1889 - Political Events

Political Events

Austria's 31-year-old Archduke Rudolf and his beautiful 17-year-old mistress Baroness Marie Vetsera are found dead January 30 at Rudolf's hunting lodge Mayerling outside Vienna. The crown prince has shot the beautiful Marie and then taken his own life, leaving the Hapsburg emperor Franz Josef without an heir (Franz Josef has stifled his son's liberal, reformist, and anticlerical ideas, excluded him from government, and arranged his marriage in 1881 to a Belgian princess). The emperor's nephew Franz Ferdinand, now 25, will become heir apparent in 1896 (but see 1914).

Serbia's Milan Obrenovic IV abdicates March 6 at age 34 and retires to Paris after a 21-year reign. The king has circulated scandalous reports about his estranged wife, Natalie, extorted a divorce that was illegal in the eyes of the Church, and is succeeded by their 13-year-old son, who will reign until 1903 as Aleksandr I (see 1900).

The French revanchist Boulanger threatens to overturn the Third Republic in a coup d'état (see 1888), but a warrant is issued for his arrest, and he flees the country April 1, taking refuge first at Brussels and then at London. Boulanger will commit suicide in 1891.

British populist politician-reformer John Bright dies at Rochdale March 27 at age 77.

Irish Captain William O'Shea, MP, files for divorce on grounds of adultery December 24 and cites as co-respondent Charles Stewart Parnell, who has helped O'Shea advance his political career (see 1882). O'Shea's wife, Katherine, has been living more or less openly with Parnell for years and has evidently borne two children by him (see 1890).

Three-time Italian prime minister Benedetto Cairoli dies at Naples August 8 at age 64.

A Young Turks reform movement has its beginnings at Constantinople's Imperial Medical Academy, where a group of students conspire against the sultan Abdul Hamid II. Most of their leaders flee abroad when the plot is uncovered, most of them to Paris. Advocating a program of orderly reform under a strong central government, they will organize a Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), but a rival organization (the League of Private Initiative and Decentralization) headed by Prince Sabaheddin will oppose centralized government and favor enlisting European assistance to implement the liberal reforms that it endorses (see 1891).

Japan's Meiji emperor Mutsuhito hands the nation's first written constitution to his prime minister Count Kuroda February 11; written by Hirobumi Ito, it is modeled on the Prussian constitution and stipulates that the emperor shall exercise legislative power with the consent of the Imperial Diet, but Imperial ordinances are not valid if the Diet fails to approve them. Waseda University founder Shigenobu Okuma, now 51, continues to favor British parliamentary principles, with a cabinet responsible to the Diet, but General Koshaku Yamagata, now 50, returns home after a year spent studying local government in Europe; less progressive than Okuma or Ito, he becomes the nation's first prime minister under its new parliamentary government.

The Ivory Coast becomes a French protectorate January 10, and an Anglo-French agreement August 5 defines respective French and British spheres of influence on the Gold and Ivory Coasts and on the Sénégal and Gambia rivers.

Mahdists kill Ethiopia's Johannes IV March 12 in the Battle of Metemma. He is succeeded after a 17-year reign by Menelek of Shoa (Sahlé Mariam), whose claim to the throne is supported by the Italians against those of Johannes' son Ras Mangasha. Now 44, Menelek II will reign as king of kings until his death in 1913, defeating an Italian invasion force and modernizing the country.

The British South Africa Company headed by Cecil Rhodes receives almost unlimited rights and powers of government in the area north of the Transvaal and west of Mozambique (see 1890). Rhodes controls De Beers Consolidated Mines, which has become virtually the sole producer of diamonds in South Africa, using a workforce comprised largely of migrant African workers bossed by white overseers.

Former French governor of Senegal Louis Faidherbe dies at Paris September 29 at age 71, having been left paralyzed and half blind by his efforts in Africa.

A relief expedition headed by Henry M. Stanley "rescues" Equatoria's governor Mehmed Emin, 48. Stanley has been financed largely by the king of the Belgians Leopold II, who is also king of the Congo Free State, and by Leopold's friend Sir William MacKinnon of the Imperial British East Africa Company, both desirous of securing Equatoria and giving the Congo State an outlet to the Upper Nile. The Silesian-born Emin Pasha (originally Eduard Schnitzer) became a medical officer in the Turkish army at age 25, learned Arabic, Farsi (Persian), and Turkish in his spare time, adopted a Turkish name while serving in northern Albania in the early 1870s, and was appointed governor of Equatoria by the late General Charles "Chinese" Gordon in 1878. The province was severed from the rest of Egypt in 1884, Emin was elevated to the rank of pasha, and he has ended slavery in Equatoria. He and Stanley leave for the coast April 10 with some 1,500 others and arrive December 4 at Bagamoyo, where Emin will soon be asked by the Germans to undertake an expedition charged with securing territories south of Lake Victoria and along its shores to Lake Albert (but see 1890).

Former Mexican president Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada dies in exile at New York in April at age 61.

Trinidad formally annexes Tobago April 6 at the insistence of the British government; both islands have been British colonies since 1814 (see 1962).

Venezuela's military dictator (caudillo) Antonio Guzmán Blanco is ousted in a coup d'état while visiting Europe, where he has spent much of his time since assuming power in 1870. He has amassed a large private fortune through profits gained at public expense in negotiations of loans with foreign bankers.

The first Pan-American Conference opens October 2 at Washington, D.C., to cement relations among Western Hemisphere nations. All Latin American countries except Santo Domingo send representatives, the delegates establish the Pan-American Union as an information bureau, but they reject a convention calling for the promotion of peace by arbitration and reject a plan of reciprocity.

Portugal's Luiz I dies at Lisbon October 19 at age 51 after a 28-year reign in which slavery has been abolished in every Portuguese colony. He is succeeded by his 26-year-old son, who has devoted his youth to painting and oceanographic studies; the new king will reign until 1908 as Carlos I.

Brazilian army officers depose Pedro II November 15 after a 49-year reign as emperor, adopt a new constitution, and proclaim a republic under the leadership of General Manoel Deodoro da Fonseca, 62 (see 1891).

President Benjamin Harrison takes office at Washington, D.C., March 4 (see 1888). He faces a Congress that is almost evenly divided, with 39 Republicans and 37 Democrats in the Senate, 166 Republicans and 159 Democrats in the House. The federal government has run a surplus every year except one since 1866, but Harrison's administration will do its best to get rid of it, appropriating pensions to Civil War veterans and trying to use a bloated budget to bolster the weak minority presidency.

North and South Dakota enter the Union November 2 as the 39th and 40th (or 40th and 39th) states, Montana enters November 8 as the 41st, Washington November 11 as the 42nd.

New York State adopts the paper Australian ballot for statewide elections, becoming the first U.S. state to do so (see Britain, 1872; voting machine, 1892).

Former U.S. secretary of war Simon Cameron dies at his Donegal Springs, Pennsylvania, home June 26 at age 90; former Confederate president Jefferson Davis at New Orleans December 6 at age 81.