Liberia declares independence
Africa's first republic, founded by descendants of slaves
From 1822 the American Colonization Society settled freed Black Americans on the West African coast. On 26 July 1847 the colony declared independence, with Virginia-born Joseph Jenkins Roberts as first president. Liberia became Africa's first republic, though for more than a century power stayed with the Americo-Liberian minority, sidelining indigenous peoples.
Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1839 Birth of photography: the daguerreotype — 8 years earlier
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — 2 years earlier
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — 1 year later
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — 1 year later
- 1861 Unification of Italy — 14 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — 6 years later
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — 14 years later
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — 20 years later
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — 22 years later
Middle East
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — 19 years earlier
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — 8 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — 8 years earlier
Asia
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — 16 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — 8 years earlier
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — 6 years later
- 1868 Meiji Restoration — 21 years later
Americas
- 1835 Darwin in the Galápagos — 12 years earlier
- 1838–1839 Trail of Tears — 9 years earlier
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — 1 year earlier
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — 1 year earlier
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — 14 years later
Oceania
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — 4 years later
Alive at the time
- Charles Darwin (aged 38)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 38)
- Karl Marx (aged 29)
- Queen Victoria (aged 28)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (aged 26)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 19)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 13)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (aged 7)
- Thomas Edison (aged 0)
- Katsushika Hokusai (aged 87)