What happened in 1848

World4

• Jan 3Joseph Jenkins Roberts is sworn in as the first president of the independent African Republic of Liberia.
• May 19The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of February 2, ending the Mexican–American War, is ratified by the Mexican government.
• Jun 2The Prague Slavic Congress brings together members of the Pan-Slavism movement.
• Oct 24Romanian bands massacre 640 Hungarian civilians at the town of Zlatna, Transylvania. The massacre continues into 1849.

North America13

• Jan 24California Gold Rush: James W. Marshall finds gold at Sutter's Mill, in Coloma, California.
• Jan 31Construction of the Washington Monument begins in Washington, D.C.
• Feb 2Mexican–American War: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo – Mexico cedes virtually all of what becomes the Southwestern United States to the U.S. The unincorporated California Territory becomes a provisional official possession; it is never organized by the United States Congress as a territory, but directly passes the requirements for statehood in 1850.
• Mar 18The Boston Public Library is founded by an act of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts.
• Apr 3The Chicago Board of Trade is founded by 82 Chicago merchants and business leaders.
• Jul 19Seneca Falls Convention: The 2-day women's rights convention opens in Seneca Falls, New York; "Bloomers" are introduced.
• Jul 26The University of Wisconsin–Madison is founded.
• Aug 14American President James K. Polk annexes the Oregon Country, and renames it the Oregon Territory as part of the United States.
• Aug 19California Gold Rush: The New York Herald breaks the news to the East Coast of the United States that there is a gold rush in California (although the rush started in January).
• Sep 26The University of Ottawa is founded in Canada as the College of Bytown, a Roman Catholic institution.
• Nov 71848 United States presidential election: Whig Zachary Taylor of Louisiana defeats Democrat Lewis Cass of Michigan, in the first U.S. presidential election held in every state on the same day.
• The University of Mississippi admits its first students.
• Rhodes College is founded in Clarksville, Tennessee, as the Masonic University of Tennessee.

Europe31

• Feb 21Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish The Communist Manifesto (Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei) in London.
• Feb 23French Revolution of 1848: François Guizot, Prime Minister of France, resigns; 52 people from the Paris mob are killed by soldiers guarding public buildings.
• Feb 24Louis Philippe I, King of the French, abdicates in favour of his grandson, Prince Philippe, Count of Paris (who is proclaimed as Louis Philippe II but not accepted by the people), and flees to England after days of revolution in Paris. The French Second Republic is later proclaimed by Alphonse de Lamartine, in the name of the provisional government elected by the Chamber, under the pressure of the mob.
• Mar 4Carlo Alberto di Savoia signs the Statuto Albertino that will later represent the first constitution of the Regno d'Italia.
• Mar 7Comptoir national d'escompte de Paris, predecessor of European bank BNP Paribas, is founded by decree of the French Provisional Government.
• Mar 15Hungarian Revolution of 1848: The Hungarian young revolutionary intellectuals, led by Sándor Petőfi, Mór Jókai and others, called the Márciusi Ifjak (Young men of March) organize peaceful mass demonstrations in Pest, forcing the city's Habsburg authorities to accept the 12 Points: the Hungarian claim for freedom and self-determination within the Habsburg Empire. On the same day, Lajos Kossuth and representatives of the Diet of Hungary go to Vienna, and force the emperor and Hungarian king Ferdinand I of Austria to accept Hungarian claims for self-determination within the empire.
• Mar 18At a Berlin barricade, fighting between revolutionaries and royalist forces marks the culmination of the German revolutions of 1848–49. As a result, King Frederick William IV of Prussia is forced to appoint a liberal government.
• Mar 24The First Schleswig War (, or Three Years' War ()), a military conflict in southern Denmark and northern Germany rooted in the Schleswig-Holstein Question, contesting the issue of who should control the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, begins.
• May 13"Maamme", the national anthem of Finland written by German composer Fredrik Pacius and Finnish poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg, was performed for the first time.
• May 18The 'Frankfurt Parliament' (Nationalversammlung), the first German National Assembly, opens in Frankfurt.
• Jul 11Waterloo railway station in London opens.
• Sep 12One of the successes of the Revolutions of 1848, the Swiss Federal Constitution, patterned on the Constitution of the United States, enters into force, creating a federal republic, and one of the first modern democratic states in Europe.
• Nov 4France ratifies a new constitution. The French Second Republic is set up, ending the state of temporary government.
• Dec 10Prince Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte is elected first president of the French Second Republic.
• Watch brand Omega is founded by Louis Brandt in Switzerland.

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Asia1

• Apr 18The Second Anglo-Sikh War breaks out in the Punjab.