French dominance of what is chic for nineteenth century women is absolute.

Parisian designs of garments and accessories are publicized throughout Europe and America by fashion plates and journals.

At first originating from England and France, after 1850 they come from all European countries.

Haute couture takes control of the fashion-design world at this point.

The Englishman Charles Frederick Worth, who had emigrated to Paris at twenty in 1845, establishes his own ladies' shop in 1858; he is among the first of the great couturiers and one of the most influential.

Through Princess Metternich, wife of the Austrian ambassador to France, he gains the patronage of the fashionable empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III of France.

Worth introduces the practice of preparing and showing a collection of designs in advance, and he is the first to use young girls as live mannequins to display designs to buyers.

He pioneers in designing dresses to be copied in French workrooms and distributed throughout the world.

Although only the rich can afford designer fashions, the styles gradually reach the ready-to-wear market (in a modified form that nonetheless prompts the introduction of new fashions for the upper classes), so that haute couture comes to dictate women's fashions.

France's new emperor, hitherto a bachelor, had begun quickly to look for a wife to produce a legitimate heir-apparent.

Most of the royal families of Europe are unwilling to marry into the parvenu Bonaparte family, and after rebuffs from Princess Carola of Sweden and from Queen Victoria's German niece Princess Adelheid of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Napoleon had decided to lower his sights somewhat and "marry for love", choosing the Countess of Teba, Eugénie de Montijo, a Spanish noblewoman of partial Scottish ancestry who had been brought up in Paris.

Prosper Mérimée, together with his friend the Countess of Montijo, has coached her daughter, Eugenie, during the courtship with Napoleon III (though his correspondence indicates he was opposed to their marriage).

When the daughter becomes the Empress Eugénie of France in 1853, he is made a senator.

Felice Orsini, a nationalist revolutionary who had participated in the uprisings in Rome in 1848-49, thereafter serving as Mazzini's agent in Switzerland, Hungary, and England, had broken with Mazzini in 1857.

Emotionally disturbed, he had begun to plot the assassination of Napoleon III, impelled by the notion that the emperor's death would trigger in France a revolution that would spread to Italy.

On the night of January 14, 1858, he and two accomplices throw bombs at the carriage of Napoleon and Empress Eugénie as they are going to the opera in Paris; although several persons are killed, the intended victims are unhurt.

Orsini is arrested; he will be executed in March.

Ironically, Orsini's attack reminds Napoleon, who remembers the pro-Italian sympathies of his youth, of his wish “to do something for Italy”.

Napoleon III had paid little attention to Algeria in the first eight years of his rule.

In September 1860, however, he and the Empress Eugénie visit Algeria, and the trip makes a deep impression upon them.

Eugénie is invited to attend a traditional Arab wedding, and the Emperor meets many of the local leaders.

Napoleon III's support for the Italian patriots and his confrontation with Pope Pius IX over who will govern Rome has made him unpopular with fervent French Catholics, and even with Empress Eugénie, who is a fervent Catholic.

To win over the French Catholics and his wife, he has agreed to guarantee that Rome will remain under the Pope and independent from the rest of Italy, and has agreed to keep French troops there.

Abdulmejid, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire (1839–1861) dies on June 25, 1861, and is succeeded by his brother Abdülaziz, whose parents are the late Mahmud II and Pertevniyal Sultan (1812–1883), originally named Besime, a Circassian.

In 1868 Pertevniyal was residing at Dolmabahçe Palace.

That year Abdülaziz led the visiting Eugénie de Montijo, Empress of France, to see his mother.

Pertevniyal perceived the presence of a foreign woman within her quarters of the seraglio as an insult.

She reportedly slapped Eugénie across the face, almost resulting in an international incident.

According to another account, Pertevniyal became outraged by the forwardness of Eugénie taking the arm of one of her sons while he gave a tour of the palace garden, and she gave the Empress a slap on the stomach as a possibly more subtly intended than often represented reminder that they were not in France.

The Pertevniyal Valide Sultan Mosque will be built under the patronage of his mother.

The construction work will begin in November 1869 and the mosque will be finished in 1871.

His paternal grandparents are Sultan Abdul Hamid I and Sultana Nakşidil Sultan.

Several accounts identify his paternal grandmother with Aimée du Buc de Rivéry, a cousin of Empress Joséphine.

Pertevniyal is a sister of Khushiyar Qadin, third wife of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt.

Khushiyar and Ibrahim were the parents of Isma'il.

The success of France's 1870 plebiscite, which should have consolidated the Empire, determines its downfall.

It is thought that a diplomatic success will make the country forget liberty in favor of glory.

It is in vain that after the parliamentary revolution of January 2, 1870, Comte Daru revives, through Lord Clarendon, Count Beust's plan of disarmament after the Battle of Königgrätz.

He meets with a refusal from Prussia and from the imperial entourage.

The Empress Eugénie is credited with the remark, "If there is no war, my son will never be emperor."

The rise of Prussia during the 1860s threatens the supremacy of its neighbor France in western Europe.

Napoleon III, growing steadily weaker in body and mind, has badly mishandled the situation, and eventually finds himself in a war without allies.

Britain is afraid of French militarism and refuses to help.

Russia is highly annoyed about French interference in supporting Polish rebels in the 1863 uprising.

Napoleon had given strong support to Italy, but had refused the demand for Rome, and keeps French troops in Rome to protect the Pope from the new Italian government, thus leading to Italian refusal to help.

The United States remains alienated because of the fiasco in Mexico.

Napoleon does not know what he wants or what to do, but the reverse is true for Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck, who plans to create a great new German nation, based on Prussian power, as well as resurgent German nationalism based on the systematic humiliation of France.

The immediate issue is a trivial controversy regarding control of the Spanish throne.

France is actually successful in the diplomatic standoff, but Napoleon wants to humiliate the Prussian king, Wilhelm I.

Bismarck in turn manipulates the situation such that France declares war against Prussia on July 15, 1870, thus sparking the Franco-Prussian War.

The smaller German states rallied behind Prussia, while the large French army proves to be poorly armed, poorly trained, and, led by the Emperor himself, very poorly commanded.

In a matter of weeks the French army is surrounded and forced to surrender after the Battle of Sedan.

Napoleon himself becomes a prisoner and Republican forces quickly take control of Paris.

France under the leadership of Léon Gambetta declares the establishment of the Third French Republic.

Napoleon and Eugénie go into exile in England.

Victory produces an onrush of German nationalism upon which Bismarck immediately seizes to unite all of the German states (except Austria), thereby creating the German Empire, with the Prussian king as its Emperor and Bismarck as Chancellor.

The new Germany is now continental Europe's dominant military force.

Additionally, France is forced to give up the two border provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, and its humiliation will last for generations.

William Henry Perkin finds a method in 1869 for the commercial production from anthracene of the brilliant red dye alizarin, which had been isolated and identified from madder root some forty years earlier in 1826 by the French chemist Pierre Robiquet, simultaneously with purpurin, another red dye of lesser industrial interest, but the German chemical company BASF patents the same process one day before he does.

Having invented the synthetic purple mauveine in 1856, Perkin had then been faced with the problems of raising the capital for producing it, manufacturing it cheaply, adapting it for use in dyeing cotton, gaining acceptance for it among commercial dyers, and creating public demand for it.

However, he had been active in all of these areas: he had persuaded his father to put up the capital, and his brothers to partner him in the creation of a factory; he has invented a mordant for cotton; he gives technical advice to the dyeing industry; and he had publicized his invention of the dye.

Public demand had been increased when a similar color was adopted by Queen Victoria in England and by Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, in France, and when the crinoline or hooped-skirt, whose manufacture uses a large quantity of cloth, became fashionable.

Everything seemed to fall into place by dint of hard work, with a little luck, too.

Perkin has become rich.

After the discovery of mauveine, many new aniline dyes had appeared (some discovered by Perkin himself), and factories producing them have been constructed across Europe.

William Perkin will continued active research in organic chemistry for the rest of his life: he has discovered and marketed other synthetic dyes, including Britannia Violet and Perkin's Green; he has discovered ways to make coumarin, one of the first synthetic perfume raw materials, and cinnamic acid. (The reaction used to make the latter becomes known as the Perkin reaction.)

Local lore has it that the color of the nearby Grand Union Canal changed from week to week depending on the activity at Perkin's Greenford dyeworks.

The construction of the Suez Canal is one of the reasons for the Panic of 1873, because the goods from the Far East are carried in sailing vessels around the Cape of Good Hope and are stored in British warehouses, but sailing vessels are not adaptable for use through the Suez Canal, because the prevailing winds of the Mediterranean Sea blow from west to east.

The canal has had an immediate and dramatic effect on world trade.

Combined with the American transcontinental railroad completed six months earlier, it allows the entire world to be circled in record time.

It will play an important role in increasing European colonization of Africa.

Built in partnership between Egypt and France, the Suez Canal, had opened to shipping on November 17, 1869.

The opening had been performed by Khedive Ismail of Egypt and Sudan, and at Ismail's invitation, French Empress Eugenie in the Imperial yacht Aigle.

The first ship to follow the yacht Aigle through the canal had been the British P&O liner Delta.

Muhammad Ali had been succeeded briefly by his son Ibrahim (in September 1848), then by a grandson Abbas I (in November 1848), then by Said (in 1854), and Isma'il (in 1863).

Abbas I had ben cautious; Said and Ismail had been ambitious developers, but they have spent beyond their means.

Although numerous technical, political, and financial problems had been overcome, the final cost is more than double the original estimate.

The cost of this and other projects has had two effects: it has ed to enormous debt to European banks, and has caused popular discontent because of the onerous taxation it required.

After the opening of the canal, the Suez Canal Company had experienced financial difficulties.

The remaining works had been completed only in 1871, and traffic had been below expectations in the first two years.

Its French developer, Ferdinand de Lesseps,had therefore tried to increase revenues by interpreting the kind of net ton referred to in the second concession (tonneau de capacité) as meaning a ship's real freight capacity and not only the theoretical net tonnage of the "Moorsom System" introduced in Britain by the Merchant Shipping Act in 1854.

The ensuing commercial and diplomatic activities had resulted in the International Commission of Constantinople establishing a specific kind of net tonnage and settling the question of tariffs in their protocol of December 18, 1873.

This is the origin of the Suez Canal Net Tonnage and the Suez Canal Special Tonnage Certificate still used today.