The international financial panic that began with the 1873 Vienna stock-market crash was the Panic of 1873.
Speculative investment in railways, property, and construction had expanded rapidly in Europe and North America. The failure of the Vienna stock exchange in May 1873 weakened confidence, and the September failure of the investment bank Jay Cooke & Company helped transmit the crisis to the United States. Banks and firms faced losses, credit contracted, and railway construction slowed.
The downturn contributed to a long period of weak prices and uneven growth often called the Long Depression. Historians debate its exact boundaries and causes, so the Panic of 1873 should not be treated as a precise synonym for every economic difficulty from the 1870s to the 1890s. Another common mix-up is the Panic of 1893, a later American crisis that also involved railway failures and banking stress. The 1873 panic was significant because financial markets and industrial economies were increasingly connected across national borders.