What 1873 financial crisis began with the failure of Vienna’s stock exchange?

The 1873 financial crisis associated with the failure of Vienna’s stock exchange was the Panic of 1873.

A speculative boom in railways, property, and company shares had spread through Europe and the United States. On May 9, 1873, the Vienna Stock Exchange fell sharply in an event known as Black Friday. Financial distress then spread internationally, including to Germany and the United States.

In the United States, the failure of the banking firm Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 helped trigger a major market collapse. The New York Stock Exchange closed temporarily, and the resulting downturn contributed to a long period of weak prices and industrial hardship often called the Long Depression.

The crisis is sometimes described as beginning in Austria and sometimes as a transatlantic panic centered on the U.S. collapse. Those descriptions refer to connected stages of the same international financial shock, not separate unrelated crashes.