1800-1876

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    Cape Frontier Wars

    The Xhosa Wars were a series of nine wars or flare-ups between the Xhosa Kingdom and encroaching European settlers in what is now the Eastern Cape in South Africa. These events were the longest-running military action in the history of European colonialism in Africa.
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    French revolutionary wars

    The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of large-scale military engagements that erupted in response to the French Revolution and lasted from 1792 until 1802. France was arrayed against the United Kingdom, Austria, the Holy Roman Empire, Prussia, Russia, and a number of other kingdoms.
  • War of the Oranges

    The War of the Oranges (1801) was a short battle between France and Spain and Portugal. Portugal's reluctance to accept Napoleon's demands in 1800 to become a political and economic extension of France and to relinquish the majority of its sovereign territory to France sparked the conflict.
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    Tripolitan War

    The First Barbary War, also known as the Tripolitan War, was a conflict between the United States and Tripoli (now Libya), sparked by the United States' refusal to pay tribute to the piratical rulers of the North African Barbary States of Algiers, Tunis, Morocco, and Tripoli. It lasted from 1801 to 1805.
  • The Louisiana Purchase

    The Louisiana Purchase effectively quadrupled the size of the United States, considerably strengthened the country physically and strategically, fueled westward development, and validated the federal Constitution's idea of implied powers.
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    Napoleonic Wars

    The Napoleonic Wars were a series of major conflicts from 1803 to 1815, pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon Bonaparte, against a fluctuating array of European powers formed into various coalitions, financed and usually led by the United Kingdom.
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    Second Maratha War

    The British won the second Maratha war, and three significant treaties were negotiated between the Maratha Empire and the British Empire between 1803 and 1805, in which the British reclaimed several Indian territories.
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    Black War

    The phrase "Black War" was attributed to warfare on the Australian island of Tasmania (then known as Van Diemen's Land) between Tasmanian Aboriginal people and British soldiers and settlers from 1804 to 1830, which almost resulted in the extinction of the island's Indigenous people.
  • The first commercial steamboat service established

    The Clermont, Robert Fulton's first American steamboat, set sail from New York City for Albany on August 17, 1807, marking the world's first commercial riverboat operation.
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    Peninsular War

    The Peninsular War (1807–1814) was the military conflict fought by Spain, the United Kingdom and Portugal against the invading and occupying forces of France for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars.
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    War of 1812

    The War of 1812 pitted the young United States in a war against Great Britain, from whom the American colonies had won their independence in 1783. The conflict was a byproduct of the broader conflict between Great Britain and France over who would dominate Europe and the wider world.
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    Creek War

    During the War of 1812, the United States defeated the Creek Indians, who were British allies, culminating in the cession of enormous swaths of land in Alabama and Georgia. The Mims Massacre sparked a fierce backlash from the Southern states.
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    Third Maratha War

    The final and definitive struggle between the British East India Company (EIC) and the Maratha Empire in India was the Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817–1819). During the battle, the Company gained control of the majority of India. The Pindaris, a gang of Muslim mercenaries and Marathas from central India, were targeted first.
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    War of Greek Independence

    The Greek Conflict of Freedom (1821–1829), often known as the Greek Revolution, was a victorious Greek war that granted Greece independence from the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the Greeks became the first of the Ottoman Empire's subject peoples to be recognized as a sovereign power.
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    Padri War

    Padri War, violent war in Minangkabau (Sumatra) between reformist Muslims known as Padris and local chieftains aided by the Dutch from 1821 until 1837. Pilgrims who invaded Sumatra through Pedir, a northern port, brought the puritan Wahhbyah sect of Islam to the island in the early nineteenth century.
  • Erie Canal is built

    The original Erie Canal, which ran 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo, was built between 1817 and 1825. It was North America's longest artificial canal and largest public works project. The canal established New York as the Empire State, with the most people, industry, and economic power.
  • Andrew Jackson elected president

    Andrew Jackson was an American lawyer, soldier, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Jackson rose to prominence as a general in the United States Army and served in both chambers of Congress before being elected to the president.
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    Naning War

    Naning War (1831–32), a failed British effort to extract tribute from the Minangkabau people of Naning, a Malay state near Malacca. In 1829, British authorities in Malacca requested one-tenth of Naning's yearly crop, claiming to have inherited a privilege formerly held by the Dutch.
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    Pastry War

    The Pastry War (1838–39) was a brief and small dispute between Mexico and France, sparked by a French pastry chef's assertion that several Mexican army soldiers had destroyed his shop in Tacubaya, near Mexico City.
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    Mexican-American War

    The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) marked the first U.S. armed conflict chiefly fought on foreign soil. It pitted a politically divided and militarily unprepared Mexico against the expansionist-minded administration of U.S. President James K.
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    Crimean War

    The Crimean War was a military war between Russia and an alliance of France, the Ottoman Empire, the United Kingdom, and Sardinia that lasted from October 1853 to February 1856. The rights of Christian minority in Palestine, which was part of the Ottoman Empire, were the direct cause of the war.
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    Bleeding Kansas

    Following the formation of the new territory of Kansas in 1854, there were periodic outbreaks of brutal guerrilla warfare between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. Between 1855 and 1859, a total of 55 persons were slain.
  • Civil war started

    Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, at 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861. Union soldiers surrendered less than 34 hours later. This day has traditionally been used to mark the start of the Civil War.
  • The Battle of Antietam

    Antietam, the worst single-day fight in American military history, demonstrated that the Union army in the Eastern theater could stand up to the Confederate army. It also provided President Abraham Lincoln the courage to release the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation when he was at his strongest, rather than when he was at his weakest.
  • Civil War ends

    In the spring of 1865, the conflict came to a conclusion. On April 9, 1865, in Appomattox Courthouse, Robert E. Lee surrendered the last significant Confederate army to Ulysses S. Grant. On May 13, 1865, the last fight was fought at Palmito Ranch in Texas.
  • Seven Weeks’ War

    Seven Weeks' War, also called Austro-Prussian War, (1866), war between Prussia on the one side and Austria, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, and certain minor German states on the other. It ended in a Prussian victory, which meant the exclusion of Austria from Germany.
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    Franco-German War

    The Franco-German Conflict (July 19, 1870–May 10, 1871), commonly known as the Franco-Prussian War, was a war in which a coalition of German powers commanded by Prussia conquered France. The war brought an end to French rule in continental Europe and the birth of a united Germany.
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    Acehnese War

    The Aceh War (Indonesian: Perang Aceh), also known as the Dutch War or the Infidel War (1873–1904), was an armed military conflict between the Sultanate of Aceh and the Kingdom of the Netherlands which was triggered by discussions between representatives of Aceh and the United States in Singapore during early 1873.
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    Red River Indian War

    The Red River War was a military operation conducted by the United States Army in 1874 to forcefully transfer Native American tribes such as the Comanche, Kiowa, Southern Cheyenne, and Arapaho from the Southern Plains to reservations in Indian Territory.