The 1840s (pronounced "eighteen-forties") was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, 1840, and ended on December 31, 1849.
The decade was noted in Europe for featuring the largely unsuccessful Revolutions of 1848, also known as the Springtime of Nations. Throughout the continent, bourgeois liberals and working-class radicals engaged in a series of revolts in favor of social reform. In the United Kingdom, this notably manifested itself through the Chartist movement, which sought universal suffrage and parliamentary reform. In France, the February Revolution led to the overthrow of the Orléans dynasty by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1848, the publication of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx would help lay the groundwork for the global socialist movement.
The Mexican–American War led to the redrawing of national boundaries in North America. In the United States, mass migration to the new West Coast occurred following the annexation of California from Mexico, with a Gold Rush beginning at the end of the decade. On its northern border, the United States settled the Oregon boundary dispute with the United Kingdom in 1846, thereby solving a domestic political crisis in the former nation.
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