Born Then1870–1871
Life during the Franco-Prussian War
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
Prussia and the German states defeated France in six months. The German Empire was proclaimed at Versailles and took Alsace-Lorraine. In Paris the siege was followed by the Commune, crushed by French troops in May 1871.
Deaths: about 185,000 soldiers on both sides, plus civilians.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from scholarly estimates.
Around the same time
- Atlantic slave trade, final decades 1800–1866
- Slavery in the United States 1800–1865
- Slavery in Brazil 1800–1888
- Serfdom in the Russian Empire 1800–1861
- British emigration to the colonies and America 1815–1913
- Cultivation System in Java 1830–1870
- Indian indenture system 1834–1917
- German emigration to the Americas 1840–1893
- Great Famine in Ireland 1845–1852
- Chinese emigration from Guangdong and Fujian 1845–1913
- Third cholera pandemic 1846–1860
- Taiping Rebellion 1850–1864
- Victorian gold rush 1851–1869
- Irish emigration after the Famine 1852–1913
- Crimean War 1853–1856
- Third plague pandemic 1855–1930
- Indian Rebellion of 1857 1857–1858
- French conquest of Vietnam 1858–1887
- American Civil War 1861–1865
- January Uprising 1863–1864
- Paraguayan War (War of the Triple Alliance) 1864–1870
- Meiji Restoration 1868–1889
- Polish emigration "za chlebem" 1870–1913
- Persian famine of 1870–1872 1870–1872
- Franco-Prussian War 1870–1871
- Long Depression 1873–1879
- Reforms of King Chulalongkorn 1874–1910
- Northern Chinese Famine 1876–1879
- Great Famine of 1876–1878 1876–1878
- Anglo-Zulu War 1879