Raffles founds modern Singapore
A fishing island becomes the Empire's free port
In January 1819 Thomas Stamford Raffles of the British East India Company landed on a sparsely inhabited island off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. In February he signed a treaty with local rulers and founded a trading post. A duty-free port at the crossroads between India and China, it grew rapidly into one of the world's great harbours.
Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1796 Jenner's first vaccination — 23 years earlier
- 1804 Coronation of Napoleon — 15 years earlier
- 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna — 5 years earlier
- 1815 Battle of Waterloo — 4 years earlier
- 1816 Year Without a Summer — 3 years earlier
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1812 Napoleon's invasion of Russia — 7 years earlier
Middle East
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — 9 years later
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — 20 years later
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — 20 years later
Africa
- 1798 Battle of the Pyramids — 21 years earlier
- 1804–1903 Usman dan Fodio's jihad and the Sokoto Caliphate — 15 years earlier
- 1805–1848 Muhammad Ali becomes ruler of Egypt — 14 years earlier
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — 16 years later
Americas
- 1803 Louisiana Purchase — 16 years earlier
- 1810–1826 Spanish American wars of independence — 9 years earlier
- 1817 San Martín's Crossing of the Andes — 2 years earlier
- 1822 Independence of Brazil — 3 years later
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — 16 years later
Alive at the time
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (aged 70)
- Napoleon Bonaparte (aged 50)
- Ludwig van Beethoven (aged 49)
- Simón Bolívar (aged 36)
- Alexander Pushkin (aged 20)
- Charles Darwin (aged 10)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 10)
- Karl Marx (aged 1)
- Queen Victoria (aged 0)
- James Watt (aged 83)