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Period: Oct 12, 1492 to
Modern History
The Modern Age is the third of the historical periods into which world history is conventionally divided, from the 15th to the 18th century. Chronologically, it includes a period that may begin with the discovery of America (1492), and end with the French Revolution (1789). -
John Kay´s flying shuttle
In 1733, John Kay received a patent for his most revolutionary device: a "wheeled shuttle" for the hand loom. It greatly accelerated weaving, by allowing the shuttle carrying the weft to be passed through the warp threads faster and over a greater width of cloth. It was designed for the broad loom, for which it saved labour over the traditional process, needing only one operator per loom (before Kay's improvements a second worker was needed to catch the shuttle). -
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Enclosure Acts
The Inclosure Acts, which use an old or formal spelling of the word now usually spelt "enclosure", cover enclosure of open fields and common land in England and Wales, creating legal property rights to land previously held in common. Between 1604 and 1914, over 5,200 individual enclosure acts were passed, affecting 6.8 million acres. -
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First Industrial Revolution (c. 1750- 1880)
The first Industrial Revolution lasted from the mid-18th century to about 1830 and was mostly confined to Britain. The second Industrial Revolution lasted from the mid-19th century until the early 20th century and took place in Britain, continental Europe, North America, and Japan. -
James Watt´s steam engine
The Watt steam engine, alternatively known as the Boulton and Watt steam engine, was an early steam engine and was one of the driving forces of the Industrial Revolution. James Watt developed the design sporadically from 1763 to 1775 with support from Matthew Boulton. Watt's design saved so much more fuel compared with earlier designs that they were licensed based on the amount of fuel they would save. -
Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations
The central thesis of Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" is that our individual need to fulfill self-interest results in societal benefit, in what is known as his "invisible hand".
It results in a web of mutual interdepencies that promotes stability and prosperity through the market mechanism.
He rejects government interference in market activities. States governments should serve 3 functions: protect national borders; enforce civil law; and engage in public works . -
Invention of the power loom
A power loom is a mechanized loom, and was one of the key developments in the industrialization of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution. The first power loom was designed in 1787 by Edmund Cartwright and first built in 1787. It was refined over the next 47 years until a design by Kenworthy and Bullough made the operation completely automatic. -
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
Recognized the rights, individual freedoms and equality of all citizens in law and taxation. -
Estates-General meeting
The Estates General of 1789 was a general assembly representing the French estates of the realm: the clergy, the nobility, and the bourgeoisie and peasants (Third Estate). It was the last of the Estates General of the Kingdom of France. Summoned by King Louis XVI, the Estates General of 1789 ended when the Third Estate became a National Assembly and, against the wishes of the King, invited the other two estates to join. This signaled the outbreak of the French Revolution. -
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French Revolution
The French Revolution began in May 1789 when the Ancien Régime was abolished in favour of a constitutional monarchy. Its replacement in September 1792 by the First French Republic led to the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793, and an extended period of political turmoil. This culminated in the appointment of Napoleon as First Consul in November 1799, which is generally taken as its end point. Many of its principles are now considered fundamental aspects of modern Liberal democracy. -
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Constitutional Monarchy
Is the first phase of the French Revolution, led by the moderate bourgeoisie. Citizens obtained more rights, the nobles had to pay more taxes and Church lands were confiscated. -
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Contemporary History
The Contemporary Age is the name given to the historical period between the French Revolution and the present day. It covers, if we consider its beginning in the French Revolution, a total of 231 years, between 1789 and the present. During this period, humanity experienced a demographic transition, which was completed for the most advanced societies (the so-called first world) and is still ongoing for most of them (the underdeveloped countries and the newly industrialized countries). -
Tennis Court Oath
On 20 June 1789, the members of the French Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath, vowing "not to separate and to reassemble wherever require, until the Constitution of the kingdom is established". It was a pivotal event in the French Revolution. -
Storming of the Bastille
The Storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris, France, on the afternoon of 14 July 1789
The medieval armory, fortress, and political prison known as the Bastille represented royal authority in the centre of Paris. The prison contained only seven inmates at the time of its storming but was seen by the revolutionaries as a symbol of the monarchy's abuse of power; its fall was the flashpoint of the French Revolution. -
Women’s March on Versailles
It was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution. The march began among women in the marketplaces of Paris who, on the morning of 5 October 1789, were near rioting over the high price and scarcity of bread. Their demonstrations quickly became intertwined with the activities of revolutionaries, who were seeking liberal political reforms and a constitutional monarchy for France. They ransacked the city for weapons and marched to the Palace of Versailles. -
First French constitution
The short-lived French Constitution of 1791 was the first written constitution in France, created after the collapse of the absolute monarchy of the Ancien Régime. One of the basic precepts of the revolution was adopting constitutionality and establishing popular sovereignty. -
War of the First Coalition
Is a set of wars that several European powers fought between 1792 and 1797 against initially the constitutional Kingdom of France and then the French Republic that succeeded it. They were only loosely allied and fought without much apparent coordination or agreement; each power had its eye on a different part of France it wanted to appropriate after a French defeat, which never occurred. -
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Social Republlic
The betrayal by the king and the military invasion led to the revolt by the common people (sans-culottes). On 10 August 17092, they stormed Tuileries Palace and imprisioned the royal family. A republic was declared and the second phase of the Revolution began. Therre have two conventions: The Girondin Convention, the more moderate bourgeoisie, controlled the Republic ( 1792-1793). The Jacobin Convention, the most radical sector of the bourgeoisie (1793-1794). -
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Girondin Convention
The more moderate bourgeoisie, controlled the Republic. A new assembly, the Nation Convention, was elected by universal male suffrage. After the death of the monarch, Louis XVI, and Queen Marie Antoinette, monarchies in Europe formed an absolutist coalition against France. And royalist, organized plots. -
Storm of Tuileries Palace
Was a defining event of the French Revolution, when armed revolutionaries in Paris, increasingly in conflict with the French monarchy, stormed the Tuileries Palace. The conflict led France to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic. -
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Reign of Terror
To stop conspirations, the Reign of Terror was imposed. Freedoms were suspended and people opposed to the government were either imprisioned or revolutionary courts ordered their execution by guillotine. -
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Jacobin Convention
The most radical sector of the bourgeoisie, endorsed the demands of the popular sectors and seized power. A new constitution that recognised popular sovereignth and the right to social equality was enacted. To atisfy the demands of the sans-culottes, a series of social laws were introduced. Many people opposed the dictatorial government, and a coup in July 1794 ended the Jacobin government. -
Execution of Louis XVI
One day after being convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers and sentenced to death by the French National Convention, King Louis XVI is executed by guillotine in the Place de la Revolution in Paris. There, Louis was forced to accept the constitution of 1791, which reduced him to a mere figurehead. -
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Conservative Republic
The moderate bourgeoisie took back control of the Revolution and it entered its third and final phase. Jacobin laws were cancelled and exiles from the Reign of Terror were encouraged to return. Stablished a new constitution, known as the Directory. General Napoleon Bonaparte organised a coup in 1799 that ended the Directory. -
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The Consulate
In 1799, Napoleon was named consul, and the Consulate´s rule began. There is a period of autocratic and the autorithian rule; the government of France during this period.There is a period between 1799 to 1804 -
Coup of 18th Brumaire
The Coup of 18 Brumaire brought General Napoleon Bonaparte to power as First Consul of France and in the view of most historians ended the French Revolution. This bloodless coup d'état overthrew the Directory, replacing it with the French Consulate. This occurred on 9 November 1799, which was 18 Brumaire, Year VIII under the French Republican calendar. -
Constitution of 1800
New political system did not include the separation of powers or a declaration of rights. Liberties were very limited and censorship was imposed to control public opinion. -
Napoleon crowned emperor
In Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Napoleon I, the first Frenchman to hold the title of emperor in a thousand years. Pope Pius VII handed Napoleon the crown that the 35-year-old conqueror of Europe placed on his own head. -
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The Napoleonic Empire
Napoleon began his conquest of Europe in 1803 and crowned emperor by the Pope in 1804. His large army and the use of new military tactics enabled him to defeat most European monarchies. This period occur between 1804 and 1815. -
Treaty of Fontainebleau
The Treaty of Fontainebleau was a secret agreement signed on 27 October 1807 in Fontainebleau, France between King Charles IV of Spain and the French Emperor Napoleon. Under the treaty, the House of Braganza was to be driven from the Kingdom of Portugal with the country subsequently divided into three regions. Within seven months the government of Spain had collapsed and two Spanish kings abdicated; in August 1808 Napoleon imposed his brother Joseph as King of Spain. -
Invasion of Spain and Joseph Bonaparte crowned king
Is the military conflict fought by Spain and Portugal. In Spain, it is considered to overlap with the Spanish War of Independence. The war began when the French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807 by transiting through Spain, and it escalated in 1808 after Napoleonic France had occupied Spain, which had been its ally. Napoleon Bonaparte installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne and promulgated the Bayonne Constitution. -
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War of Independence
The War of Independence (1807–1814) was the military conflict fought by Spain and Portugal, assisted by the United Kingdom, against the invading and occupying forces of France for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when the French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807 by transiting through Spain, and it escalated in 1808. -
Abdications of Bayonne
The name given to a series of forced abdications of the Kings of Spain, Charles IV and his son Ferdinand VII, that led to what the Spanish-speaking world calls the Spanish War of Independence (1808-1814), which overlaps with the War of Independence. -
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Luddite movement
First workers ro protest in England ( early C.19th). Violent destruction of machinery (responsable for low wages and unemployment). -
1812 Spanish Constitution
The Constitution of Cadiz,2 popularly known as La Pepa, was promulgated by the Spanish Cortes Generales, which met extraordinarily in Cadiz on 19 March 1812. It has been given great historical importance as the first Constitution enacted in Spain, as well as being one of the most liberal of its time. -
Treaty of Valençay
The Treaty of Valençay is an agreement signed in December 1813 in the castle of Valençay, by which Emperor Napoleon I offered peace and recognised Ferdinand VII as King of Spain, as a result of the defeats suffered in the War of Independence and, especially, the progressive deterioration of the French army and the morale of the soldiers due to the continuous harassment by Spanish and English troops and Spanish guerrillas. -
Manifiesto de los Persas
Manifiesto de los Persas is the name given to a document signed on 12 April 1814 in Madrid by 69 absolutist deputies led by Bernardo Mozo de Rosales.The central theme of the text is the desire of the nobility and the clergy to return to the Ancien Régime and the main ideas refer to the benefits of the Ancien Régime and the need to abolish the legislative work of Cadiz together with the Constitution. -
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The Restoration of absolutism
Betweeen 1814 and 1815, the powers that defeated Napoleon met at the Congress of Vienna. The organizer, Austrian Chancellor Metternich, wanted to stop the spread of liberal ideas and restore absolutism in Europe. -
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Reign of Ferdinand VII
The reign of Ferdinand VII (1784-1833) was one of the most complex and important in the history of Spain. It was characterized by a popular war against French occupation and by the struggle of liberal groups to establish a constitutional monarchy. -
Battle of Waterloo
In 1815, the imperial armies were finally defeated in Waterloo by Great Britain and Prussia. Napoleon abdicated after the defeat and was sent into exile on the island of Saint Helena, where he died in 1821. -
The Congress of Vienna and Holy Alliance Treaty
The Congress of Vienna established the ideological principles of the Restoration, such us the legitimacy of the absolute monarchs and the denial of national sovereignty, It also called for a balance of power between the victors through periodic meetings and the right of intervention. Th Holy Alliance Treaty was signed. This stipulated that the absolute monarchs would unite against any threat of liberal revolution. -
Pronunciamiento of Colonel Rafael del Diego
In 1820, one of this pronunciamientos, led by Colonel Rafael del Diego in Sevilla, was successful: the king was forced to reinstate the Constitution of 1812. The uprising was not put down, nor did it find the support it had hoped for, so that on 11 March what was left of the column decided to disperse, seeking refuge in the mountains of Extremadura. The uprising greatly favoured the advance of the independence movements in South America. -
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Greek War of Independence
Greece had been part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries. The Greeks had to pay high taxes, they were excluded from state administration jobs and they felt dominated by a group of people with a different religion and culture. -
Holy Alliance intervention: Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis
The Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis was the popular name for a French army mobilized in 1823 by the Bourbon King of France, Louis XVIII, to help the Spanish Royalists restore King Ferdinand VII of Spain to the absolute power of which he had been deprived during the Liberal Triennium. -
Abolishment of the Combination Acts
The English Combination Acts forbade workers to organize for the purpose of obtaining higher wages or controlling work-place conditions. The acts were repealed in 1824 as the result of a campaign led by the radical London tailor and political agitator Francis Place and the radical member of Parliament (MP) Joseph Hume. -
Stephenson´s Steam locomotive
It was an early steam locomotive of 0-2-2 wheel arrangement. It was built for and won the Rainhill Trials of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR), held in October 1829 to show that improved locomotives would be more efficient than stationary steam engines.
Rocket was designed by Robert Stephenson in 1829, and built at the Forth Street Works of his company in Newcastle upon Tyne. -
Revolutions of 1830
The movement began in France when Charles X, the absolute monarch who succeeded Louis XVIII a few years after the fall of Napoleon, was overthrown in July 1830. Louis Philippe I became the new constitutional monarch. He was called the " Citizen King". -
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The Age of revolutions
The Congress of Vienna did not respect the liberal principles of the nationalist aspirations of some European peoples. After 1815, liberalism and nationalism became the two main opposition forces, prompting the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 that ended the restoration of absolutism. -
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The Belgian Revolution
Belgium was made part of the Kingdom of Holland by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which then became the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The spread of liberal ideas helped the Belgian Revolution, and Belgium became a liberal monarchy ruled by Leopold I. -
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First Carlist War
The First Carlist War was a civil war in Spain from 1833 to 1840, the first of three Carlist Wars. It was fought between two factions over the succession to the throne and the nature of the Spanish monarchy: the conservative supporters of the late king's brother, Carlos de Borbón (or Carlos V), became known as Carlists (carlistas), while the progressive supporters of the regent, Maria Christina, acting for Isabella II of Spain, were called Liberals (liberales), cristinos or isabelinos. -
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Reign of Isabella II
The reign of Isabella II is the period in Spain's contemporary history between the death of Ferdinand VII in 1833 and the triumph of the Revolution of 1868, which forced the Queen to go into exile. Her reign is divided into two main stages: her minority, during which her mother María Cristina and later General Espartero assumed the regency; and the effective reign, which began with the declaration by the Cortes in 1843 of her early coming of age when she was only thirteen years old. -
Zollverein
There is a customs union created in Prussia in 1834, that united the majority of Germanic states. -
Grand National Consolidated Trades Union
The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union of 1834 was an early attempt to form a national union confederation in the United Kingdom. There had been several attempts to form national general unions in the 1820s, culminating with the National Association for the Protection of Labour, established in 1830. -
1837 Constitution
The Spanish Constitution of 1837 was promulgated in Spain during the regency of María Cristina de Borbón. It was an initiative of the Progressive Party to approve a consensus constitution with the Moderate Party that would allow the alternation of the two liberal parties without having to change the Constitution every time the government changed. It remained in force until 1845, when the Moderate Party imposed its own constitution. -
1845 Constitution
The Spanish Constitution of 1845 was the supreme law during the effective reign of Isabella II, which replaced the Constitution of 1837 as the supreme law during her minority. The 1845 Constitution remained in force until the proclamation of the Spanish Constitution of 1869, although there were several attempts to replace it in 1852 and during the progressive biennium (1854-1856). It was the constitutional expression of Spanish doctrinarism. -
Revolutions of 1848
In 19th-century Europe, many people lived under the rule of an empire( e.g. Austrian, Russian and Ottoman) or were fragmented into various states ( e.g. Germany and Italy). -
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French Second Republic
In France, a popular uprising proclaimed the Second Republic, which adopted a number of democratic measures, such as universal male suffrage, press freedom, abolition of the death penalty and recognition of certain rights for workers. -
Invention of the Bessemer converter
The Bessemer converter - the conversion of iron into steel - was invented and patented by Henry Bessemer in 1856. The egg-shaped converter was tilted down to pour molten pig iron in through the top, then swung back to a vertical position and a blast of air was blown through the base of the converter in a dramatic fiery ‘blow'. Spectacular but dangerous flames and fountains shot out of the top of the converter. -
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Italian Unification process
- Kingdom of Piedmont, ruled by the liberal monarchy of Savoy with Cavour as Prime Minister, started the unification. 1861. Victor Manuel II of Savoy proclaimed king of Italy. 1866. Austria left Venetia.1870. The Papal states were annexed and Rome became the capital.
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German Unification progress
- Prussia created a customs union (Zollverein). 1848. 1st freely elected parliament offered the crown of Germany to the king of Prussia, who refused it. 1861. New political figures in Prussia: King Wilhelm I and Otto von Bismarck as chancellor. 1871. Proclamation of the Second German Empire (or Reich) with Wilhelm I as Kaiser.
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First International
First International was an international organisation which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist groups and trade unions that were based on the working class and class struggle. It was founded in 1864 in a workmen's meeting held in St. Martin's Hall, London. Its first congress was held in 1866 in Geneva. -
Karl Marx publishes Das Kapital
Written in the middle of the 19th Century by German philosopher and economist Karl Marx, Das Kapital is essentially a description of how the capitalist system works and how, Marx claims, it will destroy it self. Marx had already set out his ideas on class struggle - how the workers of the world would seize power from the ruling elites - in the Communist Manifesto and other writings. -
Start of the monarchy of Amadeo of Savoy
Amadeo I was an Italian prince who reigned as King of Spain from 1870 to 1873. The only King of Spain from the House of Savoy, he was the second son of King Vittorio Emanuele II of Italy and was known for most of his life as The Duke of Aosta. -
Proclamation of the First Republic
The Spanish Republic was the short-lived political regime that existed in Spain between the parliamentary proclamation on 11 February 1873 and 29 December 1874 when General Martínez Campos's pronunciamiento marked the beginning of the Bourbon Restoration in Spain. The Republic's founding started with the abdication as King on 10 February 1873 of Amadeo I. The next day, 11 February, the republic was declared by a parliamentary majority made up of radicals, republicans and democrats. -
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Reign of Alfonso XII
Alfonso XII of Spain, was King of Spain, reigning from 1874 to 1885. After a revolution that deposed his mother Isabella II from the throne in 1868. His mother abdicated in his favour in 1870, and he returned to Spain as king in 1874 following a military coup against the First Republic. Alfonso died aged 27 in 1885, and was succeeded by his son, Alfonso XIII, who was born the following year. To date, he is the last monarch of Spain to have died whilst on the throne. -
Second International
The Second International was an organisation of socialist and labour parties, formed on 14 July 1889 at a Paris meeting in which delegations from twenty countries participated. The Second International continued the work of the dissolved First International, though excluding the powerful anarcho-syndicalist movement and trade unions. In 1922 the Second International began to reorganise into the Labour and Socialist International.
