11 Surprising Facts About The 19th Century

In the United States, the end of slavery was a big issue due to the south's economy being incredibly dependent on slave labor. This makes it ironic that three decades before the Civil War, Britain quickly and quietly abolished slavery.

The idea that monarchical Britain was more "free" than the democratic United States was one of the greatest ironies of the three decades between 1832 and 1865. Not only that, but it was an altogether casual affair in Britain, opposed to the great war that abolition caused in the United States!

The 19th century is truly the century that our modern political definitions stem from. The forces of the Enlightenment rhetoric had created revolutions that had spread across Europe and America, but it didn't stop there.

In the mid-19th century, a new political debate was starting which challenged the socio-economic power structure of the time. This was when ideas like socialism came on the scene, in an attempt to fix the ills of the dark side of capitalism, which created slums, massive income inequality, and financial instability.

Mary Shelley's novel "Frankenstein" was an instant classic that simultaneously birthed entire new genre of fiction: science fiction. Or as we call it today, sci-fi.

As science made great strides into the realms of what once could only be called magic, the minds of writers looking towards the future, of what wonders or horrors technology might bring to mankind. It was Frankenstein that first asked this question.

Crimea made headlines in 2014 when it was annexed by Russia. Well, it turns out that's not a new thing by any means.

In the mid-19th century, the decline of the Ottoman Empire became known as the "Eastern Question," and Russia was the country to really gain from it. Tensions erupted over religion and the breaking of decades old treaties. Campaigns were launched from the Crimea into the Black Sea to the Bosphorus. Ultimately, the British and the French had to get involved, fearing what might happen in a world where Russian had control over the Constantinople.

After 1783, the British officially recognized the independence of the United States of America...but they weren't totally done yet.

In 1812, the British were still not terribly happy with their former colonists and war broke out again with the British winning some important victories. They even took Washington D.C. and burned down the original White House. Ultimately, Britain was super-tired from fighting Napoleon and the Americans even gained a little traction by the time the British signed the Treaty of Ghent ending the conflict.

It's pretty difficult to imagine Europe without Germany, but before 1870, there really was no such thing.

Charlemagne was the first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, which encompassed much of modern day central Europe, but as Voltaire famously put it, it wasn't holy, wasn't Roman and wasn't an empire. It evolved over time, until the revolutionary army of Napoleon destroyed it. After 1815, the Congress of Vienna mandated the Confederation of the Rhine, which helped to bolster Prussian influence in the region. This trend would continue, until after a series of quick and victorious wars, the Empire of Germany was announced under Prussian hegemony in 1871.

From the 1500s on, Spain was a serious force to be reckoned with. It extracted a massive amount of wealth from the Americas and became tremendously rich because of it.

Unfortunately, the political climate of the 19th century fomented revolution after revolution. Once upon a time, Spain dominated almost all of South America and almost a third of North America. By the end of the century, they had little more than Cuba and some coastal African territories. Even the Philippines had been taken from them in the Spanish-American War.

The 19th Century was an amazing time for technology. It would provide the foundation for the great leaps of the 20th century; part of this is air travel.

In the mid-1800s, the first airships were being engineered: hot-air balloons and zeppelins. They utilized lighter-than-air gases to hold an object up in the atmosphere. It was rudimentary, but it worked. It was a crucial step on the path to heavier-than-air flight that was first done successfully by the Wright brothers in 1903.

The 1860s was a very interesting time for the militaries of the western world. The old tactics of the 18th centuries began to look long in the tooth as technology revolutionized the landscape of the battlefield.

During the American Civil War, President Lincoln had special envoys of the Prussian King there to study the use of railroads in battle, as there hadn't been a large-scale war in Europe since 1815, making this quite a remarkable moment. Just a year after the end of the US Civil War, Prussia declared war on Austria, utilizing the lessons learned from Lincoln and quickly routed the Austrian forces, ending the campaign in seven weeks. A few years later, they decimated France in another quick war and established the Empire of Germany.

It was in the 19th century that the concept of the modern or informed public was born. The idea that every citizen should be able to read in a society was a novelty!

The power of the press was discovered in the mid to late 19th century. This was also the time of yellow journalism. But that couldn't have happened without the democratization of literacy and by extension a well-read citizenry. This opens up a brand new avenue for the press to shape the opinion of the public, which is rapidly becoming the power base in most western democracies. This is in turn is also part of the birth modern consumer culture.

The entirety of history forward from 1799 was utterly and completely shaped by the actions of Napoleon Bonaparte when he completed his coup.

The forces set loose in the French Revolution could have been stamped out under Napoleon's Regime, but the rest of Europe wanted to restore the Bourbon monarchy. So when faced with war on all sides, Napoleon divided and conquered. Where his army stopped has been and reinforced the symbolism of the ideas of Western vs. Eastern Europe. Ultimately, the Napoleonic Wars would destroy the Holy Roman Empire, leading to a German Empire later on.

The forces of the French Revolution which Napoleon spread about the continent by conquest created the situation from which the rest of history unfolded. Who knows if and when the old monarchical order would have fallen without its influence?