2. A village fish peddler, Fatt Hing Chin often roamed
the coast of southern China to sell at market. One
day at the wharves, he heard a tale of mysterious but
enticing mountains of gold beckoning young Chinese
to cross the ocean. At nineteen years of age, Chin felt
restlessness, and he longed for the glittering
mountains. He learned that he could purchase
passage on a foreign ship, but he also needed to be
cautious. He did not want to alarm his parents, nor
did he want to draw the attention of the authorities,
who were reportedly arresting individuals seeking to
leave China. Eventually he reconciled his parents to
his plans, and in 1849 he boarded a Spanish ship to
sail to California and join the gold rush.
3. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, almost
all the lands of the western hemisphere won their independence
from European colonial powers. American peoples then struggled
throughout the nineteenth century to build states and societies
that realized their potential in an age of independence. The
United States built the most powerful state in the western
hemisphere and embarked on a westward push that brought
almost all the temperate regions of North America under U.S.
control. Canada built a federal state under British Canadian
leadership. The varied lands of Latin America built smaller states
that often fell under the sway of local military leaders. One issue
that most American peoples wrestled with, regardless of their
region, was the legacy of the Enlightenment. The effort to build
societies based on freedom, equality, and constitutional
government was a monumental challenge only partially realized
in lands characterized by enormous social, economic, and
cultural diversity.
4. • The Little Ice Age was a
period of cooling that
occurred after
the Medieval Warm Period
• Evidence from mountain
glaciers does suggest
increased glaciation in a
number of widely spread
regions outside Europe
prior to the 20th century,
including Alaska, New
Zealand and Patagonia.
5. The Louisiana Purchase
was the acquisition by the United States of America of 828,000 square
miles (2,140,000 km2) of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana in
1803.
The U.S. paid 60 million francs ($11,250,000) plus cancellation of debts
worth 18 million francs ($3,750,000), for a total sum of 15 million
dollars (less than 3 cents per acre) for the Louisiana territory ($219
million in 2010 dollars, less than 42 cents per acre).
The Louisiana Purchase encompassed all or part of 15 current U.S.
states and two Canadian provinces. The land purchased contained all of
present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska;
parts of Minnesota that were west of the Mississippi River; most
of North Dakota; nearly all of South Dakota; northeastern New Mexico;
northern Texas; the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east
of the Continental Divide; and Louisiana west of the Mississippi
River, including the city of New Orleans. (Parts of this area were still
claimed by Spain at the time of the purchase.)
6. Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied
September 23, 1782 - February 3, 1867
was a German explorer, ethnologist and naturalist. Wied
was born in Neuwied, the grandson of the ruling count
(after 1784 prince) Johann Friedrich Alexander of Wied-
Neuwied.
Born at the end of the European Enlightenment, Maximilian
became friends with two of its major figures: Johann
Friedrich Blumenbach, a major comparative anthropologist
under whom he studied biological sciences, and Alexander
von Humboldt, who served as Maximilian's mentor.
He joined the Prussian army in 1800 during
the Napoleonic Wars, rising to the rank of major. He was
given a leave of absence from the army in 1815 (prior to
Napoleon's escape from Elba).
7. The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared
against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from
1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French
Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out
on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to the application of
modern mass conscription. French power rose quickly as Napoleon's
armies conquered much of Europe but collapsed rapidly after France's
disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812. Napoleon's empire ultimately
suffered complete military defeat resulting in therestoration of the
Bourbon monarchy in France.
The wars resulted in the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and
sowed the seeds of nascent nationalism in Germany and Italy that would
lead to the two nations' individual consolidation later in the century.
Meanwhile, the global Spanish Empire began to unravel as
French occupation of Spain weakened Spain's hold over its
colonies, providing an opening for nationalist revolutions in Spanish
America. As a direct result of the Napoleonic wars, the British
Empire became the foremost world power for the next century, thus
beginning Pax Britannica.
8. The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was a period of conflict in
the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which culminated in the
elimination of slavery there and the founding of the Haitian
republic. Although hundreds of rebellions occurred in the New
World during the centuries of slavery, only two, the American
Revolution that began in 1776 and the Haitian revolution that
began in 1791, were successful in achieving permanent
independence. The Haitian Revolution is regarded as a defining
moment in the history of Africans in the New World.
Their domination of politics and economics after the revolution
created another two-caste society, as most Haitians were rural
subsistence farmers. In addition, the nascent state's future was
practically "mortgaged" to French banks in the 1820s, as it was
forced to make massive reparations to French slaveholders in
order to receive French recognition and end the nation's political
and economic isolation. These payments may have permanently
affected Haiti's economy and wealth.
9. The Indian Rebellion of 1857 began as a mutiny
of sepoys of the British East India Company's army on
10 May 1857, in the town of Meerut, and soon
escalated into other mutinies and civilian rebellions
largely in the upper Gangetic plain and central India,
with the major hostilities confined to present-
day Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, northern Madhya Pradesh,
and the Delhi region. The rebellion posed a
considerable threat to Company power in that region,
and it was contained only with the fall of Gwalior on
20 June 1858. The rebellion is also known as
the 1857 War of Independence, India's First War of
Independence, the Great Rebellion, the Indian Mutiny,
the Revolt of 1857, the Uprising of 1857, the Sepoy
Rebellion, and the Sepoy Mutiny.
10. The Crimean War
(October 1853 – February 1856)
was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and
an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire,
the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia.
The war was part of a long-running contest between
the major European powers for influence over
territories of the declining Ottoman Empire. Most of
the conflict took place on the Crimean Peninsula, but
there were smaller campaigns in
western Anatolia, Caucasus, the Baltic Sea, the Pacific
Ocean and the White Sea.
The war has gone by different names. In Russia it is
also known as the "Eastern War"
