Commodore Perry's Black Ships
American steamships' guns force open a closed Japan
In July 1853 four American ships under Commodore Matthew Perry, smoking and painted black, entered Edo Bay and demanded that Japan open to trade. Perry returned half a year later with a stronger squadron, and in March 1854 the shogunate signed the Convention of Kanagawa, opening two ports. Japan's two centuries of seclusion were over, and the shogunate itself soon fell.
Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — 8 years earlier
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — 5 years earlier
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — 5 years earlier
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — 6 years later
- 1861 Unification of Italy — 8 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — same year
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — 8 years later
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — 14 years later
- 1869 Tolstoy's War and Peace — 16 years later
- 1877 Premiere of Swan Lake — 24 years later
Middle East
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — 25 years earlier
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — 14 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — 14 years earlier
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — 23 years later
Africa
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — 18 years earlier
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — 6 years earlier
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — 16 years later
Americas
- 1846 First public demonstration of ether anaesthesia — 7 years earlier
- 1846–1848 Mexican–American War — 7 years earlier
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — 8 years later
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — 10 years later
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — 23 years later
Oceania
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — 2 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Charles Darwin (aged 44)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 44)
- Karl Marx (aged 35)
- Queen Victoria (aged 34)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (aged 32)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 25)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 19)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (aged 13)
- Thomas Edison (aged 6)
- Vincent van Gogh (aged 0)