1852
Uncle Tom's Cabin Published
Harriet Beecher Stowe's sentimental novel about the cruelties of slavery sold three hundred thousand copies in its first year and was translated into dozens of languages. Lincoln would famously - and probably falsely - greet her as "the little lady who started this great war." Whether or not, the book made abolition a moral fact.
Second Empire Proclaimed
A year to the day after his coup, Louis-Napoleon had himself proclaimed Emperor Napoleon III by plebiscite. A Bonaparte was back on a French throne, and the constitutional forms of the Second Republic were tidied away. The new regime would last eighteen years - spent in building boulevards, fighting small wars, and, finally, losing a big one.
Second Anglo-Burmese War
A trumped-up dispute at Rangoon gave the East India Company its excuse to take Lower Burma. The Royal Navy steamed up the Irrawaddy, shelled the forts, and annexed the rice-rich delta. The kingdom of Ava was reduced to its mountain heartland, and the British empire's Burmese frontier crept another notch north.
Douglass's Fourth of July
In Rochester, New York, Frederick Douglass delivered an address to the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society that asked, bluntly, "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?" His answer - a celebration of freedom he did not possess and a people's hypocrisy he could not forgive - became the greatest speech of the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement.
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Frequently asked
What happened in the year 1852?
Saeculum lists 4 curated events from 1852. The most significant is Uncle Tom's Cabin Published: Harriet Beecher Stowe's sentimental novel about the cruelties of slavery sold three hundred thousand copies in its first year and was translated into dozens…
What era was 1852 part of?
1852 falls within the Industrial Age (1801-1900). Steam, empire, and the unmaking of the old order.
Which regions saw notable events in 1852?
The curated events from 1852 span North America, Europe and Southeast Asia.