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The British Parliament authorized the creation of railways.
The earliest railways were built and paid for by the owners of the mines they served. Longer lines became possible thanks to railway technology development. They often required public subscription and needed an Act of Parliament to build. The first line to obtain such an act, in 1758, was the Middleton Railway in Leeds. The first for public use and on cast iron rails was incorporated in 1799. The first passenger-carrying public railway was authorized in 1807. -
Invention of the Steam Engine
James Watt improved the Newcomen engine by adding a separate condenser to avoid heating and cooling the cylinder with each stroke. It resulted in the creation of semi-automated factories, and it increased goods production in places where water power was not available. -
James Hargreaves’ Spinning Jenny.
It’s an early-spindle machine for spinning wool or cotton. The development of the spinning wheel into the spinning jenny was a significant factor in the industrialisation of the textile industry -
Richard Arkwright’s Water Frame
Richard Arkwright developed a spinning machine, called a water frame, which could produce strong yarn. It replaced the need for manual labour and enabled the production of inexpensive spun cotton by using the moving force of a creek or river that spun a shaft. The machine was important at the time because cotton was used for clothing and other everyday items. -
Tea Party
Incident in which 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company were thrown from ships into Boston Harbor by American patriots disguised as Mohawk Indians. The Americans were protesting both a tax on tea (taxation without representation) and the perceived monopoly of the East India Company. -
Intolerable Acts
The Coercive Acts of 1774, known as the Intolerable Acts in the American colonies, were a series of four laws passed by the British Parliament to punish the colony of Massachusetts Bay for the Boston Tea Party.
They closed the port of Boston, dissolved the colonial assembly and placed Massachusetts under military rule and the command of Major-General Thomas Gage. -
Lexington and Concord Battles
The Battles of Lexington and Concord on 19 April 1775, the famous ‘shot heard ‘round the world’, marked the start of the American War of Independence (1775-83). Politically disastrous for the British, it persuaded many Americans to take up arms and support the cause of independence. -
Declaration of Independence of American colonies
The Continental Congress cut political ties with Britain and declared the United Colonies “free and independent”. The Declaration of Independence was written on July 4, 1776, which announced the separation of 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain. -
Battle of Saratoga
The Battle of Saratoga was a turning point in the Revolutionary War. The American defeat of the superior British army lifted patriot morale, furthered the hope for independence, and helped to secure the foreign support needed to win the war. -
Samuel Crompton’s Mule.
It revolutionised textile production by vastly increasing the amount of cotton that could be spun at any one time. But this also meant textile manufacturers no longer needed to pay individual spinners to create spindles (wooden rods) wound with cotton thread, as just one operator could now use the machine to spin hundreds of spindles at once. -
Battle of Yorktown
Supported by the French army and navy, Washington's forces defeated Lord Charles Cornwallis' veteran army dug in at Yorktown, Virginia. Victory at Yorktown led directly to the peace negotiations that ended the war in 1783 and gave America its independence. -
Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris of 1763 ended the French and Indian War/Seven Years’ War between Great Britain and France, as well as their respective allies. In the terms of the treaty, France gave up all its territories in mainland North America, effectively ending any foreign military threat to the British colonies there. -
Henry Cort devised the puddling process.
This process converted pig iron into wrought iron by subjecting it to heat and stirring it in a furnace, without using charcoal. It was the first method that allowed quality wrought iron to be produced on a large scale. Cort’s invention had a tremendous impact on the iron industry and helped significantly increase England’s production. -
Edmund Cartwright’s power loom.
A loom is a device that is used to weave together threads in order to produce a fabric. Traditional handlooms were slow and required several labourers to operate. Cartwright’s invention of the power loom was significant because it used mechanisation to automate much of the weaving process. -
Great Fear / Abolition of Feudalism
The Great Fear was a wave of panic that swept the French countryside in late July and early August 1789. Fearful of plots by aristocrats to undermine the budding French Revolution, peasants and townspeople mobilized, attacking manorial houses. The unrest contributed to the passage of the August Decrees, which abolished feudalism in France.
On August 4, the National Assembly voted to abolish feudalism in France and declared equality of taxation to all classes. -
Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Considered as one of the basic charters of human liberties. With 17 articles, it served as the preamble to the Constitution of 1791. The basic principle of the Declaration was that all “men are born and remain free and equal in rights”. The sources of the Declaration included the major thinkers of the French Enlightenment. It can be seen as an attack on the pre-Revolutionary monarchical regime. Equality before the law was to replace the system of privileges that characterised the old regime. -
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French Constitutional Monarchy
The Constitutional Monarchy was a period during the French Revolution from 1791 to 1792 during which Louis XVI enjoyed only a fraction of the power he had as an absolute monarch; developments of this change began in 1789. -
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Paris Commune
Rebellion of Paris against the French government. It occurred in the wake of France’s defeat in the Franco-German War and the collapse of Napoleon III’s Second Empire.The republican Parisians feared that the National Assembly (with a royalist majority) meeting in Versailles would restore the monarchy. On March 18 resistance broke out in Paris. On March 26, municipal elections resulted in victory for the revolutionaries, who formed the Commune government. -
Tennis Court Oath.
It took place in a royal tennis court at Versailles some six weeks into the Estates General. There, more than 500 members of the Third Estate and a scattering of liberal nobles and clergymen swore a solemn pledge to bind together and keep meeting as a National Assembly until France had its own constitution capable of achieving “the true principles of monarchy” and “the regeneration of public order”. -
Storming of the Bastille
Parisian revolution in response to food shortages, soaring bread prices, unemployment and fear of military repression.
On July 14 an angry mob stormed the Bastille in search of grandpowder and weapons.
The head of the prison’s governor and the mayor were put on pikes and parade through the streets.
Paris was lost by the king and it inadvertently saved the National Assembly.
It symbolised the end of the ancien régime -
Civil Constitution of the Clergy
Convents and monasteries were abolished. All clergymen would be paid by the state and elected by all citizens (protestants, jews and agnostics could take part in the elections), they were forbidden to accept the authority of the Pope and forced to take a loyalty oath to the new government. -
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Jacobins vs. Girondins in the Legislative Assembly
The Jacobins, named after their political club, came to dominate the Legislative Assembly.
The Girondins (a group of Jacobins) became the left or advanced party of the Revolution in the Legislative Assembly and led the country into war. -
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Haitian Revolution
A series of conflicts between Haitian slaves, colonists, British armies and French colonizers. The Haitians ultimately won independence from France, being the first country to be founded by former slaves.
It ended Napoleon’s attempts to create a French empire in the West and arguably caused the Louisiana Purchase, enabling the expansion of slavery into that territory. However, it also frightened both France and Britain into abolishing slavery and led to the end of the transatlantic slave trade. -
September Massacre
Mass killing of prisoners in Paris. It was an expression of the collective mentality in Paris days after the overthrow of the monarchy. It was believed that political prisoners were planning to rise up in their jails to join a counterrevolutionary plot. During 5 days, these massacres were spread to the other prisons and the civil authorities were powerless to stop them. About 1,200 prisoners were killed. -
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The Republic of France
After a long period of debate about how the new constitution will work, the French Revolution takes a radical turn when revolutionaries arrest the King. The following month, on 22 September 1792, the National Convention is established. This proclaimed the abolition of the monarchy and established the French Republic. -
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War of the First Coalition
This war had its origins in the French Revolution, in which radical republican revolutionaries toppled the monarchy and created the First French Republic. This was a continent-spanning conflict in which a coalition of European powers, including Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, Spain, and several others, sought to contain and defeat Revolutionary France. -
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Reign of Terror.
It was a climactic period of state-sanctioned violence during the French Revolution, which saw the public executions and mass killings of thousands of counter-revolutionary 'suspects' between September 1793 and July 1794. The Terror was organized by the twelve-man Committee of Public Safety, which exercised almost dictatorial control over France. The Terror was the culmination of years of fear and paranoia, feelings which had long existed as undercurrents to the Revolution. -
Execution of Louis XVI.
It was one of the most impactful events of the French Revolution. In December 1792, the former king, now referred to as Citizen Louis Capet, was tried and found guilty of numerous crimes that amounted to high treason, and he was sentenced to death by guillotine. It marked the death of the Ancien Régime and ended a millennium of uninterrupted French monarchy. -
Committee of Public Safety.
An emergency body was set up in France in 1793. It was the first effective executive government of the Revolutionary period and governed France during the most critical year of the Revolution. Its members were chiefly drawn from the Jacobins. It successfully defeated France's external enemies but was largely responsible for the Reign of Terror, and its ruthless methods, during economic distress, led to increasing opposition. It was restricted to foreign affairs until its influence ended in 1795. -
Eli Whitney’s cotton gin.
The cotton gin was a machine that could quickly separate cotton fibers from seeds in order to create cotton items such as clothing and linens. Before the invention of the cotton gin, cotton production and processing was a very slow process, requiring lots of hard manual work. However, the cotton gin led to several main innovations. -
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Thermidorian Reaction
Ended the reign of terror.
Constituted a significant swing to the right (conservatism). Respectable bourgeois, middle-class lawyers and professionals who had led liberal Revolution of 1789 reasserted their authority. Reduced powers of the Committee of Public Safety and closed the Jacobin club. Girondins were readmitted. -
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Ruling bourgeoisie vs. aristrocacy and sans-culottes
The middle class controlled the government. This became the Directory’s major weakness as its support came from a narrow band of French society.
All economic controls were removed which ended the influence of the sans-culottes.
Middle class sought peace in order to gain more wealth and to establish a society where money and poverty determined prestige and power.
In October of 1795 the aristocracy attempted a royalist uprising. -
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War of the 2nd Coalition
The War of the Second Coalition, part of the broader French Revolutionary Wars, was the second attempt by an alliance of major European powers to defeat Revolutionary France. The Second Coalition, which included Russia, Austria, Great Britain, Naples, Portugal, and the Ottoman Empire, was defeated by the French Republic, and hostilities ended with the Treaty of Amiens in 1802. -
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Napoleon's Empire
The Napoleonic era, from 1799 to 1815, was marked by Napoleon Bonaparte's rise to power in France. He became Emperor in 1804 and sought to expand French influence across Europe. -
Coup d’etat Brumaire.
It refers to the Coup which overthrew the system of government under the Directory in France and substituted the Consulate, making way for the despotism of Bonaparte. Napoleon took part in its planning. In Paris on 18 Brumaire, the legislative Council of Ancients voted to have both the Ancients and the lower house meet ostensibly to render the councils safe from a “Jacobin plot” in Paris but in reality to keep the councils away from the city and under the intimidation of Bonaparte’s troops. -
Concordat of 1801
Agreement reached on July 15, 1801, between Napoleon Bonaparte and papal and clerical representatives in both Rome and Paris, defining the status of the Roman Catholic Church in France and ending the breach caused by the church reforms and confiscations enacted during the French Revolution. The Concordat was formally promulgated on Easter day, 1802. -
Code Napoleon.
French civil code enacted by Napoleon in 1804. It clarified and made uniform the private law of France and followed Roman law in being divided into three books: the law of persons, things, and modes of acquiring ownership of things. -
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Confederation of the Rhine
Excluding Austria and Prussia, it was a union under Napoleon I's influence. It allowed France to control and unify Germany until Napoleon's defeat. It dissolved in 1813 after Napoleon's downfall, yet its consolidation efforts paved the way for German unification. -
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Continental System
It was a major blockade of British trade imposed by Napoleon. It was designed to cripple the British economy, thereby forcing Britain out of the Napoleonic Wars. However, the blockade proved difficult to enforce and ended up negatively affecting France, contributing to Napoleon's eventual downfall.
The Continental System was meant to deny Britain access to trade with continental Europe. However, the British compensated for it by opening new markets in other parts of the world. -
Treaty of Tilsit.
Two peace treaties signed in July 1807 by Emperor Napoleon I of France and the monarchs of Russia and Prussia in the aftermath of the Battle of Friedland. The treaties ended the War of the Fourth Coalition, solidified French control of Central Europe at Prussia's expense, and turned Russia into a Napoleonic ally. -
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Penninsular War
Also known as the War of Spanish Independence, it was a major conflict of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) that was waged in the Iberian Peninsula by Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom against the invading First French Empire of Napoleon I (r. 1804-1814; 1815). It remains the bloodiest episode in the modern history of Spain. -
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Russian Campaign
It was a catastrophe for the Grande Armée, which confronted both huge logistical problems as well as the resistance and patriotism of Russian troops. In January 1814, carried by the success of the German campaign, coalition troops penetrated into France. The campaign would prove to be fierce but short. On March 31, Alexander I entered Paris, which was a prelude to Napoleon's abdication on April 6. -
Waterloo
It was the last major engagement of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), fought by a French army under Emperor Napoleon I (r. 1804-1814; 1815) against two armies of the Seventh Coalition. Waterloo resulted in the end of both Napoleon's career and the First French Empire and is often considered one of history's most important battles. -
George Stephenson’s Rocket.
It was built to run on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the world's first inter-city passenger railway line. In 1829, Rocket won the Rainhill Trials, which was a competition to decide on the best mode of transport for the railway. Rocket was the only locomotive to successfully complete the trials, averaging 12 mph and achieving a top speed of 30 mph.
It was also the first public railway line. -
Uprisings in the Kingdom of the 2 Sicilies
The 1848 Revolutions in Europe began with this uprising. The revolution temporarily overthrew the rule of the repressive Bourbon dynasty (a parliament was elected and a constitutional monarchy proclaimed), but in May 1848 the king managed to suppress the insurrection and restore his absolute rule. -
February Revolution- France
A period of civil unrest in France that led to the collapse of the July Monarchy and the foundation of the Second French Republic. -
National Assembly- Germany
The National Assembly that met in Frankfurt’s St. Paul’s Church failed in its attempt to establish a German nation-state.