What 1873 crisis began after the Vienna Stock Exchange crash on 9 May?

The 1873 crisis that began after the Vienna Stock Exchange crash on 9 May was the Panic of 1873.

The panic developed from speculative investment, especially in railways and property, combined with fragile banking structures. The Vienna crash, known as Black Friday in Austria, helped expose the weakness of highly leveraged projects. Financial distress then spread to Germany and the United States, where the failure of the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 triggered a major Wall Street crisis.

The panic contributed to a long period of economic stagnation often called the Long Depression. That label and its exact dates are debated by historians, but the downturn clearly affected industrial production, investment, employment, and prices across several economies.

The event is sometimes mistaken for a purely American crash. Vienna was the initial flashpoint, while later banking failures and the New York Stock Exchange’s temporary closure made the crisis especially severe in the United States.