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Opening of China
By the 1850s, the European powers and the United States were increasingly dissatisfied with both the terms of their treaties with China and the non-compliance by the Qing government. The British forced the issue by attacking the Chinese port cities of Guangzhou and Tianjin in the Second Opium War. -
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Colonial Expansion
The policy or practice of a wealthy or powerful nation's maintaining or extending its control over other countries, especially in establishing settlements or exploiting resources. -
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Second Opium War
The commercial interests created by the British smuggling of opium into India and China and the efforts of the Chinese government to impose its laws on that trade were the cause of the war. China's defeat in both wars forced the government to tolerate the opium trade. -
Livingstone's expedition of Victoria Falls
In March 1858 Livingstone embarked upon a government-backed expedition to introduce commerce, civilization, and Christianity to the lands of Zambezi River and Lake Malawi. -
Discovery of the source of the Nile
In February 1858, John Hanning on Captain Richard Burton's East African Expedition discovered Lake Tanganyika. In August he encountered what he later described as "a vast expanse" of "the pale blue waters" of the northern lake. He named it Lake Victoria and believed, correctly, that it was the source of the Nile. -
Modernisation of Japan. Canadian Confederation
However, the figure given for 1861's population above comes from the Census of British North America and it includes Upper Canada, Lower Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland -
Opening of the Suez Canal
In 1854, Ferdinand de Lesseps, a former French consul in Cairo, struck a deal with the Ottoman governor of Egypt to build a 100-mile canal across the Isthmus of Suez. Construction began in 1859, and at first the excavation was done by hand with picks and shovels. Later European workers arrived with dredges and steam shovels. The Canal was not completed until 1869. On November 17, 1869, the Suez Canal was opened to navigation. -
Industrial dynamo
Industrial dynamics is the study of the means and processes through which industries change over time, through their own processes of evolution – as first analyzed by Joseph Schumpeter. It is the complementary study to that of an industry's comparative statics, which still dominates economic analysis. -
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Second Industrial Revolution
The Second Industrial Revolution refers to the interrelated changes, during this period the changes had a strong acceleration. The industrialization process changed its nature and economic growth varied. -
Victoria, Empress of India
Benjamin Disraeli, Conservative Prime Minister, had Queen Victoria proclaimed as Empress of India. India was already under crown control after 1858, but this title was a gesture to link the monarchy with the empire further and bind India more closely to Britain. -
Inventation of telephone
During the 1870's, two inventors both independently designed devices that could transmit sound along electrical cables. Those inventors were Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray. Both devices were registered at the patent office at the same time. There followed a legal battle over the invention of the telephone, which Bell won.
The telegraph and telephone are very similar in concept, and it was through Bell's attempts to improve the telegraph that he found success with the telephone. -
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Height of Imperialsm
As European affairs grew tense, states sought to acquire colonies abroad in order to gain an advantage over their rivals. In the late 1800s a “new imperialism” flourished, with most of the major European countries attempting to take control of territories in Asia and Africa. -
Berlin Conference
Regulated the partitioning of Africa among fourteen European countries and the United States. Scramble for Africa: The period between 1885 and 1910, during which European countries were competing for control of Africa's territories. -
French Indochina
French Indochina was a colony of the French colonial empire located in Indochina. It included Cambodia, Laos, the Chinese territory of Guangzhouwan, and the Vietnamese regions of Tonkin in the north, Annam in the center, and Cochinchina in the south. Its capitals were Hanoi and Saigon. -
Invention of cinematograph
Louis and Auguste Lumière gave birth to the big screen thanks to their revolutionary camera and projector, the Cinématographe. Auguste and Louis Lumière invented a camera that could record, develop, and project film, but they regarded their creation as little more than a curious novelty. -
Russo-Japanese War over Manchuria
The Russo-Japanese War was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1905 over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria -
Opening of the Panama Canal
The American-built waterway across the Isthmus of Panama, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.