Many international events in the 19th century had paved the way to the independence of our country from Spain. After Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815, bringing an end to the Napoleonic Wars, the United Kingdom from the merged Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland controlled almost a quarter of the world’s population and one-third of the land area. This British empire enformed a Pax Britannica, encouraged trade, and fought widespread piracy. But at the end of the century, New Imperialism emerged.
Slavery was also discouraged around the world. There was a successful slave revolt in Haiti and slavery in America (1820) and serfdom in Russia (1851) was also abolished. In the 1810’s to 1820’s, most of the Latin American colonies at that time freed themselves from their Spanish or Portuguese Empires after the Mexican War of Independence and the South American Wars of Independence. Greece and Uruguay also gained their own independence from their colonizers during the 1820’s and Belgium, Columbia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica also followed in the 1830’s. The British Empire then had banned slavery using the Slavery Abolition Act enacted in 1833.
During the 1940s, revolutions were rampant in Europe and new countries had formed from treaties like the foundation of New Zealand with the Treaty of Waitangi. In 1848, the The Communist Manifesto was also published. Social turmoil increased in China during the Taiping Rebellion when it was considered as the bloodiest conflict of the century. Wars and rebellions continued, creating worldwide violence and massive deaths.
The Second Industrial Revolution, fueled by electricity, steel and petroleum, also started in this century which made the German Empire, Japan, and the United States to become internationally powerful that raced to create their own empires. However, China’s Qing Dynasty and Russia experienced a massive social unrest during the Opium Wars that made them fail to keep pace with these other world powers. The Gilded Age started in 1876 where there was massive expansion in population, territory, industry and wealth of the United States. In 1884-1885, the attending nations of the Berlin Conference agreed to totally ban slavery. Slavery in Brazil was then banned and it was then the beginning of the Brazilian Republic. In Asia during the 1890’s, China ceded Taiwan to Japan and granted Japan a free hand in Korea. At that time when the United States had gained control to the Philippines, it had also gained control of Cuba and Puerto Rico. At the same time again, the One Thousand Days War in Colombia broke out between the “Liberales” and “Conservadores”, culminating the loss of Panama.
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