The 1873 financial crisis that began with a Vienna stock-market panic is called the Panic of 1873.
The Vienna Stock Exchange crash in May 1873 followed a period of speculative investment and rapid railway expansion. Financial stress then spread through Europe and reached the United States, where the failure of the investment bank Jay Cooke & Company helped trigger a major panic in September.
The crisis was followed by a prolonged period of economic weakness often called the Long Depression. The name can be confusing because historians disagree about the depression’s exact starting and ending dates and about how severe it was in different countries.
In the United States, the panic led to the temporary closure of the New York Stock Exchange. Its effects also exposed the risks created by railroad speculation, interconnected banks, and heavily leveraged investment.