1838
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French statesman Charles M. de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince de Bénévet, dies at his native Paris May 17 at age 84, having helped to restore the Bourbons to power and organize the Quadruple Alliance of 1834 before retiring into private life. Bavarian statesman Maximilian, graf von Montgelas de Garnerin, dies at at his native Munich June 14 at age 78.
Queen Victoria is crowned at Westminster June 24 amidst national rejoicing. A "People's Charter" published at London May 8 has called for universal suffrage without property qualifications; drafted chiefly by William Lovett of the London Working Men's Association (see 1836), the charter contains Six Points that include payment for Members of Parliament, equal electoral areas, and other reforms, it wins approval at a great meeting held on Newhall Hill August 8, and although Parliament rejects the charter it will eventually adopt some of its ideas (see O'Connor, Frost, 1839).
London and Washington exchange diplomatic notes with regard to last year's seizure and burning of the U.S. steamboat Caroline in late December, the British insist that their troops acted in self defense, U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster insists that a nation can justify such a hostile preemptive action only in the event of a necessity "instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation" (his dictum will come to be regarded as a basic principle of international law). Canada's British governor general and lord high commissioner John George Lambton, 46, 1st earl of Durham, arrives at Quebec in May, finds that French-Canadian hostility has created virtual anarchy in Lower Canada, is given almost dictatorial powers, organizes a new executive council that is more conciliatory, and placates the rebels June 28 by proclaiming an amnesty that excepts only 24 rebel leaders. Britain's prime minister Lord Melbourne disavows Durham's actions, and Durham resigns (see 1839).
Carlist forces in Spain triumph over monarchist forces in the Battle of Morella (see 1834). Progresistas (Liberals) shot the mother of insurgent leader Ramón Cabrera 2 years ago, he leads the Carlists to victory, and he is created count de Morella. One of the regent Maria Cristina de Borbón's supporters leads an uprising at Seville against General Baldomero Espartero's Progresistas, but Ramón Maria Narváez, 38, fails in his effort and is forced into exile (see 1839; Narváez, 1843).
France's Louis Philippe demands 600,000 pesos in compensation from the Mexican republic for damage sustained by French nationals (Mexican soldiers have allegedly looted a French pastry shop). French naval forces take a fortress near Veracruz, and General Antonio López de Santa Anna comes out of retirement to join the fighting (but without authority). The "Pastry War" ends when President Anastasio Bustamante agrees to meet the French demand, but a cannonball from a departing French ship severs the lower part of Santa Anna's left leg, and he has the lower limb entombed with great ceremony at Mexico City, exaggerating his role in the skirmish at Veracruz in an effort to restore his image (he has actually done no more than fire at the departing ships) (see 1839).
The Federal Republic of Central America begins to break up following a cholera epidemic (see Morazán, 1829); Nicaragua and Costa Rica withdraw, and the charismatic mestizo leader Rafael Carrera leads a native uprising in Guatemala, where the 7-year-old government of Mariano Galvez falls after having introduced liberal reforms. Honduras secedes from the confederation and will remain Central America's poorest nation (see 1839).
Former Brazilian prime minister José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva dies at Niterói, Brazil, April 6 at age 74 (approximate) and is mourned as the "patriarch of independence."
Georgia-born Texas vice president Mirabeau B. (Buonaparte) Lamar, 40, succeeds Sam Houston December 10 to become the republic's third president. Houston's opponents have supported him in the election, his two opposing candidates have both committed suicide, and in his inaugural address he proposes a system of public education supported by land endowments (see education, 1839). Lamar will serve until December 1841.
Russian forces capture the Chechen stronghold of Ahulgo in the north Caucasus, but the Sufi leader Shamil escapes (see 1834). He has led extensive raids against the Russian positions in Dagestan, and St. Petersburg has sent a fresh expedition to subdue him; the Russians will capture many of his fortresses and towns, but Shamil will continue to elude them (see 1845).
British troops invade Afghanistan and advance to Kandahar. The governor-general of India George Eden, earl of Auckland, has sent in the troops out of exaggerated fears that Russian influence on the Afghans threatens Britain's control of India. The British move on to Ghazni and Kabul, depose the Barakzai emir Dost Mohammed, who took power in 1834, and take him to India as a prisoner (see 1839).
The nabob of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa Humayun Jah dies at Murshidabad October 3 at age 28 after a 14-year reign and is succeeded by his 8-year-old son, who will reign until his retirement in 1880 as Mansur Ali Khan Feradun Jah—the 10th (and last) of the nabobs.
Boer leader Piet Retief is executed as a witch February 6 by the Zulu chief Dingane after trying to trick the tribe into ceding land. Zulu tribesmen in Lesotho fight off land-seeking Afrikaners (Boers) by hurling boulders down on the invaders (see 1824; 1868). The Battle of Blood River December 16 in Natal gives Afrikaner forces a victory over Zulu natives; the Boers kill more than 3,000 Zulu and eliminate the main threat to their settlements.
Parliament passes the Infant Custody Bill, largely through efforts by Caroline Norton (see 1837), but their father has sent her sons to school in Scotland, where the new law does not apply (see 1842).
Abolitionist Sarah Moore Grimké issues a pamphlet under the title "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman; Addressed to Mary Parker, President of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society" (see 1836). Now 46, she rejects any suggestion that women should not speak out on moral issues; as morally responsible individuals, she says, they cannot do otherwise, and she urges that women become ministers. Her sister Angelina has married abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld (see 1839).
U.S. abolitionists transport southern slaves to freedom in Canada via an "Underground Railway" that is formally organized under the leadership of Robert Purvis. Not actually a railway (although its members are called "conductors" and its safe houses "stations") nor literally subterranean, this escape strategy defies the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 (see Tubman, 1849), but slaving interests at Philadelphia work on the fears of Irish immigrants and other working people, who worry that freed slaves may take their jobs. A Philadelphia mob burns down Pennsylvania Hall May 17 in an effort to thwart antislavery meetings.
The "Trail of Tears" takes more than 14,000 members of the Cherokee Nation from tribal lands in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee miles westward along the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Arkansas Rivers to Little Rock and thence to lands in Indian territory west of the Red River, where thousands from other tribes have previously been relocated (see Supreme Court decision, 1831). Escorted with all of their horses and oxen by 7,000 troops under the command of General Winfield Scott, the Cherokee journey up to 1,200 miles by wagon and keelboat for anywhere from 93 to 139 days, an estimated 4,000—mostly infants, children, and old people—will die en route of measles, whooping cough, pneumonia, pleurisy, tuberculosis, and pellagra, and the last contingents will not reach Indian territory until March 25 of next year (some have refused to budge) (see Texas, 1839).
Sac chief Black Hawk dies in a village near the Des Moines River October 3 at age 71. He has been in the custody of his former rival, Keokuk (or Keokuck), since 1834.
St. Paul, Minnesota, has its beginnings in a settlement made by French-Canadian voyageur Pierre Parrant, 60, known as "Old Pig's Eye," who moves from Mendota and settles in the upper Mississippi Valley at Fort Snelling, formerly Fort Anthony (see 1819). Parrant and other squatters will be removed from the reservation in 1840, and missionary Lucian Galtier will name the neighboring squatter settlement St. Paul in 1841 (see Minneapolis, 1847).
Explorer-mathematician Joseph N. Nicollet heads an official U.S. expedition to survey the region between the upper Missouri and Mississippi rivers (see 1836). Members of the party include Georgia-born soldier John C. (Charles) Frémont, 25, who has been appointed to the U.S. Army Topographical Corps with help from his patron, South Carolina politician Joel R. Poinsett, now 59.
Explorer-fur trader (and former Missouri governor) William H. Ashley dies near Boonville, Missouri, March 26 at age 59 (approximate); explorer William Clark of Lewis and Clark expedition fame at St. Louis September 1 at age 68.
Kansas City is founded in November on a hill overlooking a bend in the Missouri River by Missouri pioneers who include John McCoy, William Sublette, William Chick, and William Gillis. Their settlement is near Westport Landing, founded earlier as a post for the Indian fur trade and an outfitting station for wagons to Santa Fe and Oregon Territory.
Lancashire calico printer Richard Cobden, 34, at Manchester joins with Rochdale-born Quaker cotton-spinner's son John Bright, 28, and others to found an Anti-Corn Law League to oppose British protectionism (see 1839).
Yorkshire industrial reformer Richard Oastler, now 48, is dismissed in May for opposing the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which permitted the compulsory employment of indigent farm workers in factories at substandard wages (see 1836). His employer Thomas Thornhill begins legal proceedings against Oastler for unpaid debts, and he will have Oastler confined to London's Fleet Prison from December 1840 to February 1844, when Oastler's friends will pay his debts and have him released so that he can continue to campaign for a 10-hour day.
Britain applies the Poor Law of 1834 to Ireland and adds to the hardship of that country's famine. Designed to discourage paupers from seeking relief, the Poor Law makes work inside the workhouse worse than the most unpleasant sort of work to be found on the outside, and it has the effect of stimulating emigration.
A commercial treaty signed August 15 between Britain and the Ottoman Empire provides for the abolition of trade monopolies throughout the empire, including Egypt, but Egypt's viceroy (vizier) Muhammad Ali has opposed the agreement and takes up arms (see 1833; 1839).
British and U.S. traders continue their practice of taking opium from Macao to the deserted island of Lintin (Solitary Nail), offloading it under protection from gunboats to storage ships and selling it from there to middlemen who arrive by small boats from Guangzhou. Jardine, Matheson has sent armed opium vessels up the coast to provinces whose people are not yet addicted to the drug, and Jardines will soon account for more than one third of all the opium smuggled into China.
Chinese officials try to execute an opium dealer in front of the foreign factories at Guangzhou (Canton) December 12 but meet resistance from British and American opium traders, who chase them away, provoking a riot (see Jardine, Matheson, 1832; Russell & Co., 1830; Forbes, 1837). Chinese middlemen have been paying for opium in silver; the government has demanded silver bullion in payment for the tea, porcelain, and fireworks that the East India Company is taking home to Britain; and the Company has promoted the use of opium as an alternative, producing the drug in its own factories and bringing it in from India in distinctive chests weighing about 140 pounds each. An imperial commissioner is appointed to investigate (see politics, 1839).
Houston's Rice dry goods store opens in the Republic of Texas. Massachusetts-born merchant William Marsh Rice, 22, will develop his enterprise into a large export-import and retail business (see education [Rice Institute], 1912).
New York's Lord & Taylor moves into a four-story building at 61-63 Catherine Street, offering "Irish linens, sheeting, diapers, shawls, laces, gloves, silk and cotton hosiery, &c. &c. &c." (see 1826).
The 11-year-old Baltimore & Ohio Railroad makes history January 1 by becoming the first railroad to win a government mail-carrying contract.
The Norfolk & Western Railway has its beginnings in a nine-mile line built in Virginia between Petersburg and City Point.
An Austrian rail line opens January 6 between Vienna and Wagram, via Florisdorf.
The first Russian railway opens to link St. Petersburg with the czar's summer palace at Tsarskoe Selo.
Shipbuilder-naval architect Joshua Humphreys dies at Haverford, Pennsylvania, January 12 at age 86; steamboat and railroad pioneer John Stevens at Hoboken, New Jersey, March 6 at age 87; mathematician-astronomer Nathaniel Bowditch of 1802 Practical Navigator fame at Boston March 16 at age 64.
Two British steamers arrive at New York April 23 after the first transatlantic crossings by ships powered entirely by steam. The 703-ton S.S. Sirius, 19 days out of London, has been used until now only for cross-channel service, while the 1,440-ton S.S. Great Western, 15 days out of Bristol, is larger and faster. English engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, 32, son of Marc Isambard Brunel, has designed both, and the Great Western is the largest vessel built since antiquity, when the Romans had large ships to carry grain from North Africa (see surface condenser, 1830; Cunard, 1840).
The new S.S. Great Western takes its name from the Great Western Railway that I. K. Brunel has been serving as chief engineer, and it is the first wooden steamship to cross the Atlantic. Brunel's father is at work on the Thames tunnel from Wapping to Rotherhithe (see 1825), and the younger Brunel has introduced broad gauge tracks and constructed the Great Western's viaducts, tunnels, and bridges, including the Royal Albert Bridge across the Tamar River into Cornwall.
Alfred Krupp, now 26, visits Sheffield, England, and meets J. A. Henckel, founder of a steel mill in the Ruhr valley town of Solingen (see Krupp, 1826). Fried. Krupp of Essen is turning out tableware on a hand mill devised by Alfred's brother Hermann (see 1851).
Yorkshire-born inventor Samuel C. (Cunliffe) Lister, 23, and his brother John open a worsted mill at Manningham using a wool-combing machine developed by young Samuel that separates long hairs from short ones so that they may be used in various kinds of textiles. He will take a crude and inefficient machine built by another inventor and create one whose success will spur development of sheep farming in Australia (see silk, 1865).
Connecticut clockmaker Chauncey Jerome invents a 1-day brass movement that represents an improvement over wood clocks (year approximate; see 1824). Now 41, Jerome uses mass-production techniques pioneered by Eli Whitney and floods the U.S. market with low-priced brass clocks.
Mathematician-logician Augustus De Morgan introduces the term mathematical induction that he defines and uses to describe with new clarity the process used in mathematical proofs (see 1849).
German botanist Matthias J. (Jakob) Schleiden, 34, at Jena formulates the cell theory of physiology, stating that "the lower plants all consist of one cell, while the higher ones are composed of [many] individual cells" (see 1858).
Stuttgart-born botanist Hugo von Mohl, 41, at the University of Tubingen coins the word protoplasm to denote the substance of a cell body as differentiated from the cell nucleus (see Purkinje, 1840).
French physicist Charles Cagniard de la Tour, 61, shows that fermentation is dependent on yeast cells (see Pasteur, 1857).
Chemist-physicist Pierre-Louis Dulong dies at Paris July 18 at age 53; saltpeter (potassium nitrate) manufacturer Bernard Courtois at Paris September 27 at age 61.
Paris-born physician Jean Louis Marie Poiseuille, 41, conducts experiments from which he derives a law that he will soon formulate about the voluminal laminar stationary flow of incompressible viscous fluid such as blood (see sphygmomanometer, 1896).
Iron in the blood is what enables blood to absorb so much oxygen, concludes Swedish chemist Jöns Jakob Berzelius, now 59, who pioneers an understanding of hemoglobin and the iron-deficiency anemia common in women who lose blood in their menstrual cycles.
Irish-born Jesuit priest John Joseph Hughes is consecrated coadjutor (acting) bishop of New York January 7 under the ailing John DuBois. Now 40, Hughes came to the city as a common laborer from the north of Ireland and has championed the interests of working people, but his traditional views will not appeal to most working-class Irish immigrants.
Bishop Hughes demands state aid for Catholic schools, calling for a return to the system that prevailed before 1826, when the state stopped funding denominational schools. The Public School Society controls public education in the city, allocating state funds on the basis of a "common" understanding of Protestant Christianity (see education, 1841).
Philadelphia's Hebrew Sunday School is founded by philanthropist Rebecca Gratz, now 57, who has modeled it after schools in "other religious communities." The first school of its kind, it uses prayers written by Gratz, who teaches classes and will continue as president of the institution until 1864, when she will retire at age 83. Jewish congregations at New York, Charleston, and Richmond will establish Sunday schools of their own in the next few years.
Philadelphia's Girard College president Alexander Dallas Bache returns from a trip on which he has studied schools abroad and reorganizes the city's public schools into a model system.
The Toronto Examiner begins publication under the aegis of Irish-born journalist Francis Hincks, 30, who will become joint premier of a united province of Canada in 1851; his paper will be merged in 1855 into the Globe that will be launched in 1844.
Nonfiction: Casanova's Memoirs Ecrits par Lui Même, twelfth and final volume. The first appeared in 1826, some 28 years after the roué's death at age 73 (see 1755).
Fiction: Oliver Twist, or the Parish Boy's Progress by Charles Dickens, who has serialized the work in his Bentley's Miscellany. Its sentimental story of Fagin, Bill Sykes, the Artful Dodger, and young Oliver is intended in part as an exposé of Poor Law evils. Illustrations are by caricaturist George Cruikshank, 46; "Ligeia" by Edgar Allan Poe, whose melodramatic short story appears in the September Baltimore American Museum (Poe married his cousin Virginia, now 15, 2 years ago); The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Poe is a ghoulish tale of cannibalism based on an account by the first mate of the Nantucket whaling ship Essex that was smashed by a sperm whale in 1820; Münchhausen by Karl Leberecht Immerman introduces the mendacious baron who personifies the attitudes that Immerman opposes with an idealized image of patriotic peasant morality; Spiridion by George Sand, who begins a 9-year liaison with composer Frédéric Chopin 4 years after her estrangement from poet-playwright Alfred de Musset, who has taken to drink after failures to achieve reconciliation (he will never recover but despair has inspired his most creative work). Chopin at 28 is, like Musset, 6 years younger than Sand, who continues to have her novels published while she scandalizes Europe with her masculine attire and cigar smoking.
Painting: Medea by Eugène Delacroix, who is rejected for membership in the French Institute.
Theater: Thou Shalt Not Lie (Weh dem, der lügt) by Franz Grillparzer 3/6 at Vienna's Burgtheater (it is whistled off the stage and then suppressed by authorities in a strict censorship that will not be relaxed until 1848); French actress Rachel Félix, 17, makes her Paris debut in June at the Comédie-Française in the role of Camille in Corneille's Horace, leaves the audience spellbound, and begins a career as la grande Rachel; Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo 11/8 at the Théâtre de la Renaissance, Paris.
Opera: Benvenuto Cellini 9/10 at the Paris Opéra, with tenor Gilbert Duprez, music by Hector Berlioz (composer-violinist Niccolo Paganini hears the opera 6 days after its opening and is so overcome that he kisses Berlioz's hand); Anglo-Swedish soprano Jenny (née Johanna Maria) Lind, 17, makes her debut at Stockholm singing the role of Agathe in the 1821 von Weber opera Der Freischutz.
Popular songs: "Vive la Compagnie" is published at Leipzig as a French drinking song; "Annie Laurie" by Scottish composer Alicia Ann Spottiswoode, 28, Lady John Scott, lyrics from the 1700 poem by William Douglas; "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton" by Philadelphia composer James E. Spilman, lyrics from the 1792 Robert Burns poem "Afton Water".
Boxing promoters adopt London Prize Ring rules to replace the rules for bareknuckle fisticuffs laid down by Jack Broughton in 1743. The new rules call for a rope-enclosed "ring" 24 feet in diameter; they outlaw butting, kicking, gouging, and hitting below the belt; bouts are to be divided into rounds, with a knockdown ending a round, followed by a 30-second rest and another 8 seconds for the contestants to regain the center of the ring. The rules will be revised somewhat in 1853 (see first world championship, 1860; Marquess of Queensberry rules, 1867).
Goshen, New York, holds its first trotting race to begin a harness-racing tradition.
The Arc de Triomphe is completed at Paris in the Place l'Etoile at the top of a hill on the Champs d'Elysée (see 1810). Prince Louis Philippe ordered construction resumed when he came to power 8 years ago; the world's largest triumphal arch, it is 164 feet high and 148 wide, and has a frieze depicting the successful campaigns of France's armies between 1790 and 1814. The four avenues that converge on the Place l'Etoile will grow to number 12.
Claridge's Hotel, London, has its beginnings as former English butler William Claridge acquires a small hotel-restaurant previously run by the French chef Mivart at the corner of Brook Street and Davy Street. Mivart has established a reputation for his joints and steam puddings (see 1878).
Regent's Park opens to the London public on 410 acres of pastureland that were known as Marylebone Park Fields until the park was laid out in 1812.
Famine kills thousands in the north of Ireland as crops fail (see 1845).
Dutch chemist Gerard Johann Mulder, 36, coins the word protein, adapting a Greek word meaning "of the first importance."
The first U.S. beet-sugar refinery opens at Northampton, Massachusetts, using beets grown from seed imported from France 2 years ago.
London's Reform Club installs gas ovens (see 1836; Sharp, 1826). Coal or wood is the common cooking fuel in most of the world, but Arab nomads use camel chips, American Indians buffalo (bison) chips, and Eskimos blubber oil (see Soyer, 1839).
Fresh menus are printed daily at New York's 2-year-old Astor House, writes Captain Frederick Marryat (see 1837; Delmonico's, 1836). Delmonico's bill of fare does not change from day to day, runs to 12 pages, and offers 371 dishes.
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