| 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. |
| 1840–1850 | USA [farming] | Wheat becomes an increasingly important cash crop in the USA; production in 1839 is nearly 85 million bushels and climbs to over 100 million bushels in 10 years. |
| 1840–1860 | world [plagues and epidemics] | A cholera pandemic kills millions of people worldwide. |
| 1841 | UK, Ireland, USA, France, Austria, Germany [statistics and demography] | Populations: Great Britain 18,534,000; Ireland 8,175,000; USA 17,063,000. Principal cities: London, England 2,235,000; Paris, France 935,000; Vienna, Austria 357,000; Berlin, Germany 300,000; New York City 313,000. |
| 1841–1850 | USA, UK [statistics and demography] | Emigration to the USA is 267,044 from Britain and 780,719 from Ireland. |
| 1841 | Germany [technology] | German chemist Robert Wilhelm von Bunsen invents the carbon–zinc battery. |
| 1841 | UK [technology] | English mechanical engineer Joseph Whitworth standardizes the size of threads on screws, which becomes internationally accepted. |
| 1841 | USA [fiction] | The US writer Edgar Allan Poe publishes the short stories ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ and ‘Descent into the Maelström’ in Graham's Magazine. |
| 1841 | USA [literature and language] | The US poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes his first volume of Essays. Among the essays are ‘The Over-Soul’, ‘Self-Reliance’, and ‘Friendship’. |
| 1841 | UK [magazines] | Henry Mayhew launches the weekly comic magazine Punch, in London, England, with Mark Lemon as editor and John Leech as chief illustrator. |
| 1841 | France [ballet] | The ballet Giselle, by the Italian choreographer Jean Coralli and the French choreographer Jules Joseph Perrot, is first performed, in Paris, France. |
| 20 January 1841 | China, UK [colonization] | British sovereignty is proclaimed over the Chinese port of Hong Kong. |
| 25 February 1841 | France [births and deaths] | Pierre-Auguste Renoir, French Impressionist painter, born in Limoges, France (–1919). |
| 4 April 1841 | USA [administration] | Following the death of William H Harrison after just one month in office, John Tyler becomes the tenth president of the USA. |
| 3 May 1841 | New Zealand, UK [colonization] | New Zealand is formally proclaimed a British colony. |
| 13 July 1841 | France, UK, Russian Empire, Prussia, Austrian Empire, Ottoman Empire [political events] | By the Convention of the Straits, the European powers guarantee Ottoman independence and the Dardanelles and Bosporus are closed to warships of all nations in peacetime (thus overthrowing the 1833 Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi). |
| 30 August 1841 | UK [administration] | Robert Peel becomes prime minister of a Conservative government in Britain when Lord Melbourne resigns because elections have weakened support for him in the House of Commons. |
| 2 November 1841 | Afghanistan, UK [wars] | The Second Anglo-Afghan War begins when the Afghans rise and massacre British army officers. |
