Events

• Climate: Renewed attack of the cold during the decade 1880, perhaps consecutive with the explosion of the volcano Krakatoa in August 1883 in Indonesia.

• January 1st 1880: Beginning of the construction of the Panama Canal directed by the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps, driller of the Suez Canal. This first phase will finish in 1889 by the ruin of hundred thousands of French small savers.

• the France colonizes the Indo-China.

• Colonization of the Africa: The industrial and commercial crisis in Europe (1876 - 1896) involves protectionist policies in the majority of the industrialized countries. The acquisition of colonies in Africa is initially conceived and perceived by the European countries like the possibility of opening to interior markets. The search for raw materials, especially mineral, justifies also colonization.

• Turbid anti-semites in Algeria between 1880 and 1900: the juiveries of Tlemcen, Algiers, Oran, Sétif, Mostaganem are periodically set fire to, the cemeteries are profaned and the invaded synagogs.

• Strikes of the black workers in the plantations of Cane to sugar of the South of the the United States, which claim pay rises and threaten to leave the country. Beginning of the emigration of the Blacks of the South towards the cities of the North of the the United States.

• Frequency of the Lynching S of Blacks in the South of the the United States in the years 1880-1890.

Significant characters

• Jules Ferry

• Leon Gambetta
• Ernest Renan

Inventions, discoveries, introductions

• incandescent Electric light.

• G. Eastman manufactures a film which replaces the glass plates. The roller will follow very quickly.
• Law on the Freedom of the press, in France.
• public school free for all, in France.

Economy & company

Canada

• population of the Manitoba reached 60  000 inhabitants. The village of Winnipeg becomes an agglomeration of 8000 inhabitants. The Territoires of the North-West count 6974 inhabitants (more than 1000 in 1870).

The United States

• 5 200  000 immigrants between 1880 and 1889. 75  000 Chinese immigrants live in California. 1  118  000 children of less than sixteen years work (one on six).
• 160  000 km of railways. Production of a million tons of steel, 30  000 tons of copper.
• the value of the manufactured goods exceeds that of the product of the farmers.
• Of 1880 with 1890, the capital invests in the purchase of machines increases on average by 200% in each industrial plant.
• Of 1880 with 1888, four hundred railroad companies are eliminated with the profit from great domestic networks like the Pennsylvania Railroad or the Baltimore and Ohio .
• Development of spinning mills of Cotton ( Knitting machine Millets ) in Alabama, Carolines, Georgia (from 161 to 400 of 1880 with 1900), of manufactures of cigarettes and the metallurgy in the South.
• 25% of the grounds is rented with farmers.

Australia

• Trade of the frozen meat in Australia.
• Discovered important gold layers.
• 378  000 departures of Great Britain towards the Australia of 1880 with 1890.

India

• Nearly thirty million books is invested after 1880 to fight against the floods in the valleys of the Gange and the Indus and to develop the irrigation of the desert areas of the Dekkan, to fight against the epidemics of Choléra and the Famine S.

Burma

• Under the colonial domination, the bonds between the government and the religion is lost, the monastic orders fall in failure and their schools, which had given to the Burma a rate of elimination of illiteracy higher than that of England at the same time, decline as English becomes the language of the social advancement. Nevertheless, the indigenous culture persists throughout the magic world of the Pwe (theater), the practice of the Bouddhisme and the Animisme.

Ottoman Empire

• economic and cultural Influence of the France growing in the Empire: French creates many companies, in particular in the field of the communication (railroad, roads, ports) and of public works. France is the first creditor of the Door and directs, with the the United Kingdom, the administration of the Othoman debt. An important French banking network covers the whole of the Empire.
• France subsidizes and supports an important network of schools and charitable and medical establishments. France provides education for thus close to 90  000 Othoman children, mainly of the not-Moslems and the children the notable ones and local civils servant. Schooling is done in French.
• Great Britain provides 45% of the Othoman imports.

Europe

• Spain: Speculation on the vineyard after the crisis of the Phylloxéra in France (1880 - 1890). First steel-works on the Cantabric coast.
• economic Expansion in Germany during the years 1880.

The United Kingdom

• the economic crisis causes great movements of emigration towards the the United States: between 1880 and 1890, more than one million English farmers emigrate.
• Plus of 45% of the population has less than twenty years. Sudden fall of fruitfulness. Birth rate falls to 25 ‰ in 1911. The number of child per family falls from 6 to 2,3 between 1870 and 1914.

Italy

• Great European depression. Agricultural crisis, which touches primarily corn and corn, but also mulberry trees with silk.

• Italy east economically late compared to the rest of Europe. The company is primarily rural (more than 60% of workers of the ground). The report/ratio of the senator Jacini, the inchiesta agraria depicts an agriculture which only marginally did not progress compared to the Moyen-âge, characterized by enormous inequalities according to the areas (in the fertility of the ground, the structure of the land and buildings, the existence or not of an agrarian capitalism, the techniques, the amount of the wages, tenant farming and share-croppings). The North, most advanced, has problems related on the cyclic variations and foreign competition (Blé). The small holders of the areas of hills of North, on the poor ground, carry out a miserable existence and must migrate to supplement their incomes. The share-cropping ( mezzaria ) is largely widespread in the Center. It does not encourage with the investment. The more one advances towards the South, the more the situation degrades oneself. Around Rome ( agro romano ), dominates the latifundia pertaining to the Church or aristocrats. The properties are neglected and 10% only ground are cultivated, rented by farmers who exploit it with a labor working under very hard conditions. The Adriatic coast , badly drained, is infested by the Malaria. Inside, of the latifundia in waste land follow one another on a ground roasted by the sun and devastated by deforestation. The share-cropping is practiced in the the Abruzzi, in Molise, Campanie and Sicily with some small holders living in autarky. The only advanced areas are on the edge of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Poverty, opposition to progress, weakness of the investments of the great landowners, cut tiny exploitations, absence of a modern grid system characterize the Italian agriculture of the Années 1870 -1880.

• In the cities, populated craftsmen and tradesmen, the situation is better. Essentially, industry did not exceed the stage of manufacture, of the domestic industry of the peasants during (textile) or the day laborer winter months of agriculture engaging itself in the mine or building site at the dead season. Regarded as a simple auxiliary resource, it employs 80% women. The absence of iron, of coal, the scarcity of the capital and the lack of infrastructure explain this delay. Only the action of controlling and the overseas investments (British in Sicily and Venezia, French with the Piedmont and Naples, German or Swiss in Lombardy, Belgians with Rome) allow the development of the Railroads, the trams, of the installations of gas, the extension of the shipbuilding industry or textile.

Simple: 1880s