Second Opium War
British and French troops burn the Emperor's Summer Palace
The war began in 1856 with the Chinese seizure of the ship Arrow and ended with a British and French march on Beijing. In October 1860 they looted and burned the Yuanmingyuan, the Old Summer Palace, and under the Convention of Peking China opened more ports and legalised opium imports.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — 11 years earlier
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — 8 years earlier
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto — 8 years earlier
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species — 3 years later
- 1861 Unification of Italy — 5 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — 3 years earlier
- 1858 Treaty of Aigun — 2 years later
- 1861 Emancipation of the serfs in Russia — 5 years later
- 1864 End of the Caucasian War and the Circassian expulsion — 8 years later
- 1867 Alaska Purchase — 11 years later
Middle East
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — 17 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — 17 years earlier
- 1876–1878 The first Ottoman constitution — 20 years later
Africa
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — 21 years earlier
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — 9 years earlier
- 1869 Opening of the Suez Canal — 13 years later
- 1879 Battle of Isandlwana — 23 years later
Americas
- 1861–1865 American Civil War — 5 years later
- 1863 Emancipation Proclamation — 7 years later
- 1864–1870 Paraguayan War — 8 years later
- 1876 Invention of the telephone — 20 years later
- 1879 Edison's incandescent lamp — 23 years later
Oceania
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — 5 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Charles Darwin (aged 47)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 47)
- Karl Marx (aged 38)
- Queen Victoria (aged 37)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (aged 35)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 28)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 22)
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (aged 16)
- Thomas Edison (aged 9)
- Vincent van Gogh (aged 3)