Fiji’s first large sugar mill is built at Nausori in 1881; Rotuma Island is annexed to Fiji in the same year.

The British bring to Fiji four hundred and sixty-three Indian contract laborers to work on the sugar plantations as the first governor of Fiji, Arthur Charles Hamilton-Gordon, adopts a policy disallowing the use of native labor and no interference in their culture and way of life.

These indentured Indians are the first of some sixty thousand to come over the next thirty-seven years.

George Grey’s New Zealand government does not operate particularly well, with Grey seeking to dominate the government and coming into conflict with the Governor.

His term as Premier is regarded by historians as a failure.

Towards the end of 1879, Grey's government gets into difficulties over land tax; eventually, Grey asks for an early election..

Elected in both the Thames and the City of Christchurch electorates in September 1879, Grey had come first in the three-member Christchurch electorate (Samuel Paull Andrews and Edward Stevens had come second with equal numbers of votes, 23 votes ahead of Edward Richardson).

Richardson had petitioned against Grey's return on technical grounds, as Grey had already been elected in the Thames electorate.

The electoral commission had unseated Grey on October 24, with Richardson offered this vacancy a few days later.

Grey had kept the Thames seat and remained a member of parliament through that electorate.

Japan refers its dispute with Qing China concerning suzerainty over the Ryukyu Kingdom to British arbitration in 1879, and the British confirm Japanese sovereignty over the Ryukyus, a result which is not recognized by China.

Nevertheless, Japan uses this as the justification for taking de facto control over Ryukyu, moving the king of Ryukyu to Japan and incorporating Ryukyu as a prefecture of Japan.

The ensuing Chinese protest leads to the matter being submitted to U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant as arbitrator, during which Japan offers to split Ryukyu between Japan and China.

This is refused by China, but a weakened China is unable in practice to stop Japanese incorporation of the islands.

The surrendering aborigines are given Japanese flags to fly over their villages that they view as a symbol of peace with Japan and protection from rival tribes; however, the Japanese view them as a symbol of jurisdiction over the aborigines.

Lars Magnus Ericsson, his reputation in telephony manufacturing established, becomes a major supplier of telephone equipment to Scandinavia.

Because the Ericson factory cannot keep up with demand, work such as joinery and metal-plating is contracted out.

Much of its raw materials are imported, so in the following decades Ericsson will buy into a number of firms to ensure supplies of essentials like brass, wire, ebonite and magnet steel.

Much of the walnut used for cabinets is imported from the US.

As Stockholm's telephone network has expanded rapidly in 1879, the company had reformed into a telephone manufacturing company, but when Bell bought the biggest telephone network in Stockholm, it only allowed its own telephones to be used with it, so Ericsson's equipment sells mainly to free telephone associations in the Swedish countryside and in the other Nordic countries.

Ericsson was born in Värmskog, Värmland and had grown up in the small village of Vegerbol, between Karlstad and Arvika.

At the age of twelve his father had died, and he had had to start working as a miner, working until he had money enough to leave the village and move to Stockholm in 1867.

He had then worked for six years for an instrument maker, Öllers & Co., who mainly created telegraph equipment.

Because of his skills, he had been given two state scholarships to study instrument making abroad between 1872 and 1875.

One of the companies he worked at was Siemens & Halske.

Upon his return to Sweden in 1876, he had founded a small mechanical workshop together with his friend Carl Johan Andersson, who had also worked at Öllers & Co., and repaired foreign-made telephones.

This workshop was actually a former kitchen of some thirteen square meters situated at Drottninggatan 15 in the most central part of Stockholm.

In 1878, Ericsson had begun making and selling his own telephone equipment.

His phones were not technically innovative, as most of the inventions had already been made in the US.

In 1878, he had made an agreement to supply telephones and switchboards to Sweden's first telecom operating company, Stockholms Allmänna Telefonaktiebolag.

Also in 1878, local telephone importer Numa Peterson had hired Ericsson to adjust some telephones from the Bell Telephone Company, inspiring him to buy a number of Siemens telephones and analyze the technology further.

Through his firm's repair work for Telegrafverket and Swedish Railways, he was familiar with Bell and Siemens Halske telephones.

He has improved these designs to produce a higher quality instrument.

These are used by new telephone companies, such as Rikstelefon, to provide cheaper service than the Bell Group.

He has no patent or royalty problems, as Bell had not patented their inventions in Scandinavia.

His training as an instrument maker is reflected in the high standard of finish and the ornate design which makes Ericsson phones of this period so attractive to collectors.

At the end of the year he had started to manufacture telephones of his own, much in the image of the Siemens telephones, and the first product had been finished in 1879.

Lars Fredrik Nilson, while working on rare earths, employs spectroscopic analysis in 1879 to discover scandium's oxide, scandia (named for Scandinavia"), in the rare-earth minerals gadolinite and euxenite, which occur only in Scandinavia.

During this time he also studies the gas density of metals which make it possible to determine the valence of various metals.

Nilson was born in Skönberga parish in Östergötland, Sweden.

His father, Nikolaus, was a farmer.

The family had moved to Gotland when Lars Fredrik was young.

After graduating from school, Lars Fredrik had enrolled at Uppsala University, and there he studied the natural sciences.

His talent for chemistry drew attention from chemistry professor Lars Svanberg, who was a former student of Jöns Jakob Berzelius.

In 1874 Nilson had became associate professor of chemistry, and could now devote more time to research.

Swedish chemist Per Teodor Cleve identifies scandium with the hypothetical ekaboron later in 1879.

The agreement of its properties with those predicted by Dmitri Mendeleev help to bring about general scientific acceptance of Mendeleev's periodic table.

Wilhelm Wundt institutes the first laboratory for the systematic experimental study of experience at Liepzig in 1879, inculcating his views on the science of psychology in students from all over the world.

Bismarck negotiates the military Dual Alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1879.

Albanian intellectuals in the late nineteenth century begin devising a single, standard Albanian literary language and making demands that it be used in schools.

Sami Frasheri founds a cultural and educational organization in Constantinople in 1879, the Society for the Printing of Albanian Writings, whose membership comprises Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox Albanians.

Naim Frasheri, the most-renowned Albanian poet, joins the society and writes and edits textbooks.

Albanian émigrés in Bulgaria, Egypt, Italy, Romania, and the United States support the society's work.