Key Events timeline

• c. 1750- Industrialization begins in Great Britain 
• 1751-1772- Publication of the Encyclopedia
• 1762- Jean-Jacques Rousseau publishes The Social Contract and Emile
• 1769- James Watt creates the modern steam engine
• 1775-1781-Revolution in North America
• 1776- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
• 1789- U.S. Constitution formally adopted; revolution begins in France
• 1791- Revolution begins in Haiti 
• 1792- France declared a republic
• 1799- Napoleon comes to power
• 1803- Denmark becomes first Western country to abolish the slave trade
• 1804- Haiti becomes independent from France 
• 1811- Simon Bolivar first takes up arms against Spain 
• 1814- George Stephenson puts a steam engine on a carriage on rails, inventing the locomotive
• 1815- Napoleon defeated at Waterloo; Congress of Vienna resettles the boundaries of European states
• 1816- Argentina becomes independent from Spain
• 1817- Chile becomes independent from Spain
• 1819- First Atlantic crossing by a steamship
• 1821- Mexico and Peru become independent from Spain
• 1822- Brazil becomes independent from Portugal
• 1825- Bolivia becomes independent from Spain
• 1839-1842- Opium War between China and Great Britain 
• 1842- Treaty of Nanjing opens Chinese ports
• 1848- Communist Manifesto published
• 1853- U.S. ships enter Japanese ports
• 1840s-1864- Taiping Rebellion
• 1865- U.S. Civil War ends, rapid U.S. industrialization begins
• 1868- Meji Restoration launches Japanese industrialization
• 1871- Germany gains resource-rich Alsace and Lorraine after defeating France
• 1873-c. 1900- Deep Global recession with uneven recovery
• 1890s- Argentina's leading textile manufacturer produces 1.6 million yards of cloth annually
• 1891-1904- Construction of trans-Siberian railroad