History of the West 1800 – 1850

Experience the History of the West 1800-1850 with WisdomMaps: The Future of the Past!

Perspective

The history of the West 1800-1850 saw Europe’s population grow by nearly half, to some 150 million. Railroads fueled massive urbanization, and many urban populations reached a million or more during this time, London most of all. What is more, vast stretches of Africa and Asia were explored, and the increasing availability of detailed maps of most of the globe expanded the worldview of the West. With that, liberalism became the salient political sentiment and reform movement in the West.

Slavery was on the way out. This was seen in the successful slave uprising in Haiti that caused Britain and France to attack and punish the Barbary pirates for their enslavement of Europeans. Then in Britain, the Slavery Abolition Act gave the British Royal Navy its mandate to end the slave trade on the high seas. As a result, in 1834 the British Empire became the first empire to abolish slavery. This added urgency to abolitionist sentiment in the United States and hastened the onset of the Civil War that would end slavery there.

The 19th century saw widespread settlement and urbanization in North America and Australia. As examples, both Chicago and Melbourne in Australia, practically non-existent at the beginning of the 19^th century, grew to become their nations’ second-largest cities. This was part of the tide of migration of the 19th century, wherein approximately 70 million Europeans migrated to the United States, fleeing pervasive war, poverty, and lack of opportunity.

sample map

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Crime in 19th-Century Europe

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