- South America
End of the long war
The Guerra Grande ends without outright victory, leaving Uruguay exhausted but independent and its two-party rivalry entrenched.
Era: Blancos, Colorados, and the Guerra Grande
Sources: Uruguay: The struggle for national identity · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- South America
Battle of Caseros
Justo Jose de Urquiza defeats Rosas at Caseros, opening the way to the constitutional organisation of the country.
Era: Civil Wars, Unification and the Liberal Republic
Sources: Justo Jose de Urquiza · Encyclopaedia Britannica, Argentina · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Africa
Boer attack on the Bakwena
Transvaal Boers attack Sechele's Bakwena and sack Livingstone's Kolobeng mission, part of mounting pressure from the Transvaal on Tswana land.
Era: Missionaries, Boers and Mounting Pressure
Sources: History of Botswana · Wikipedia
- Asia
Second Anglo-Burmese War
British forces annex Lower Burma, including the Irrawaddy delta and the province renamed Pegu, tightening control of the coastline.
Era: The Anglo-Burmese Wars and British Rule
Sources: Anglo-Burmese Wars · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- North America
William Walker's filibuster
Hired by León's Liberals, the American filibuster William Walker seizes Granada and makes himself president of Nicaragua in 1856 before a coalition of Central American states expels him.
Era: Independence, Rivalry, and the Filibuster
Sources: William Walker · Encyclopædia Britannica, Territorial Expansion, Filibustering, and U.S. Interest in Central America · U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian
- North America
National War against William Walker
Costa Rica joins Central America in defeating the American filibuster William Walker; the soldier Juan Santamaria becomes a national hero.
Era: Independence and a Coffee Republic
Sources: William Walker · Encyclopaedia Britannica, Juan Santamaria · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Europe
Southern Bessarabia briefly returned
The Treaty of Paris ending the Crimean War returned the southern strip of Bessarabia to Moldavia; Russia recovered it in 1878 at the Congress of Berlin, underlining the province's status as a contested borderland.
Era: Russian Bessarabia
Sources: Bessarabia · Encyclopaedia Britannica, Moldova: History · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Africa
Senekal's War with the Orange Free State
Conflict erupts with the Boers of the Orange Free State over land in the western lowlands, the first of the Free State–Basotho Wars.
Era: Moshoeshoe and the Birth of the Basotho
Sources: Lesotho: The Sotho kingdom (1824–69) · Encyclopaedia Britannica, History of Lesotho · Wikipedia
- Asia
French attack on Da Nang
A French and Spanish naval force assaults Da Nang, beginning the military conquest that would bring Vietnam under colonial rule.
Era: The Nguyen Dynasty and Expansion South
Sources: French Indochina / Conquest of Vietnam · Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vietnam · Encyclopaedia Britannica
- South America
The Federal War
A devastating civil war between Liberal federalists and Conservative centralists ravages the country and ends with the Treaty of Coche and a federal constitution.
Era: Caudillos, the Federal War and the Rise of Oil
Sources: Federal War (Venezuela, 1859-1863) · Encyclopedia.com (Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture), Venezuela · Encyclopaedia Britannica
War & Rupture in the 1850s
Every event in the Terralore archive tagged war and rupture — wars, invasions, conquests, battles and armed conflict, narrowed to the 1850s — 10 of them, drawn from 10 nations, running from 1851 to 1859. Each entry keeps the sources it was verified against and links back to the chronicle it came from.
- Events
- 10
- Nations
- 10
- Earliest
- 1851
- Latest
- 1859
- South America
- 3
- Africa
- 2
- Asia
- 2
- North America
- 2
- Europe
- 1
Every entry below is the same record, with the same sources, as the one on its nation’s chronicle.