The Civil World Trivia Quiz

Answer: 1861

The Edict of Emancipation was the first major reform carried out by Emperor Alexander II of Russia. It granted full civil rights to peasants who had been tied to either the land or the household of the gentry. This was over a third of the population, so it was a very significant change! Those who were tied to the land were given the right to purchase their land, although this proved problematic, as most of them could not purchase enough to actually sustain themselves, so unrest continued. But capitalism thrived, and local government grew to be a more potent social force than it had been, weakening the autocratic structure.

Also in 1861, Wilhelm I (later to be the first ruler of Germany, in 1871) succeeded his brother Frederick Wilhelm IV as Kaiser of Prussia, Victor Emmanuel was proclaimed as the first King of Italy, and Benito Juárez became President of Mexico (the first indigenous head of state in North America). Queen Victoria lost both her mother and her husband during the year. In March, an earthquake completely destroyed the Argentinian city of Mendoza.

Answer: 1861

The Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett (1806-1861) was disinherited by her father when she married the poet Robert Browning. She started writing poems at the age of four, and the volume she published in 1844 drew Browning's attention, and romance bloomed. They moved to the continent, living primarily in Italy for the duration of their marriage.

Also in 1861, the Royal Seminary of Sweden opened its doors to women; the first Melbourne Cup was run; a steam-powered carousel opened in Bolton, England; Sir William Crookes discovered thallium; the first issue of 'L'Osservatore Romano' (the Vatican's newspaper) was published; the first Archaeopteryx skeleton was discovered;the Pony Express closed after 18 months of operation, following the completion of a transcontinental telegraph line; and Rabindranath Tagore, Bengali poet and musician (and more) who was the first non-European awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, was born.

Answer: 1862

The Second French Intervention in Mexico (1861-1867) involved the Second French Empire invading the Second Federal Republic of Mexico to support the conservative forces in their civil war. It did succeed in displacing Benito Juárez and installing the Austrian Archduke Maximilian I as Emperor in 1864, it all collapsed when the French withdrew, and Juárez was restored. The Battle of Puebla took place early on (5 May 1962, to be precise), with outnumbered Mexican forces successfully defending the city against the French. The victory was shortlived (the city was taken by a different set of troops on 17 May), but it provided a morale boost to the Mexican army. While most Mexicans no longer consider this a major event (except in the Puebla area), it has become a day when Americans of Mexican heritage celebrate their culture.

Otto von Bismark became Chancellor President (Prime Minister) of Prussia in September, and a week later delivered his famous 'Blut un Eisen' (Blood and Iron) speech urging the unification of Germany.
Speaking of Otto, the Bavarian prince Otto was deposed as King of Greece, a position he had held since the monarchy was established when he was 17. Following the coup that ousted him, the Greeks elected Prince William of Denmark (another 17-year-old) to reign as George I. Meanwhile, in what is now South Africa the Transvaal Civil War, a series of battles between factions of Boers who favoured the continuation of multiple independent Boer republics and factions favouring union, began.

Answer: 1862

Sarah Bernhardt was the stage name of Henriette-Rosine Bernard (1824-1923), who starred in some of the most famous French plays of the 19th and early 20th centuries. She became internationally known because of her numerous world tours (undertaken every few years to raise money when she ran short), including no fewer than four American Farewell Tours between 1905 and 1981. A leg injury that never completely healed led to amputation in 1915, but she performed on!

1862 was an eventful year in the world of the arts. It was during that summer that Lewis Carroll took a boat trip from Oxford to Godstow, accompanied by the Liddell sisters. During the journey, he regaled them with the creation of a story that was to become 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland', published in 1865. Victor Hugo's epic novel 'Les Misérables' was published (two volumes in Brussels on March 30 or 31 and in Paris on April 3, the final volumes on May 15). And the year saw the birth of American author Edith Wharton (Pulitzer Prize winner for her novel 'The Age of Innocence'), Austrian artist Gustav Klimt ('The Kiss') and French composer Claude Debussy, whose symphonic poem 'L'après-midi d'un faune' ('Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun'), inspired by a Stéphane Mallarmé poem of that name, is considered both a masterpiece of musical Impressionism and the start of Modernism.

Answer: 1863

Siam (later to be known as Thailand) and Vietnam spent a number of years fighting for control of Cambodia during the 19th century. Following the Siamese-Vietnamese War of 1841-1845, the two countries agreed to joint control. In 1860 Ang Voddey was elected king, taking the regnal name of Norodom, but did not gain actual control until he had convinced the French to establish Cambodia as a separate protectorate, as part of the colonial jigsaw that was French Indochina. The protectorate remained in place until 1953, when King Norodom Sihanouk (who had been appointed by the French because he was young, and they erroneously thought he would be pliable) gained independence for his country.

1863 saw the start of the January Uprising in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus, a movement acting mainly in Poland, attempting to restore the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and remove it from control by Russia. The last insurgents were killed/captured in 1864. Polish independence was not reestablished until 1918, following 123 years under the control of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia.

Speaking of Austria-Hungary, December of 1863 witnessed the birth of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in 1914 was one of the events triggering the conflict that is now known as World War I.

Answer: 1863

Jules Verne (1828-1905) is best known for his adventure novels, which are often classified as science fiction because he incorporated the latest technological advances, and often anticipated future developments on the basis of what he saw. Many of his more important works were not translated into English at the time, so his impact on French literature was not fully appreciated by those who only saw (often abridged versions of) such classics as 'Journey to the Center of the Earth' (1864), 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas' (1870), and 'Around the World in Eighty Days' (1872). 'Five Weeks in a Balloon, or, A Journey of Discovery by Three Englishmen in Africa' contained many of the elements of his later work, including travel to unfamiliar locations (this was the time of the search for the source of the Nile, and Africa provoked much interest) and lots of plot twists. Its popular success set him up financially.

What else happened in 1863? The first section of the London Underground was officially opened, the International Red Cross Committee was established, the first horses ran in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, and Samuel Clemens first adopted the pen name Mark Twain. The Salon des Refusés in Paris (an exhibition of works that had been rejected by the official Paris Salon) included Édouard Manet's controversial 'Déjeuner sur l'herbe'.

Answer: 1864

Also known as the Dano-Prussian War, this was the second attempt to resolve a complex set of issues involving the relationships between the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, and their joint and individual relationships to the Danish crown and the German Confederation. It began when Prussian and Austrian forces invaded the Danish duchy of Schleswig in February of 1864, and ended in October when the Treaty of Vienna ceded the two duchies to Prussia and Austria. In 1866, those two fought the Austro-Prussian War, leaving Prussia in control of the disputed territory.

There were several other conflicts resolved in 1964. Britain ceded the Ionian Islands to Greece in May, ending a protectorate that had been in place since the Treaty of Paris in 1815. The islands had been agitating for union with Greece, and since the new Greek king (well, the Danish king of Greece) was a British supporter, this seemed an appropriate time for the change.

In July, the Battle of Nanking effectively ended the Taiping Rebellion, in which the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom sought to overthrow the ruling Qing dynasty in China, although some further skirmishes continued until 1871. The rebellion started in 1850, and left over 20 million dead by the time the last rebels were killed.

Answer: 1864

One of the first projects of the International Committe of the Red Cross, established in 1863, was
the first Geneva Convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field". This first convention (later to be revised in 1906, 1929 and 1949) was signed by representatives of twelve countries on 22 August 1864. By the end of the 20th century, virtually every nation had signed to at least some parts of the various Conventions and Protocols. Henry Dunant's role in establishing the Red Cross and getting agreement to the Geneva Convention to provide protection for non-combatants during a time of war led to him being the recipient of the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.

1864 also saw Louis Pasteur develop a process to prevent microbial growth in wine without damaging the quality of the beverage, known as pasteurisation. It involved raising the temperature of the liquid to a critical temperature for a short time before aging it. Originally used for beer and wines, it is now more familiar to most for its use in processing milk to keep it from spoiling. A modification called UHT uses a higher temperature for a few seconds, to produce milk with a non-refrigerated shelf life of several months.

For cricket fans, 1864 is notable as the year when John Wisden published 'The Cricketer's Almanack for the year 1864'. It went on to be an annual publication of cricketing statistics and commentary, usually just called 'Wisden', and nicknamed 'The Bible of Cricket'.

Answer: 1865

The Duars or Dooars (Bengali for door) are floodplains in northeast India where there are 18 passages connecting Bhutan and India. Bhutan had taken control of the region around 1300 CE, and Britain gained control following a conflict whose origins are obscured by political rhetoric. The British claimed that the Bhutanese were using the region as a basis for attacking the British Raj, while Bhutan saw that as a pretext for imperial expansion. War was declared in November of 1864, and in November of 1865 the Treaty of Sinchula ceded the region to the British, in return for an annual subsidy.

The Paraguayan War started in 1864, as a conflict between Paraguay and Brazil over the Uruguayan War (1864-1865), which had led to a change of regime in Uruguay. Paraguay had supported the losing regime. When Argentina entered the conflict in 1865 it became known as the War of the Triple Alliance, which ended in 1870 when the final guerilla resistance from the defeated Paraguayans came to an end.

In 1865 the Chincha Islands War started. This series of mostly naval battles between Spain and the former Spanish colonies of Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia lasted until 1879. It was started by the Spanish seizure of the Chincha Islands (off the coast of Chile) in 1864. Ultimately, the Spanish were forced to withdraw.

Answer: 1865

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's famous boat trip from 1862 led to the publication of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland', using the pen name Lewis Carroll, in 1865. The development of his pen name reflects the workings of his mind: Charles Lutwidge can be translated into Latin as Carolus Ludovicus; Ludovicus becomes Lewis when Anglicized, and Carroll is an Irish surname related to Carolus. So Charles Lutwidge became Lewis Carroll, a pseudonym he first used in 1856 when publishing a poem called 'Solitude'.

The American author Mary Mapes Dodgson published her classic 'Hans Brinker; or, the Silver Skates: A Story of Life in Holland' in 1865. As well as portraying life in the Netherlands during the early part of the 19th century, this book is responsible for the story-within-a-story of the young boy who plugged the hole in a dyke with his finger, saving his town from inundation despite the overnight cold before adults discovered him and made a proper repair.

Meanwhile, in Russia, an early version Leo Tolstoy's masterpiece 'War and Peace', with the working title of 'The Year 1805', began publication as a serial in 'The Russian Messenger'. Tolstoy performed a lot of revision, including the title change, before publishing the full book in 1869.