Little reminder of the changes of the world impressionists witnessed

• Railway tracks spread across Europe (human beings to agree on what time it is not to miss the train, before time was local, depending when was 12h in your town). Tourism and commuting become possible and kind of a thing.

• The telegraph allows information to travel. And information crosses frontiers, you can know what's happening in the world almost in real time, before it would take 2 weeks to bring news from across the Atlantic. The world seems bigger (than your town). 

• EEUU civil war (1861-1865), people fighting about the expansion of slavery. In 1865, big news, no more slavery -EEUU wondering what are they’re going to do with four million formerly enslaved people. Meanwhile Ku Klux Klan kicking as*es.

• Japan is undergoing the Meiji Restoration (from 1868), one of the fastest programs of modernization in history that makes the country go from an isolated feudal of regional samurai society to a modern industrial state capable of competing with Western powers Within the lifetime of one generation (instead of being colonized by them).

• About colonies, Southeast Asia contains everything from British Singapore and the Dutch East Indies to French expansion in Vietnam and an independent Siam (Thailand) trying to modernize quickly enough to avoid colonization too.

• Most of Africa has not yet been colonized by European powers. African kingdoms, empires and political systems still control much of the continent (btw they started african slavery).  

• In 1869, the Suez Canal opens, shortening the maritime route between Europe and Asia.

• Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone (1876).

• Industrialization: more goods at lower cost. You don't merely buy what you need, you go somewhere to look at things you might want. Consumer's modernity.