Vintage in Context: the 1890s

This is a new series I'll be working on entitled "Vintage in Context."  We vintage lovers definitely pick and choose the parts of history we enjoy (which is totally okay; it's the luxury of living now and looking back!).  However, it's great to get a more holistic view of history to more fully understand our vintage love. 
I also like the idea of seeing each decade as it was in different parts of the world, not just the West that many of us are more familiar with.  It helps explain the attitudes of people in each culture toward each other, for it was a world before globalization, the Internet, fast travel, and other technologies that make intercultural dialogue easier today.

To start, I'm going to pull from the 1890s, for this decade helped set up many of the major events of the early 1900s.  In this decade...

The Jungle Book is published in 1894 by Rudyard Kipling.  Kipling drew from his childhood experiences growing up in India (and his later years living there) to write stories of animals with moral points included.  The more well-known stories include stories of Mowgli and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.

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The Panic of 1893 occurred and became the worst economic depression in American history until that point.  Started by shaky railroad, iffy foreign investment, the amount of silver flooding the market, and other factors, the Panic of 1893 saw up to 19% unemployment and waves of strikes.  The U.S. Treasury ran dangerously low on gold and had to borrow from J.P. Morgan, but the economy began to recover in 1897.

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Tribes of Northern Sudan rally around the Mahdi and overthrow the British-Egyptian government in the early 1890s.  They establish the first Islamic state in Sudan, as well as being the only indigenous peoples to win independence from Britain through warfare.  They hold off the British, Egyptian, and Ethiopian armies until 1898 when Khartoum is retaken.
This inspires Rudyard Kipling's poem "Fuzzy Wuzzy" (an actually positive view of Sudanese warriors, despite the language we would now consider racist) and several movies in later decades.

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The bustle and corset are still going strong, albeit with slimmer skirts.
Another motto of the times, the bigger the hair and bigger the sleeves, the smaller the waist!  Matched with a giant hat is even better.

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December 27, 1890 marks the date of the Wounded Knee Massacre.  After tensions between the government and Native Americans continued to grow due to a resurgence of the Ghost Dance and its meanings, conflict between a soldier and Sioux man resulted in a shot being fired.  This sparked an immediate and brutal response from the cavalry that resulted in 150-300 Sioux people (half of whom were women and children) being massacred on the spot.  This was the last stand of the Sioux and the last major confrontation between soldiers and the Plains Indians.

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1890s pictures from around the world:

source - Hudson Taylor sets a new precedent as a missionary that speaks Mandarin, eats and dresses in Chinese style and accepts Chinese culture as his own because of his love for the Chinese people and shuns the lifestyle he could be living as a Western Imperialistic foreigner in China.

1890s Japanese Footwear

Portales of the Market in San Marcos.  Aguascalientes, Mexico c. 1890s

Samoan women making wreaths, c. 1890s