Timeline: 1821 to 1830

1821  The stability for Europe sought at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 is coming undone. Following Serb rebellions against Ottoman rule in previous years, the Greeks in March rise simultaneously against Ottoman rule, including in Macedonia, Crete and Cyprus. The Turks respond by hanging the Patriarch of Constantinople, Gregorios V. The Greeks liberate the Peloponnesian Peninsula in September. There, in the city of Tripolitsa, a center of Turkish authority, Muslims in the thousands are massacred for three days and nights.

1821  Napoleon Bonaparte dies at the age of fifty-one under British authority on the island of St. Helena, the reported cause: stomach cancer. The English poet, John Keats, dies of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-six.

1821  A treaty is signed between the United States and the declining power of  Spain. The US buys Florida for 5 million dollars, money the US government gives to US citizens with claims against Spain. Spain receives an established line separating the US from its territory in North America.

1821  Caracas falls to Bolivar's force. Venezuela is now free of Spanish rule. Peru and Mexico declare independence. In Guatemala independence is declared for its provinces: Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, San Salvador and Chiapas.

1821  Michael Faraday, son of a blacksmith, has overcome the conceit of aristocrats and, as a scientist, has been promoted in Britain's Royal Institution. His interest in a unified force in nature and work in electro-magnetism produces the foundation for electric motors and contributes to what will be "field theory" in modern physics, which includes its most basic formula: E=MC2.

1822  A member of Portugal's royal family is in power in Brazil. He has lifted duties paid on the importation of books, abolished censorship and ordered the teaching of law at the universities of Sáo Paula and Olinda. His rule is being challenged from Portugal, and from his royal palace he declares "Independence or death!" At the age of 24 he his proclaimed Emperor of Brazil: Pedro I. 

1822  Officials of the American Colonization society have purchased a strip of land they call Christopolis, at Cape Mesurado on the Atlantic Coast in western Africa. Eighty-six freed blacks have arrived. 

1822  In Vienna the accordion is invented.

1822  In Britain, fewer crimes are capital offenses. 

1822  The Ottoman Turks respond to rebellion on the island of Chios by slaughtering five-sixths of the islands 120,000 inhabitants. 

1823  Austria, Russia and Prussia authorize French troops to enter Spain to destroy the liberal revolution there and re-establish the rule of Ferdinand VII. Ferdinand begins revenge killings that will revolt those who returned him to power.

1823  Steam powered shipping begins between Switzerland and France on Lake Geneva.

1823  Mexico, interested in populating Texas, allows Stephen F. Austin to sell plots of land to settlers so long as they are of good character. 

1824  The Frenchman, Eugène Delacroix, paints The Massacre of Chios.  Britain's romantic poet, Lord Byron, who has written "We are all Greeks," has gone to Greece and dies of "marsh fever."

1824  Britain and the US negotiate a treaty establishing procedures for suppressing the slave trade, but the US Senate undercuts the treaty's powers and the British refuse to sign.

1824  In Britain, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is founded, the first animal protection organization in the world.

1825  Louis XVIII has died and is succeeded by his reactionary brother,
Charles X.

1825  Russian military officers, who had been exposed to the Enlightenment during Russia's occupation of France, attempt to replace authoritarian rule with a representative democracy. Their coup, called the Decembrist Rising, fails and they are crushed.

1826  In Spain the Inquisition had been ended by the Revolution in 1820 that had overthrown King Ferdinand VII, but with Ferdinand's return it is revived.  A Jew is burned at the stake, also a Spanish Quaker schoolmaster who replaced "Hail Mary" with "Praise be to God" in school prayer. It has been described as the last of such executions.

1827  Britain, Russia and France break with Austria regarding the Greek war of independence – Austria still feeling threatened by any revolt against empire while the Russians want to protect their fellow Orthodox Christians. Egypt, a part of the Ottoman Empire, is helping the Turks, but a combined British, French and Russian fleet sink an Egyptian and Turkish fleet at Navarino Bay, on the west coast of the Peloponnesian Peninsula. This weakens Ottoman power in Greece and in Arabia.  

1827  In Vienna, Austria, over 10,000 mourners attend the burial of Beethoven.

1827  New York passes a state law emancipating slaves.

1829  In London, parliament extends tolerance, passing the Catholic Emancipation Bill, making it possible for Catholics to hold public office.

1829  The Treaty of Adrianople ends war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire grants Greece independence.  Russian authority in Georgia is recognized. The Russians are allowed access through the narrow straits from the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea. Autonomy is extended to Serbia and to the Romanians of Moldavia and Walachia, under Russian protection.  

1829  Scotch tape is invented.

1829  Mexico abolishes slavery in its territories, hoping to discourage migration into Texas from the United States.

1830  With China's great population growth, unemployment has risen and there has been a shortage of land, creating peasant unrest. China is still the leader in manufacturing output (real rather than per capita), but its share is slipping from 32.8 percent in 1750 to 29.8 percent. India's share since 1750 has fallen from 24.5 percent  to 17.6 percent. Britain, with a fraction of the population of either China or India, has increased its share in this period from 1.9 to 4.3 percent. The US share is 2.4 percent.

1830  France has reneged in paying its bill for wheat bought from Algeria. A new era of European imperialism begins with Charles X sending an invasion force of 36,000 troops to Algeria, claiming that he was responding to the insult to his ambassador. The invasion is described as a civilizing mission and a mission to abolish slavery and piracy – a response to Algeria's reputation in France for having attacked the ships of Christian nations during past centuries and for an estimated 25,000 European slaves in Algeria, including women in the harems.

1830  Businessmen and common people loathe Charles X, who has returned to absolutism, including dissolving parliament. The barricades go up in the streets of Paris. Charles X is frightened and rather than fight goes into exile, back to Britain. Parliament returns, creates a constitutional monarchy and elects a new king, Louis-Philippe.

1830  Violence erupts across Germany. Rent, tax and military records are burned. People want bread or are annoyed by higher prices for food, military conscription and in places by feudal dues. In Brunswick, Grand Duke Karl flees and a liberal constitution is created. The king of Saxony grants his subjects a liberal constitution. In Hesse-Kassel a constitution and a unicameral legislature are created.

1830  In Britain, the first edition of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology is published and will revolutionize the age-of-earth concepts.

1830  The first railway station opens in the United States – in Baltimore Maryland. 

1830  President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act, which rips the Cherokee and other eastern tribes from their homes and banishes them to areas west of the Mississippi River.

1830  Joseph Smith Jr. of New York organizes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

1830  In England the lawn mower is invented. 

1830  A Frenchman patents a sewing machine.

1830  Simón Bolivar dies disappointed and regretting that Spain did not allow people in its American colonies to develop self-government within a framework of institutions as had Britain with its colonists.

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