The 1830s (pronounced "eighteen-thirties") was a
decade of the
Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, 1830, and ended on December 31, 1839.
In this decade, the world saw a rapid rise of
imperialism and
colonialism, particularly in
Asia and
Africa. Britain saw a surge of power and world dominance, as
Queen Victoria took to the throne in 1837. Conquests took place all over the world, particularly around the expansion of the
Ottoman Empire and the
British Raj. New outposts and settlements flourished in Oceania, as Europeans began to settle over
Australia and
New Zealand.
China was ruled by the
Daoguang Emperor of the
Qing dynasty during the 1830s. The decade witnessed a rapid rise in the sale of opium in China,[2] despite efforts by the Daoguang Emperor to end the trade.[3] A turning point came in 1834, with the end of the monopoly of the
East India Company, leaving trade in the hands of private entrepreneurs. By 1838, opium sales climbed to 40,000 chests.[2][4] In 1839, newly appointed imperial commissioner
Lin Zexu banned the sale of opium and imposed several restrictions on all foreign traders. Lin also closed the channel to
Guangzhou (Canton), leading to the seizure and destruction of 20,000 chests of opium.[5] The British retaliated, seizing
Hong Kong on
August 23 of that year, starting what would be known as the
First Opium War. It would end three years later with the signing of the
Treaty of Nanking in 1842.
The
Padri War was fought from 1803 until 1837 in
West Sumatra between the Padris and the Adats. The latter asked for the help of the
Dutch, who intervened from 1821 and helped the Adats defeat the Padri faction. The conflict intensified in the 1830s, as the war soon centered on Bonjol, the fortified last stronghold of the Padris. It finally fell in 1837[6] after being besieged for three years, and along with the exile of Padri leader
Tuanku Imam Bonjol, the conflict died out.
The British government appointed a series of administrative heads of British India in the 1830s ("
Governor-General of India" starting in 1833):
Lord William Bentinck (1828–1835),
Sir Charles Metcalfe, Bt (1835–1836), and
The Lord Auckland (1836–1842). The
Government of India Act 1833 was enacted to remove the
East India Company's remaining trade monopolies and divested it of all its commercial functions, renewing the company's political and administrative authority for another twenty years. It invested the Board of Control with full power and authority over the company.
The
English Education Act by the Council of India in 1835 reallocated funds from the East India Company to spend on education and literature in India. In 1837, the British East India company
replaced Persian with local vernacular in various provinces as the official and court language. However, in the northern regions of the Indian subcontinent,
Urdu instead of Hindi was chosen to replace Persian.[9][10]
In 1834 Grey retired from public life, leaving
Lord Melbourne as his successor. Reforms continued under Lord Melbourne, with the
Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834, which stated that no able-bodied British man could receive assistance unless he entered a
workhouse. King
William IV's opposition to the Whigs' reforming ways led him to dismiss Melbourne in November and then appoint Sir
Robert Peel to form a Tory government. Peel's failure to win a House of Commons majority in the resulting
general election (January 1835) made it impossible for him to govern, and the Whigs returned to power under Melbourne in April 1835. The
Marriage Act 1836 established
civil marriage and registration systems that permit marriages in
nonconformist chapels, and a
Registrar General of Births, Marriages, and Deaths.[14][15]
The first two
Canut revolts occurred in the 1830s. They were among the first well-defined worker uprisings of the
Industrial Revolution. The word
Canut was a common term to describe to all Lyonnais silk workers.
The First Canut revolt in 1831 was provoked by a drop in workers' wages caused by a drop in silk prices. After a bloody battle with the military causing 600 casualties, rebellious silk workers seize
Lyon, France. The government sent Marshal
Jean-de-Dieu Soult, a veteran of the
Napoleonic Wars, at the head of an army of 20,000 to restore order. Soult was able to retake the town without any bloodshed, and without making any compromises with the workers. The Second Canut revolt in 1834 occurred when owners attempted to impose a wage decrease. The government crushed the rebellion in a bloody battle, and deported or imprisoned 10,000 insurgents.
August 31,
1839 – The
First Carlist war (
Spain) ends with the Convenio de Vergara, also known as the Abrazo de Vergara ("the embrace in Vergara"; Bergara in Basque), between liberal general
Baldomero Espartero, Count of Luchana and Carlist General Rafael Maroto.
In 1830,
France invaded and quickly seized
OttomanRegency of Algiers, and rapidly took control of other coastal communities. Fighting would continue throughout the decade, with the French pitted against forces under
Ahmed Bey at
Constantine, primarily in the east, and nationalist forces in
Kabylie and the west. The French made treaties with the nationalists under
'Abd al-Qādir, enabling them to capture Constantine in 1837. Al-Qādir continued to give stiff resistance in the west, which lasted throughout the decade (and well into the
1840s, with Al-Qādir surrendering in 1847).
May
1838 – Lord Durham and his entourage arrive in Upper Canada to investigate the cause of the 1837 rebellion in that province. This leads to Durham submitting the
Durham Report to Britain.
July 1,
1839 – Slaves aboard the Amistad rebel and capture the ship off the coast of
Cuba. Under direction to sail the ship to Africa, the crew sailed the ship to
Long Island, New York, where the slaves were taken into custody by the
U.S. Navy. The slaves would later win the right to return to Africa in United States v. The Amistad.
May 6,
1833 – In
Alexandria,
Virginia, the first public physical attack on an
American President, with
Andrew Jackson struck by a disgruntled Robert B. Randolph, who was dismissed from the navy by Jackson for embezzlement. Though the assailant was immediately apprehended, Jackson decided not to press charges.
March 12,
1830 – Craig vs. Missouri: The
United States Supreme Court rules that state loan certificates are unconstitutional because they were bills of credit emitted by a state in violation of Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution.
December 9,
1835 – Texian "army" volunteers, under General Burleson, capture the town of
San Antonio de Bejar from the Mexican forces occupying the town under General Martin Perfecto de Cos.
March 6,
1836 – The
Battle of the Alamo ends the 13-day siege; approximately 200 defenders (Anglo settlers & Tejano townsfolk) die in a fierce struggle with approximately 5,000 Mexican soldiers.[20]
April 21,
1836 –
Battle of San Jacinto:
Mexican forces under
General Santa Anna are defeated in a battle lasting 18 minutes by the
San Jacinto River, Texas. (General Houston is wounded during the battle, and is later relieved of command by interim President David G. Burnet. This action enables Houston to recover from his wounds.)
The 1830s for Mexico saw the end of the
First Mexican Republic and saw General Santa Anna move in and out of the presidency in a 30-year span now known as the "Age of Santa Anna". In 1834, President
Antonio López de Santa Anna dissolved Congress, forming a new government. That government instituted the
Centralist Republic of Mexico by approving a new centralist constitution ("
Siete Leyes"). From its formation in 1835 until its dissolution in 1846, the Centralist Republic was governed by eleven
presidents (none of which finished their term). It called for the state militias to disarm, but many states resisted, including
Mexican Texas, which declared independence in the
Texas Revolution of 1836. During the
1840s, other provinces separated. The
Republic of the Rio Grande in 1840, and the
Republic of Yucatán declared independence in 1841.
May
1838 – An insurrection breaks out in
Tizimín, beginning the campaign for the independence of
Yucatan from
Mexico.
November 1838 – The
Pastry War (also known as the First
French intervention in
Mexico) began with the naval blockade of some Mexican ports and the capture of the fortress of
San Juan de Ulúa in Veracruz by French forces sent by
King Louis-Philippe. The intervention followed many claims by French nationals of losses due to unrest in Mexico City, as well as the failure of Mexico to pay a large debt to France.
March 1839 – The
Pastry War ends with a British-brokered peace.
27 December,
1831 -
Sam Sharpe leads a major slave rebellion, also known as the
Baptist War. The slave uprising lasted for 10 days and spread throughout the entire island, mobilizing as many as 60,000 of Jamaica's enslaved population. The British colonial government used the armed Jamaican military forces and warriors from the towns of the Jamaican
Maroons to put down the rebellion, suppressing it within two weeks. Some 14 whites were killed by armed slave battalions, but more than 200 slaves were killed by troops.
In 1834,
Michael Faraday's published his research regarding the quantitative relationships in electrochemical reactions, now known as
Faraday's laws of electrolysis.[29] Also in 1834,
Jean C. A. Peltier discovered the
Peltier "effect", which is the presence of heating or cooling at an electrified junction of two different conductors. In 1836,
John Daniell invented a primary cell in which
hydrogen was eliminated in the generation of the electricity.
1839 – An archaeological excavation on
Copan begins.
Sociology
July 2,
1832 –
Andre-Michel Guerry presents his Essay on moral statistics of France, to the French Academy of Sciences, a significant step in the founding of empirical
social science.
May 24,
1832 – Francois Arban, early French balloonist makes his 1st ascent.[38]
Automobile
1834 –
Thomas Davenport, the inventor of the first American
DC electrical motor, installs his motor in a small model car, creating one of the first
electric cars.
March
1836 – First monthly part of
Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers ("The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club ..., edited by Boz") published in London.
August 7,
1831 – American
Baptist minister
William Miller preaches his first sermon on the Second Advent of Christ in Dresden, New York, launching the Advent Movement in the United States.
October 27,
1838 – Missouri Governor
Lilburn W. Boggs declares Mormons to be enemies of the state and encourages the extermination or the exile of the religious minority, forcing nearly 10,000 Mormons out of the state.[40]
Historians believe that the
first cholera pandemic had lingered in Indonesia and the Philippines in 1830. The second cholera pandemic spread from India to Russia and then to the rest of Europe claiming hundreds of thousands of lives.[41] It reached
Moscow in August 1830, and by 1831, the epidemic had infiltrated Russia's main cities and towns.
Russian soldiers brought the disease to Poland during the
Polish–Russian War 1830–31.[42] "
Cholera Riots" occurred in Russia, caused by the anti-cholera measures undertaken by the
tsarist government.
The epidemic reached western Europe later in 1831. In London, the disease claimed 6,536 victims; in Paris, 20,000 died (out of a population of 650,000), with about 100,000 deaths in all of France.[43] In 1832 the epidemic reached
Quebec,
Ontario, and
Nova Scotia, Canada; and
Detroit and
New York City in the United States. It reached the Pacific coast of North America between 1832 and 1834.[44]
^Peter Ward Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842: Barbarians in the Celestial Empire in the Early Part of the Nineteenth Century and the Way by Which They Forced the Gates Ajar (Chapel Hill, North Carolina:: University of North Carolina Press, 1975).
^Raymond Durand (1980). Robert Bielecki (ed.). Depesze z powstańczej Warszawy 1830–1831: raporty konsula francuskiego w Królestwie Polskim [Memoranda from Warsaw during the Uprising 1830–1831: reports of the French consul to the Kingdom of Poland]. Warsaw: Czytelnik.
ISBN978-83-07-00254-5.
OCLC7732541.
^Rosenberg, Charles E. (1987). The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866. University of Chicago Press.
ISBN0-226-72677-0.
^"Cholera's seven pandemics". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. December 2, 2008. Retrieved 2008-12-11.Note: The second pandemic started in India and reached
Russia by 1830, then spreading into
Finland and Poland. A two-year outbreak began in England in October 1831 and claimed 22,000 lives. Irish immigrants fleeing poverty and the
Great Famine, carried the disease from Europe to North America. Soon after the immigrants' arrival in Canada in the summer of 1832, 1,220 people died in Montreal and another 1,000 across Quebec. The disease entered the U.S. via ship traffic through
Detroit and
New York City. Spread by ship passengers, it reached Latin America by 1833. Another outbreak across England and Wales began in 1848, killing 52,000 over two years.