1853 | Political Events
Political Events
Political unrest in Europe over Turkish occupation of holy places in Palestine brings Russia, France, and Britain to the brink of war. Czar Nicholas I allegedly calls Turkey the "sick man of Europe," suggesting to the British ambassador Sir Hamilton Seymour in January that it is time for Britain and Russia to reach an accord on dividing up the Ottoman Empire (see 1849). "We have on our hands a sick man, a very sick man. It will be a great misfortune, I tell you frankly, if, one of these days, he should happen to die before the necessary arrangements can be made." Sir Hamilton replies that the patient may recover; what he requires may be a physician, not a surgeon. Russia's foreign minister Karl Robert Vasilyevich, Graf Nesselrode, now 72, tries to prolong negotiations in an effort to avert war, but the indecision of Britain's prime minister George Hamilton-Gordon, Viscount Gordon of Aberdeen, over conflicts of interest in the Middle East hampers peacekeeping efforts by his foreign secretary George Villiers, 4th earl of Clarendon, now 52 (see 1854).
The French emperor Napoleon III is married at Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, January 30 to the Spanish beauty Eugénie, 26, second daughter of Don Cipriano, count of Teba, whose wife is of Scottish descent). Now 44, Napoleon has failed to win the hand of a Vasa or Hohenzollern.
Portugal's Maria II (Maria de Gloria) dies November 15 at age 34 after a 27-year reign marked by insurrections in 1846 and 1851 and interrupted by a 5-year civil war during which the queen lived in England. Her son Pedro de Alcantara, now 16, will assume power in 1855 after a 3-year regency by his father and reign as Pedro V until his death in 1861.
Prussia's reactionary former chief minister Joseph von Radowitz dies at Berlin December 25 at age 56.
Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, 59, U.S. Navy, arrives in Edo Bay July 8 with more than 1,000 men aboard seven black ships, including the steam frigates Mississippi and Susquehanna (see Biddle, 1846). Dispatched in November by President Fillmore with a request for a trade agreement, the Newport, Rhode Island-born commodore demands the treaty "as a matter of right, and not . . . as a favor"; he departs July 16, leaving word that he will return in the spring for a favorable reply. Japan has isolated herself from the world for 2 centuries; many people recognize that the policy has put the country at a disadvantage (vaccination for smallpox was introduced only 4 years ago); but while they are receptive to opening up to the world, others oppose any change. Japan's shōgun Ieyoshi Tokugawa dies July 23 at age 61 after a 16-year reign; he is succeeded by his 29-year-old brother Iesada, who is in delicate health, will live only until 1858, but will open two ports to trade next year in order to end a civil war precipitated by the demands of Commodore Perry (see 1854).
A Russian fleet arrives at Nagasaki August 8 aiming to open trade relations and resolve boundaries in the Kuriles and Sakhalin.
Burma's king Pagan dies after a 7-year reign and is succeeded by his 39-year-old brother Mindon, who will reign until 1878. The new king immediately sues for peace in the Second Anglo-Burmese War, Britain annexes Pegu, and Mindon is obliged to accept a much-reduced realm, but although cut off from some of Burma's richest teak and rice-growing regions he embarks on an enlightened reign in which he will build Mandalay and make it the Burmese capital in 1857.
"The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from home, where it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies, where it goes naked," writes Karl Marx July 22 in the New York Tribune. "Did they not, in India, to borrow an expression from that great robber, Lord Clive himself, resort to atrocious extortion, when simple corruption could not keep pace with their rapacity? While they prated in Europe about the inviolable sanctity of the national debt, did they not confiscate in India the dividends of the rajahs, who had invested their savings in the Company's own funds?" Gen. Sir Charles J. Napier dies at Portsmouth August 29 at age 71; he left India in February 1851 after a quarrel with Lord Dalhousie.
Nanjing (Nanking) falls to Chinese insurgent forces as they move northward to the Yangzi (Yangtse) River basin in the continuing Taiping Rebellion (see 1851). Confucian scholar Zeng Guofan (Tseng Kuo-fan), 41, has joined the local defense force early in the year in his native Hunan Province and will assume growing responsibility in opposing the rebels. Manchu troops sent by the emperor Xianfeng (Hsien-feng) prove corrupt and ineffective, Shanghai falls September 7, and the rebels prepare to march on Beijing (Peking). Bandits in Anhuei, North Jiangsu (Kiangsu), and Shandong (Shantung) provinces organize the peasantry of northern China and begin a 15-year Nian Rebellion, plundering villages as imperial troops withdraw to cope with the Taiping rebels; the emperor relies increasingly on volunteer militias (see 1860).
President Pierce and his vice president William Rufus de Vane King take their oaths of office March 4, but King then returns to his plantation near Cahaba, Alabama, and dies there of tuberculosis April 18 at age 67. Pierce appoints Mexican War hero Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, now 44, his secretary of war in a move to conciliate the South.
Argentina's Buenos Aires Province secedes under the leadership of Bartolomé Mitre (see 1852). A new federal constitution modeled on that of the United States gains approval from all the other provinces and goes into effect May 25, but it gives the city a minimal role in national affairs, its citizens refuse to accept it, and although Buenos Aires will not become a member until 1859 Justo José de Urquiza will remain Argentina's president until 1860 (see 1859).
Mexican voters return reactionary forces to power; among the many prominent liberals who go into exile in December is lawyer Benito (Pablo) Juárez, 47, who will live in semipoverty at New Orleans until June 1855. Former president Anastasio Bustamante has died at San Miguel de Allende February 6 at age 72.
The Gadsden Purchase treaty signed with Mexico December 30 permits the United States to annex a tract of land extending for nearly 30,000 square miles south of the Gila River. Mexico receives a mere $10 million under terms of the treaty, which has been negotiated by U.S. Minister James Gadsden, now 65, following repudiation by the Senate of an earlier treaty, whose terms provided for payment of $15 million for some 19 million acres. Northerners had objected that the new territory might be used by planters to extend slavery, but some land has been required for a southern railroad route to California. Mexican dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna comes under pressure for having agreed to the sale of Mexican territory; now 59, Santa Anna's lavish spending has made him widely unpopular, as have his frequent, extended absences from the capital and his womanizing (he has sired dozens of illegitimate children by various mistresses and married a 15-year-old girl shortly after the death of his first wife) (see 1854).
Transportation of British convicts to Tasmania ends after a half-century in which some 67,000 convicts have been landed on the island that is now definitively renamed Tasmania instead of Van Diemen's Land (see 1642).
The Massachusetts Constitutional Convention receives a petition to permit woman suffrage. The appeal comes from the wife of educator and social reformer Amos B. Alcott and 73 other women (see Lucy Stone, 1850; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1860).
Frontiersman Thomas Fitzpatrick negotiates another settlement with the Comanche and Kiowa at Fort Atkinson, Kansas.
Pioneer and Indian fighter Bland W. Ballard dies at his Shelbyville, Kentucky, home September 5 at age 93.