833).
Uruguay proclaims her independence August 27 (see 1825). The Treaty of Rio resolves differences between Brazil and Argentina after mediation by British diplomats to set up the 68,037-square-mile buffer state on the Rio de la Plata, Brazil recognizes Uruguya's independence, but Uruguyan revolutionary José Gervasio Artigas has lived in exile in Paraguay since 1820 and must celebrate only from a distance the independence that he fathered (see 1830).
Conspirators attack the palace of South American liberator Símon Bolívar at San Carlos, he escapes through a window, and there are accusations that Francisco de Santander was involved in the plot (see 1826). No proof is forthcoming, and the death sentence against Santander is commuted to exile (see 1833).
Siamese forces sack the Laotion capital of Vien Chan (see 1827). Anouvong (Chao Anou) makes another attack against Siam but is defeated and deposed; Vien Chan becomes a province of Siam (see 1899).
Madagascar's king Radama I dies after an 18-year reign in which he has extended Merina control over nearly the entire African island, organized a cabinet, encouraged the Protestant London Missionary Society to establish schools and churches (the missionaries have devised a written form of the local Malagasy language using Latin letters and introduced a printing press to reach the several thousand people who have become literate). Radama is succeeded by his widow, who will reign for 33 years as Queen Ranavaloana I, remaining throughout hostile to both French and British influence and the efforts of missionaries. The oligarchy that will rule in her name will hold all the land, monopolize commerce, kill off rivals, persecute and kill many Protestant converts, and oblige many Europeans to flee the island (see 1861).
The Zulu king Shaka is assassinated September 22 at age 41 after a 12-year reign that has founded the Zulu nation, ending the ancient pattern of society in South Africa. Demented since his mother's death last year, Shaka has begun arbitrary executions. His brothers Dingane and Mhlangane kill him and will reign jointly (see 1879).
New York's Governor De Witt Clinton dies at Albany February 11 at age 58; U.S. Army commanding general Jacob Brown at Washington, D.C., February 24 at age 52.
Andrew Jackson wins the presidential election in November with 171 electoral votes to 83 for President Adams. John Quincy Adams has resisted exhortations from his wife, Louisa, to get out of the house and campaign actively for reelection. She has been angered to read of an Irish immigrant girl who was sexually abused by her master and has written two fictional poems about a girl who commits suicide when her hopes are dashed of marrying the young master who took advantage of her. President-elect Jackson's overweight wife, Rachel (née Donnelson), has been accused of bigamy and adultery in a smear campaign of speeches and handbills (her first husband had filed for divorce and she had believed herself free to marry the hero of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, even though, technically, she was still married; see 1829). Vice President John Caldwell Calhoun is reelected to serve with the six-foot-one-inch Jackson, who weighs only 140 pounds and has a bullet lodged near his heart.
"South Carolina Exposition and Protest" sets forth a theory that states may nullify within their borders any acts of Congress which their state conventions find unconstitutional. Motivated by anger at the "Tariff of Abominations," which has created popular resentment by raising the prices of both raw materials and manufactured goods, Vice President Calhoun has drafted the protest, and it is reported December 19 to the South Carolina legislature, which orders it printed.
Britain and the United States extend indefinitely their agreement of 1818 on joint occupation of the Pacific Northwest Territory (see 1845; 1846).
Fanny Wright arrives in January at her Nashoba community with English barrister's wife Frances Trollope (née Milton), 47, whose husband is trying to develop a Cincinnati business after the failure of his legal practice. They find that Wright's overseer and his mulatto mistress have set up a colony of free love and let the plantation go to ruin. Mrs. Trollope hurries back to Cincinnati, and Wright, now 32, publishes an article in the Memphis Advocate attacking racially-segregated schools, organized religion, racial taboos in sexual relations, and the institution of marriage. She spends the summer at the failing New Harmony community, making plans to terminate her Nashoba community (it will become Germantown), transport its slaves to Haiti, and free them (see 1825; 1829).
Colonial agent Jehudi Ashmun leaves Liberia, sails for the West Indies, arrives at Boston, and dies there August 25 at age 34.
English reformer Robert Owen breaks with his business partner William Allen saying, "All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer" (see 1814; 1824).
Navigator Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d'Urville sights wreckage in February that he believes is from the frigates La Boussole and Astrolabe of the late explorer Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, who disappeared in the South Pacific in 1788 while searching for new whaling grounds. Now 37, Dumont d'Urville has set out in search of some trace of La Pérouse and makes his discovery near Vanikoro in the Santa Cruz Islands, whose natives tell him that about 30 men from the ships were massacred on shore but that others, better armed, were able to escape (see 1829).
A new British Corn Law introduced by the duke of Wellington theoretically gives consumers relief from the high food prices that have prevailed since the Corn Law of 1815. The new law imposes duties on a sliding scale based on domestic prices, but prices remain too low to permit grain imports.
A new tariff act signed into law by President Adams May 19 raises duties on manufactured goods. Supporters of Andrew Jackson framed it to discredit President Adams and are astonished when it is passed and signed. Daniel Webster, representing New England shippers and manufacturers, and Henry Clay, representing western farmers, have championed the measure, whose critics call it the "Tariff of Abominations." The Reciprocity Act passed by Congress May 24 allows for lower duties on imports from countries that reciprocate, but opponents of the Tariff of Abominations are not appeased (see Webster-Hayne debate, 1830).
Girls and women at Dover, New Hampshire, organize the first strike of U.S. women wage earners after the cotton-mill owners post new regulations that include the following: "The bell to call the people to work will be rung 5 minutes and tolled 5 minutes; at the last stroke the entrance will be closed and a fee of 12½ cents exacted of anyone for whom it may be opened"; "No person can be allowed to leave work without permission of the overseer"; and "No talking can be permitted while at work, except on business." The 12½-cent fine for tardiness represents one third of a day's wage. Several hundred women join in the strike, but they return to work after a few days (see 1834).
Construction begins July 4 on the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) Railroad that was chartered last year by the state of Maryland as the first U.S. railroad for the general transportation of freight and passengers (see 1815; 1825). Charles Carroll of Carrollton, now 90, has backed the project (he is the richest man in America) and lays the first rail for the narrow four-foot 8½-inch gauge track based on the standard English track width for carriages (see 1830).
Work begins July 4 on the Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O) Canal. President Adams turns the first spade of soil to start a race between the B&O and C&O across the Alleghenies (see 1839).
The first barges to navigate the new Delaware & Hudson Canal arrive at the city in October with anthracite coal in time for the heating season, and 7,000 tons will be delivered before the canal freezes over (see 1825). Completed in less than 3 years, the canal still lacks a rail link to the coal mines at Carbondale, but engineer John B. Jervis has devised a scheme of five ascending planes worked by stationary steam engines and three descending gravity planes, Benjamin Wright approves the plans, and 360 tons of iron rails are ordered from England in November (seeStourbridge Lion, 1829).
Hamburg entrepreneur Ferdinand Laeisz, 27, starts a maritime transport company that will continue to operate sailing vessels well into the 20th century. He will acquire his first ship in 1839, and his son Carl will have taken over by the time of his death in 1887 (seePreussen windjammer, 1897).
Scottish inventor James Beaumont Neilson, 26, devises a blast furnace to improve the manufacture of iron.
Massachusetts-born inventor John Thorp, 44, invents a ring spinning machine which is so simple and productive that within 40 years it will have replaced most of the spinning mules used in textile mills since their invention by the late Samuel Crompton in 1779.
Estonian naturalist Karl Ernst von Baer, 36, at Königsberg discovers the mammalian ovum and establishes the modern science of embryology. Aristotle was not sure whether the embryo was preformed and simply enlarged in the womb or differentiated from an amorphous beginning; 18th century scientists such as Malpighi, Swammerdam, and Leewenhoek supported the idea that it was preformed, but the German physician Caspar Friedrich Wolff ventured in 1759 that undifferentiated materials gradually become specialized in an orderly way into adult structures. This concept of epigenetic changes has received growing support, and von Baer formulates four basic laws on embryonic development (see Haeckel, 1866).
English palaeontologist Mary Anning, 28, discovers the bones of a prehistoric pterodactyl, previously unknown to science. As a child she unearthed the fossil skeleton of an icthyosaurus in a cliff at her native Lyme Regis, Dorset, and will soon find the fossil remains of a plesiosaur.
Chemist Friedrich Wöhler heats ammonium cyanate and unintentially produces synthetic urea (NH2CONH2), an organic compound of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. It is the first laboratory synthesis of an organic compound from inorganic ingredients and represents a pioneer step toward the production of artificial dyes (see Fritzsche, 1841; Perkin, 1856), nitrogen fertilizer (see Haber, 1908), and other synthetic substances (see Cavendish, 1766).
Jöns Jakob Berzelius isolates thorium.
Chemist William Hyde Wollaston dies at London December 22 at age 62.
An English physician suggests that the word obstetrician, from the Latin "to stand before," be used to denote a specialist in childbirth in place of such terms as male midwife, man midwife, midman, accoucheur, and even androboethogynist.
Edinburgh police discover the murdered body of a local woman October 31 with help from the neighbors of William Burke and William Hare, who have killed at least 15 wayfarers and sold their corpses (see 1827). The medical profession needs corpses for dissection but is unable to acquire them legally (see 1829).
Fanny Wright hears that religious revivalism is sweeping Cincinnati. She goes to the city and delivers a series of anti-clerical lectures.
London University is founded by men who include Scottish jurist Henry Brougham, 50, Baron Brougham of Brougham, who tells the House of Commons, "Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave."
The Ladies' Magazine begins publication at Boston in January with the avowed aim "to make females better acquainted with their duties and privileges." Editor of the new 50-page magazine is onetime schoolteacher Sarah Josepha Hale (née Buell), 39 (see 1834).
The Spectator begins publication in early July at London. Former Dundee Advertiser editor Robert S. Rintoul edits the new weekly review of politics, literature, theology, and art.
Printer Luke Hansard dies at London October 29 at age 76, having published parliamentary proceedings since 1774; he leaves his business to his son Thomas Curson Hansard, now 52, who has been reprinting parliamentary debates (copied from newspaper reports) since 1803 and in 1825 published Typographia, an Historical Sketch of the Origin and Progress of the Art of Printing; he will live only until 1833 but his younger brothers will continue the enterprise (see 1837).
An American Dictionary of the English Language is published after 28 years of work by Noah Webster, who has studied 26 languages in order to determine the origins of English words (see 1806). Now 70, Webster defines nearly 70,000 words, introduces Americanisms such as revolutionary, skunk, and applesauce, and gives words such as colour and plough American spellings (color, plow).
Fiction: The Fair Maid of Perth and Tales of a Grandfather by Sir Walter Scott; Pelham by London-born novelist Edward (George Earle) Bulwer, 25, whose Gothic romance is set in the world of fashion and establishes his reputation (he will add his mother's maiden name to his own in 1843 and become Edward Bulwer-Lytton); Sketches From Everyday Life (Teckninger utur hvardagslivet) by Swedish writer Fredrika Bremer, 24, has been written to help finance the charitable work she is doing among the cottagers on her family's estate just south of Stockholm.
Painting: Faust (19 lithographs) by Eugène Delacroix; Hampstead Heath: Branch Hill Pond by John Constable; The Deluge and Ruth Returned from the Gleaning by English painter Samuel Palmer, 23; Don José Pio de Molina by Francisco de Goya, who dies at Bordeaux April 16 at age 82; Gilbert Stuart dies at Boston July 9 at age 52.
Sculptor Jean Houdon dies at Paris July 15 at age 87.
Theater: A Faithful Servant of His Master (Ein truer Diener seines Atrin) by Franz Grillparzer 2/28 at Vienna's Burgtheater.
Opera: Grace Malibran makes her Paris debut 4/8 in the role of Semiramide at the Théâtre des Italiens; Henrietta Sontag makes her London debut at the King's Theatre 4/19 singing the role of Rosina; Count Ory (Le Comte Ory) 9/20 at the Opéra-Comique, Paris, with music by Gioacchino Rossini.
First performances: Fantasy in F minor for Piano Four Hands by Franz Schubert 5/9 at Vienna; Symphony No. 6 (or No. 7) in C minor by the late Franz Schubert 12/14 at Vienna.
Bösendorfer Klavierfabrik is founded at Vienna by local pianomaker Ignaz Bösendorfer, 33, who has apprenticed under Josef Brodman and receives a license (Number 225 669) to open his own business and take up residence in the city. Bösendorfer's instruments will find favor with the young pianist Franz Liszt, whose vigorous style shatters flimsier pianos, and Ignaz's zeal for perfectionism will lead him to use soundboards made only from spruce grown in the same area of Italy where Stradivarius obtained wood for his violins, trees grown at least 1,000 meters above sea level and felled only in January, when their sap content is lowest. His son Ludwig will take over the company after Ignaz dies in 1859, and Bösendorfer Klavierfabrik will survive into the 21st century as the oldest piano making company in continuous production, taking 62 weeks to complete a hand-made instrument.
Franz Schubert dies of tertiary syphilis (or, possibly, typhoid fever or alcoholism) at his native Vienna November 19 at age 31, leaving his Symphony in B major unfinished.
French perfumer Pierre François Pascal Guerlain opens a Paris shop on the Rue de Rivoli selling salts, soaps, and fragrances. Originally from Picardy, he has studied in England, is qualified in both chemistry and medicine, creates different perfumes for each customer at a time when few people bathe even once a week, and will move to 15 Rue de La Paix in 1848 following a remodeling of the city (see 1864).
The Unitarian Church (Stone Temple) completed at Quincy, Massachusetts, to Greek revival designs by Alexander Parris will contain the burial vaults of presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams.
Architect-inventor William Thornton dies at Washington, D.C., March 28 at age 68, having created the original design for the Capitol and designed several of the city's residences.
New York's Washington Square Park is created on the site of a potter's field cemetery which has been removed to a site on 42nd Street acquired by the city in 1823 (see Bryant, 1844).
London's 2-year-old Royal Zoological Society opens its "zoo" to the public for 2 days per week beginning April 27 with the first hippopotamus to be seen in Europe since the ancient Romans displayed one at the Colosseum. The Society will help save some rare bird and animal species from extinction.
A Japanese earthquake at Echigo December 28 kills 30,000.
Dutch chemist and merchant Coenraad J. (Johannes) Van Houten, 27, patents an inexpensive method for removing the excess fat from the nib (center) of roasted cacao beans with an hydraulic press and produces the world's first chocolate candy. Van Houten has been in business since 1806, and in 1815 he established a chocolate factory that began the use of cocoa as a food (it was considered an aristocratic drink before the French Revolution but its popularity waned after 1789, partly because coffee was considered more Protestant and businesslike, partly because of cocoa's association with courtiers and clergymen (especially Jesuits, who have been accused of trying to monopolize the cacao trade 1828; Cailler, 1819). The defatted "mass" can be used to make a powder, and Van Houten has found that by adding the extra cocoa butter, as it will be called, to an experimental mixture of cocoa powder and sugar, adding alkaline salts (potassium carbonate or sodium carbonate) to neutralize the acidic chocolate and make the powder mix readily with water, the resulting sticky substance cools into a solid, moldable form. He will use his "Dutching" process to start a company that will outlive him (see Cadbury, 1847; Nestlé and Peter, 1875). Van Houten creates a pulverized cocoa powder that makes it possible to brew a cup of instant cocoa and will be the forerunner of other instant beverages.
Chili (or Chile) con carne is popular in Mexico's Tejas province, writes a U.S. visitor to San Antonio (see chili powder, 1835).
America's Shakers change their permissive attitude toward alcohol. They forbid the use of "beer, cider, wines, and all ardent liquors . . . on all occasions, at house-raisings, husking bees, harvestings, and all other gatherings."
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