| 1800–1850 | USA [consumer products] | A revolution in retail and wholesale trade occurs: specialization transforms the urban retail market, replacing the general store with individual stores for hardware, groceries, dry goods, furnishing, books, tobacco, and so on. Cash-only sales policies are instituted around 1806. |
| 1810–1859 | USA [agriculture] | US cotton production, the vast majority of which is grown in the southern states, rises from 171,000 bales in 1810 to just under 5.4 million in 1859. |
| 1827–1838 | Ireland, Germany, USA [statistics and demography] | A period of Irish and German migration to the USA begins due to a severe winter in 1829, increased legislation against German Jews, economic stress in Ireland, and Irish factionalism. |
| 1827–1838 | USA [zoology] | US ornithologist John James Audubon publishes the first volume of his multi-volume work Birds of America. |
| July 1830 - April 1833 | Scotland [earth sciences] | Scottish geologist Charles Lyell publishes the first volume of his three-volume work Principles of Geology in which he argues that geological formations are the result of presently observable processes acting over millions of years. It creates a new time frame for other sciences such as biology and palaeontology. |
| 1831–1840 | USA, UK [statistics and demography] | Emigration to the USA is 75,810 from Britain and 207,381 from Ireland. |
| 27 December 1831 - 2 October 1836 | South America, Pacific [zoology] | The English naturalist Charles Darwin undertakes a five-year voyage, to South America and the Pacific, as naturalist on the Beagle. The voyage convinces him that species have evolved gradually but he waits over 20 years to publish his findings. |
| 1832 | USA [technology] | John Matthews creates the soda fountain, a machine for carbonating water that he then sells at his shop in New York City. |
| 1832 | Belgium [technology] | The Belgian inventor Joseph Plateau develops the phenakistoscope, a device which creates the illusion of motion. It consists of a disc, with images in reverse, located around the centre, and which is rotated in front of a mirror. The illusion of motion is created by observing the images in the mirror through slits on the disc. |
| 1832 | England [physics] | The English physicist William Sturgeon constructs an electric motor. |
| 1832 | France [physics] | The French inventor Hippolyte Pixii builds the first magneto or magneto-electric generator. A magnet rotates in front of two coils to produce an alternating current, making it the first induction electric generator, and the first machine to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. |
| 1832 | UK [plagues and epidemics] | There is a cholera epidemic in Britain in which around 20,000 people die. |
| 1832 | France [plays] | The tragedy Le Roi s'amuse/The King Amuses Himself by the French writer Victor Hugo is first performed, in Paris, France. It later provides the basis for the opera Rigoletto, which is written in 1851 by the Italian composer Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi. |
| 1832 | England [poetry] | The English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, publishes Poems. Among its best-known poems are ‘The Lotus-Eaters’ and ‘The Lady of Shalott’. |
| 23 January 1832 | France [births and deaths] | Edouard Manet, French realist painter and important 19th-century artist, born (–1883). |
| 27 January 1832 | England [births and deaths] | Lewis Carroll (pen-name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), English novelist who writes Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), born in Daresbury, Cheshire, England (–1898). |
| 22 March 1832 | Germany [births and deaths] | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German poet, novelist, dramatist, and philosopher, dies in Weimar, Saxe-Weimar (now Germany) (82). |
| 10 April 1832 | Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Ottoman Empire [political events] | The Ottoman Empire declares war on Mehmet Ali, its representative in Egypt, who is in effect independent. He is demanding the Ottoman province of Syria as his reward for aiding the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence. |
| 21 September 1832 | Scotland [births and deaths] | Walter Scott, Scottish novelist, poet, historian, and biographer who developed the historical novel, dies in Abbotsford, Roxburgh, Scotland (61). |
| 11 October 1832 | France [law and government] | The former Napoleonic marshal Nicholas-Jean Soult, duc de Dalmie, becomes prime minister of France in an administration containing François Guizot, Adolphe Thiers, and Achille, duc de Broglie, which stabilizes French politics. |
| 11 November 1832 | USA [elections] | In the US presidential elections, President Andrew Jackson, who was nominated as candidate at the first Democratic Convention, defeats Henry Clay with 219 electoral votes compared to Clay's 49 votes.Martin Van Buren is elected vice-president. |
| 29 November 1832 | USA [births and deaths] | Louisa May Alcott, US author of children's books, best known for Little Women (1869), born in Germantown, Pennsylvania (–1888). |
