1811 Plantation slaves just outside New Orleans are aware of the successful slave revolt that freed the slaves of Haiti (1791-1804). On January 8, between 200 and 500 slaves near New Orleans, from more than one plantation, join together with stolen arms against their masters and oppressors. They kill for their freedom. There is a musket face-off in which the slaves lose. Most are executed and their heads displayed on pikes as a lesson for other slaves.
1811 The French are driven from Portugal.
1811 Independence is declared in Caracas (Venezuela), La Paz (Bolivia) and New Grenada (Colombia). Fighting erupts between those favoring independence and Spanish authority in Latin America.
1811 In Egypt, Viceroy Muhammad Ali Pasha exterminates Mamluk warlords. He invites them to a banquet and has them slaughtered.
1811 A 60-year-old Spanish priest, Hildago, who was influenced by the Enlightment, is executed after leading an uprising in behalf of the well being of Indians and mestizos.
1812 For the Ottoman empire, Muhammad Ali Pasha drives the Wahhabi and Saudis out of Medina and Mecca.
1812 In England, a few workers called Luddites in various cities in the spinning and cloth finishing industries have been destroying new machinery. They fear technological unemployment. Some are executed.
1812 Priests in Caracas claim that an earthquake is God's anger against the sins of the new government. Spain's military is able to regain control of the city.
1812 At sea, Britain has a counter-blockade against France. Britain's new prime minister, Lord Liverpool, instructs the British navy to treat US trading ships with new tact and to avoid clashes with Americans. This does not deter those in the US who want war, and Congress declares war against Britain on June 18, 1812.
1812 Napoleon's march into Russia exposes his recklessness and shallow strategic thinking. His march into Russia is not going well. His three top-ranking subordinates urged a halt to the campaign. Napoleon agrees, but the following day he changes his mind. He doesn't want to admit folly or show weakness. On September 7 at the Battle of Borodino he losses 30,000 to 35,000 more men, dead, wounded or captured. A week later he is in Moscow. In mid-October he begins a terrible march back from Russa, ending his campaign with none of the army of 600,000 with which he began.
1813 Napoleon's move against Russia has delayed Russia's ability to protect their fellow Orthodox Christians, the Serbs, who have been rebelling against Ottoman rule. The Ottoman Empire moves against rebel Serb areas, and Albanian troops plunder Serb villages.
1813 Napoleon has failed to win enough friends. In Spain, British and Spanish forces defeat his military. Napoleon withdraws from Germany after the Russians, Prussians, Austrians and Swedes defeat him there. His Confederation of the Rhine falls into history's trash bin.
1813 Laura Secord walks 20 difficult miles to warn of a surprise attack by an invading US force. She is to be a Canadian heroine.
1814 A negotiated treaty ends the War of 1812-14 and restores "peace, friendship, and good understanding" between the United States and "His Britannic Majesty."
1814 Russian and Prussian forces enter Paris. Napoleon is exiled to the island of Elba. The terms of peace between the victors and France are settled in another Treaty of Paris. The victors over Napoleon gather at Vienna – the Congress of Vienna – to create a stable Europe to their liking.
1814-15 At the Congress of Vienna, September 1814 to June 1815, the British, Spain, Portugal, a politically new France, and the Netherlands are meeting to discuss the world without Napoleon, and they agree to eventually abolish the slave trade.
1815 In the Indonesian Archepelgo, Mount Tamobra has been inactive for thousands of years, but on April 10 it begins a week of eruptions. Its debris in the stratosphere reduces sunlight. In the Northern Hemisphere in September there are days with no sunlight. Crops fail and livestock die in much of the Northern Hemisphere, creating the worst of 19th century famines.
1815 Napoleon returns to France in February. He inspires men to reach again for glory, and his final military defeat comes June 18th at the Battle of Waterloo.
1816 In France, the income of working people in terms of what it buys (real wages) begins a four-decade decline.
1816 Because of the Tambora eruption, 1816 will be known with the year without a summer." Amid the gloom in Britain, Mary Shelley writes a scary story: "Frankenstein."
1816 The British return to the Dutch their empire in Indonesia.
1816 Spain's military drives Simón Bolivar from New Grenada. Bolivar flees to Jamaica and then to Haiti.
1817 Bolivar and a small force return to Venezuela and establish a base inland in the rain forest along the Orinoco River.
1817 In Britain, real wages have been declining at least since the late 1790s, as Britain has been burdened by war against France. From this year on and into the next century real wages in Britain will be rising.
1817 The British sign a Maratha kingdom, Nagpur, into its system of alliances. Those opposed sack and burn the British residence at Poona (Pune). 27,000 attack a British force of 2,800 a few miles north of Poona – the beginning of the Third Anglo-Maratha War.
1818 The Third Anglo-Maratha War ends with the break-up of the Maratha Empire and the British in control of most of India.
1818 For the Ottoman Empire, Egyptians are taking control of the Arabian Peninsula. They destroy the mud-brick town of Diriyah (thirteen miles from the center of what today is Riyadh) which had been the home base of the Saud family and Wahhabis.
1819 In England, 60,000 gather in a field and listen to a call for universal suffrage. A magistrate sends a force to arrest the main speaker, Henry Hunt. People riot. Eleven are killed and others injured. A movement for reform gathers strength.
1820 In England a group of revolutionaries chose a strategy of killing government cabinet ministers, believing it will trigger a massive uprising. It's to be known as the Cato Street Conspiracy. One of their number was a police agent. A few conservatives used the conspiracy as propaganda against parliamentary reform. The conspirators were tried in court and five of them were hanged and then decapitated – the last of England's decapitations.
1820 A liberal uprising begins in Spain. It starts with soldiers and is joined by others who want a constitutional monarchy or a republic. A few who are poor and illiterate attack and set fire to churches.
1820 The combined area of Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi and Alabama has six times the number of people of European heritage that it had in 1800.
1820 The US has becomes the world's biggest cotton producer of raw cotton.
1820 Per capita world Gross Domestic Product (according to today's economic historian Angus Maddison) is $667, measured in 1990 dollars. This (according to Maddison) is up from $435 in the year 1000. Western Europe, which was lower than the world in general in the year 1000, at $400, is at $1,232.
Copyright © 1998-2018 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.