Directory

1832 CE

November 24: U.S. state of South Carolina begins Nullification Crisis by asserting power to nullify U.S. government laws.

Geopolitics & Diplomacy

  • February 6 – The Swan River Colony is renamed Western Australia.source
  • February 9 – The Florida Legislative Council grants a city charter for Jacksonville, Florida.source
  • February 12 – Ecuador annexes the Galápagos Islands.source
  • May 7 – The Treaty of London creates an independent Kingdom of Greece. Otto of Wittelsbach, Prince of Bavaria, is chosen King; thus begins the history of modern Greece.source
  • May 11 – Greece is recognized as a sovereign nation; the Treaty of Constantinople ends the Greek War of Independence in July.source
  • June 7 – The Reform Act receives royal assent after passage by the British Parliament, reforming the electoral system and setting uniform law for voting rights in England and Wales, though not in Scotland or Ireland.source
  • October 20 – Principal Chief Levi Colbert (Itawamba Mingo) and other leaders of the Chickasaw Nation of American Indians sign the Treaty of Pontotoc Creek with the United States, ceding their remaining 9,400 square miles of land to the U.S., in return for a promise that they will receive all proceeds of sales of the land by the federal government to private owners, along with expenses for relocation and food and supplies for one year. The area ceded includes the entire northern one-sixth of the state of Mississippi.source
  • December 3 – 1832 United States presidential election: Andrew Jackson is re-elected president.source
  • December 28 – John C. Calhoun becomes the first Vice President of the United States to resign.source
  • George Catlin starts to live among the Sioux in the Dakota Territory.source

Conflict & Security

  • January 13 – The Christmas Rebellion of slaves is brought to an end in Jamaica, after the island's white planters organize militias and the British Army sends companies of the 84th regiment to enforce martial law. More than 300 of the slave rebels will be publicly hanged for their part in the destruction.source
  • March 24 – In Hiram, Ohio, a group of men beat, tar and feather Mormon leader Joseph Smith.source
  • April 6 – The Black Hawk War begins in the United States.source
  • May 10 – The Egyptians, aided by Maronites, seize Acre from the Ottoman Empire after a 7-month siege.source
  • June 5–6 – The June Rebellion in France, anti-monarchist riots led chiefly by local students and workers, breaks out in Paris.source
  • July 9 – The Commissioner of Indian Affairs post is created within the United States Department of War.source
  • August 2 – The Bad Axe Massacre ends the last major Native American rebellion east of the Mississippi in the United States.source
  • August 27 – Black Hawk (Sauk leader) surrenders to the United States authorities, ending the Black Hawk War.source
  • September 22 – Qasim al-Ahmad is appointed as the new Ottoman Governor (mutasallim) of Jerusalem (Kudüs), after Sultan Mahmud II dismisses Muhammad Said Agha.source
  • December 4 – Siege of Antwerp: The last remaining Dutch stronghold, Antwerp Citadel, comes under French attack in the aftermath of the Belgian Revolution.source
  • December 21 – Battle of Konya: The Egyptians defeat the main Ottoman army in central Anatolia.source
  • December 23 – The Siege of Antwerp ends with the Dutch garrison losing the citadel.source
  • Publication begins (posthumously) of Carl von Clausewitz's Vom Kriege ("On War").source

Exploration & Expansion

  • February 28 – Charles Darwin and the crew of arrive at South America for the first time.source
  • May 16 – Juan Godoy discovers the rich silver outcrops of Chañarcillo sparking the Chilean silver rush.source
  • July 10 – The United States Survey of the Coast is revived within the Department of the Treasury.source
  • A local guide working for British explorer B. H. Hodgson during a Himalayan expedition claimed to have spotted a large bipedal creature running away in fear. It would become the first sighting of the so-called Yeti.source

Religion & Belief

  • August 7 – William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, has his coach attacked by an angry mob on his first official visit to Canterbury because of his opposition to the Reform Act in the United Kingdom.source

Economy & Finance

  • July 1 – Global conglomerate Jardine Matheson is founded in Canton (modern day Guangzhou) in Qing dynasty China by Scottish merchants.source
  • November 24 – Nullification Crisis: The U.S. state of South Carolina passes the Ordinance of Nullification, challenging the power of the U.S. federal government, by declaring that it will not enforce national tariffs signed into law in 1828 and 1832.source
  • December 10 – U.S. President Andrew Jackson responds to the Nullification Crisis by threatening to send the U.S. Army and Navy into South Carolina if it does not comply.source
  • The City of Buffalo in New York is incorporated.source
  • Global watch brand Longines is founded in Switzerland.source

Technology & Infrastructure

  • May 30 – The Rideau Canal in eastern Ontario (Canada) is opened.source
  • June 9 – The Strasburg Rail Road is incorporated by the Pennsylvania State Legislature, making it the oldest continuously operating railroad in the Western Hemisphere.source
  • October 4 – Prince Otto of Bavaria, the second oldest son of King Ludwig I, is selected by Europe's major powers to become Othon, the first King of Greece, after the Hellenic nation's reacquisition of independence.source
  • The Cumberland and Oxford Canal connects the largest lakes of southern Maine with the seaport of Portland, Maine.source
  • The first commutator DC electric motor, capable of turning machinery, is demonstrated by William Sturgeon in London.source

Science & Discovery

  • July 2 – André-Michel Guerry presents his Essay on moral statistics of France to the French Academy of Sciences, a significant step in the founding of empirical social science.source

Health & Medicine

  • February 12 – A cholera epidemic in London claims at least 3,000 lives; the contagion spreads to France and North America later this year.source

Culture & Society

  • January 6 – Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison founds the New-England Anti-Slavery Society.source
  • February 26 — Frédéric Chopin made his highly anticipated Paris debut on at the Salle Pleyel. The concert featured his own Piano Concerto in E Minor and Variations on 'Là ci darem la mano', and was attended by the city's musical and cultural elite, including Franz Liszt and Felix Mendelssohn. The concert would catapult him as one of the most popular composers in not only Paris but all of Europe.source
  • May 30 – The Hambacher Fest, a demonstration for civil liberties and national unity in Germany, ends with no result.source
  • July 4 – Durham University is founded in the north of England by an act of Parliament given royal assent by King William IV.source
  • August 9 – Leopold I of Belgium marries the daughter of the French king Louise of Orléans in a dynastic marriage at the Château de Compiègnesource
  • October 29 - Alpha Delta Phi, the sixth-oldest college fraternity, is founded as a literary society by Samuel Eells at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.source
  • November 21 – Wabash College, a small, private, liberal arts college for men, is founded.source
  • The first Baedeker guidebook, Voyage du Rhin de Mayence à Cologne, is published in Koblenz.source

Births

  • February 21 – Louis Maurer, German-American lithographer, and the father of painter Alfred Henry Maurer (d. 1932)source
  • March 10 – John Owen Dominis, prince consort of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi as the husband of Queen Liliʻuokalani (d. 1891)source
  • April 8 – Howell Edmunds Jackson, American politician, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (d. 1895)source
  • April 19 – Lucretia Garfield, First Lady of the United States (d. 1918)source
  • June 21 – Joseph Rainey, American politician, first black person in the House of Representatives (d. 1887)source
  • August 9 – Alexander von Monts, officer in the Prussian Navy and later the German Imperial Navy (d. 1889)source
  • August 16 – Wilhelm Wundt, German physiologist, philosopher, and professor, and pioneer of modern psychology (d. 1920)source
  • August 26 – Charles DeRudio, Italian aristocrat and U.S. Army officer (d. 1910)source
  • September 22 – John Smith, nephew of Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the fifth Presiding Patriarch of LDS Church (d. 1911)source
  • October 1 – Caroline Harrison, First Lady of the United States (d. 1892)source
  • October 1 – Henry Clay Work, American composer and songwriter (d. 1884)source
  • November 9 – Émile Gaboriau, French writer, novelist, journalist, and a pioneer of detective fiction (d. 1873)source
  • December 8 – Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Norwegian author, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1910)source
  • December 27 – Thomas Blakiston, English explorer, zoologist, and naturalist. (d. 1891)source

Deaths

  • February 2 – Ignacio López Rayón, leader of the Mexican War of Independence (b. 1773)source
  • February 3 – George Crabbe, English poet and naturalist (b. 1754)source
  • March 4 – Jean-François Champollion, French Egyptologist (b. 1790)source
  • May 13 – Georges Cuvier, French zoologist (b. 1769)source
  • May 31 – Évariste Galois, French mathematician (b. 1811)source
  • June 1 – Jean Maximilien Lamarque, French general and politician (b. 1770)source
  • June 6 – Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher (b. 1748)source
  • August 24 – Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, French military engineer and physicist (b. 1796)source
  • September 27 – Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, German philosopher (b. 1781)source
  • November 8 – Marie-Jeanne de Lalande, French astronomer and mathematician (b. 1768)source
  • November 12 – Henry Eckford, Scottish-born American shipbuilder, naval architect, industrial engineer, and entrepreneur (b. 1775)source
  • November 14 – Charles Carroll of Carrollton, signer of the United States Declaration of Independence and U.S. Senator (b. 1737)source
  • November 15 – Jean-Baptiste Say, French economist, originator of Say's law (b. 1767)source
  • December 29 – James Hillhouse, American politician and congressman from Connecticut, 1791 until 1810 (b. 1754)source