THE WORLD ATLAS

Chapter · Age of Revolutions

Waterloo and the Vienna Settlement

The world in 1815

The world of 1815 is catching its breath after more than twenty years of revolutionary and Napoleonic war. Napoleon's final gamble ended at Waterloo in June, and he has been shipped to the remote island of St Helena.

At the Congress of Vienna the victors, Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia, have redrawn Europe's map to restore kings and keep France in check, aiming for a balance of power that will largely hold for a century. Britain emerges as the unrivalled master of the seas and is tightening its grip on India. Qing China, under the Jiaqing Emperor, is still the world's largest economy, but strains are showing. In the Americas, Spain's empire is crumbling as independence wars rage from Mexico to Argentina, while the young United States has just ended its war with Britain. In April the eruption of Tambora in Indonesia, the most powerful in recorded history, threw ash into the sky that will cause the 'Year Without a Summer' in 1816. Most people everywhere still live as farmers, but steam engines and factories are spreading through Britain.

Open the map in 1815

The great powers

Region by region

Southern Africa

Britain holds the Cape Colony, seized from the Dutch in 1806 and formally ceded in 1814, where Dutch-speaking farmers (Boers) and Xhosa clash on the eastern frontier. Among the Nguni to the east, Dingiswayo's Mthethwa confederacy dominates, and a young commander named Shaka is about to found the Zulu kingdom. Portugal clings to coastal Angola and Mozambique, Radama I is uniting Madagascar under the Merina kingdom, and the Omani sultan Said bin Sultan holds Zanzibar and claims the Swahili coast, though Mombasa resists him until 1837. Inland, kingdoms such as the Lozi, Lunda and Kazembe trade in ivory, copper and slaves.

Northern Africa

Egypt is ruled by Muhammad Ali, nominally an Ottoman governor but in practice an independent modernising strongman. Along the Barbary Coast, the Ottoman regencies of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli live partly from piracy, which the United States punished in a brief war in 1815, while Sultan Mulay Slimane rules Morocco. In West Africa, Usman dan Fodio's jihad has created the vast Sokoto Caliphate (the 'Fulani Empire'), and the Asante kingdom under Osei Bonsu dominates the forest zone. Ethiopia is splintered in the 'Era of the Princes', with powerless emperors and feuding regional lords.

Europe

The Congress of Vienna restores Louis XVIII to the French throne and creates a German Confederation of 39 states led by Austria's Emperor Francis I and his minister Metternich. Prussia, under Frederick William III, gains the Rhineland; Tsar Alexander I of Russia takes most of Poland as its king; and a new United Kingdom of the Netherlands joins Holland and Belgium under William I. Britain, under the ailing George III and his son the Prince Regent, keeps Malta and other strategic islands. Italy is divided among Austria (Lombardy-Venetia), the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Papal States under Pius VII, and the restored Bourbon kingdom of Naples and Sicily.

Middle East & South Asia

Sultan Mahmud II rules the Ottoman Empire from Constantinople, from the Balkans through Anatolia to Iraq and the Hejaz, though local strongmen act freely. Persia is ruled by Fath-Ali Shah of the Qajar dynasty, which has recently lost Georgia and much of the Caucasus to Russia. In central Arabia the first Saudi-Wahhabi state, under Abdullah bin Saud, is under attack from Egyptian armies sent by the Ottomans. In India the British East India Company, under Governor-General Lord Moira (Hastings), dominates through direct rule and princely alliances; the Mughal emperor Akbar II is a pensioner in Delhi, the Maratha Peshwa is on the verge of final defeat, and Ranjit Singh's Sikh kingdom rules the Punjab.

Northern & Central Asia

Russia rules all of Siberia to the Pacific and claims overlordship of the Kazakh hordes of the northern steppe. Further south, the Uzbek khanates of Khiva, Bukhara and Kokand rule the old Silk Road oases of Transoxiana. Qing China holds Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin (later called Xinjiang), conquered in the 1750s, through garrisons and local Muslim nobles.

East Asia

The Qing dynasty, under the Jiaqing Emperor, rules China, Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang, the largest extent China has ever reached, but faces rebellions, corruption and a growing opium trade. Japan remains largely closed to the outside world under the Tokugawa shogun Ienari, with Emperor Kokaku a ceremonial figure in Kyoto. Korea's Joseon dynasty, under King Sunjo, is a loyal Qing tributary, and Tibet is ruled by Buddhist regents under Qing supervision.

Southeast Asia

Mainland Southeast Asia is dominated by three strong kingdoms: Siam under King Rama II (Rattanakosin dynasty, capital Bangkok), Burma under King Bodawpaya (Konbaung dynasty), and Vietnam, recently unified by Emperor Gia Long of the Nguyen dynasty. Cambodia is squeezed between Siam and Vietnam. Java is temporarily under British rule (Stamford Raffles) but will be returned to the Dutch in 1816; Spain rules the Philippines, and Britain holds Penang and Malacca. In April 1815 Mount Tambora on Sumbawa erupted, killing tens of thousands.

Northern North America

British North America consists of Upper and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland, which have just survived American invasions in the War of 1812. The Hudson's Bay Company and its rival the North West Company control the fur trade across the vast interior of Rupert's Land. Russia's Russian-American Company runs Alaska from Sitka under Alexander Baranov, and Denmark holds Greenland. Most of the north is still the homeland of First Nations and Inuit peoples.

Southern North America

The United States, under President James Madison, has 18 states and stretches to the Rocky Mountains through the Louisiana Purchase; the War of 1812 ended with the Treaty of Ghent and Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans. Spain's Viceroyalty of New Spain, under Viceroy Felix Maria Calleja, has captured and executed the rebel priest Jose Maria Morelos, temporarily crushing Mexico's independence movement. Spain still holds Cuba, Puerto Rico and Florida, Britain has Jamaica and many smaller islands, and Haiti is split between King Henri Christophe in the north and President Alexandre Petion in the south.

Northern South America

Brazil is the seat of the Portuguese monarchy, which fled Napoleon in 1807: Prince Regent Joao rules from Rio de Janeiro for his mother Queen Maria I, and in December 1815 Brazil was raised to a kingdom equal to Portugal. In the north, a Spanish army under Pablo Morillo is reconquering Venezuela and New Granada, while Simon Bolivar writes his famous 'Jamaica Letter' in exile. The Viceroyalty of Peru under Viceroy Abascal remains a royalist stronghold. Britain has taken the Dutch colonies of Demerara and Essequibo, while the Dutch keep Suriname.

Southern Cone

The United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, centred on Buenos Aires, have been self-governing since 1810 under juntas, triumvirates and, from 1814, Supreme Directors and will formally declare independence in 1816. Chile has been reconquered by Spanish royalists after the Battle of Rancagua (1814), while Jose de San Martin trains an army in Mendoza to cross the Andes. Paraguay is ruled by the reclusive dictator Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, and Jose Artigas leads the Banda Oriental (future Uruguay). The Pampas, Patagonia and southern Chile remain in the hands of Mapuche, Tehuelche and other Indigenous peoples.

Australasia & Oceania

The British penal colony of New South Wales, under Governor Lachlan Macquarie, is growing beyond Sydney, with outposts in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania); the rest of Australia is the land of hundreds of Aboriginal nations. In New Zealand, Maori iwi remain fully independent, though missionaries and traders have arrived and muskets are fuelling intertribal wars. Kamehameha I rules a united Kingdom of Hawaii, and Papuan peoples occupy New Guinea, whose western coast the Dutch loosely claim.

Events

  1. Napoleon's invasion of Russia ends in catastrophe; the War of 1812 begins between Britain and the United States
  2. Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba; the Treaty of Ghent ends the War of 1812
  3. Mount Tambora erupts in Indonesia, the largest eruption in recorded history
  4. Congress of Vienna completes its settlement of Europe
  5. Napoleon is defeated at Waterloo by Wellington and Blucher and exiled to St Helena
  6. Spanish forces execute Mexican rebel leader Jose Maria Morelos
  7. Argentina declares independence; the 'Year Without a Summer' brings famine to Europe and North America

Moments of this period

Wars of this period

More chapters

Sources