1899
Second Boer War
Paul Kruger's Transvaal issued an ultimatum; the British ignored it; war began that evening. What London expected to be a short campaign became a three-year slog involving 450,000 imperial troops, Boer commandos, concentration camps, and a quarter-million dead. British imperial confidence did not quite survive it. Emily Hobhouse's reports on concentration camp conditions shocked liberal opinion and foreshadowed the humanitarian interventionism of the next century.
Philippine-American War
Filipino independence fighters under Emilio Aguinaldo, who had helped the Americans take Manila from the Spanish, turned on their erstwhile allies when it became clear that independence was not on offer. The war that followed would last three years and kill over two hundred thousand Filipinos. It is mostly forgotten in America. It is not forgotten there.
Boxer Rebellion Begins
In Shandong, members of a martial-arts society who called themselves the Righteous and Harmonious Fists - Boxers to foreigners - began attacking missionaries and Chinese Christians. Cixi, seeing an opportunity, encouraged them. Within a year they would besiege the Beijing legations, and eight foreign powers would march on the Chinese capital.
Aspirin Marketed
The Bayer company of Elberfeld began selling acetylsalicylic acid under the brand name Aspirin, based on a compound first synthesized in a stable form by Felix Hoffmann two years earlier. It was cheap, effective for pain and fever, and had no obvious downsides. It would become the most widely used drug in human history.
Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class
A Wisconsin economist named Thorstein Veblen published a savage study of the consumption habits of the American rich, coining the term 'conspicuous consumption.' Gilded-Age mansions, opera boxes, and absurd hats were, he argued, archaic tribal signals. Half the social criticism of the twentieth century would draw on the book. His prose style - deadpan, Germanic, lethally ironic - made the book a pleasure to read as well as a weapon to quote.
First Hague Convention
At the invitation of Tsar Nicholas II, delegates from twenty-six nations met at the Hague and agreed to prohibit dum-dum bullets, poison gas, and bombardment from balloons. They also set up a Permanent Court of Arbitration. Fifteen years later, Europe would violate every one of these provisions on an industrial scale.
Open Door Notes
US Secretary of State John Hay circulated notes to the great powers asking them to respect equal commercial access to China within their spheres of influence. The powers responded with polite evasion, which Hay took as assent. The Open Door policy would govern - or at least describe - American thinking on China for fifty years.