The 1873 financial panic that helped trigger a long global depression was the Panic of 1873.
The crisis began in Vienna in May 1873 and spread through financial markets in Europe and North America. In the United States, the failure of the investment bank Jay Cooke & Company in September helped precipitate a panic. The New York Stock Exchange closed temporarily, an extraordinary response that reflected the shortage of confidence and liquidity.
The panic was followed by the Long Depression, a period of falling prices, banking stress, bankruptcies, and weak investment. Historians debate the exact boundaries and severity of that depression, and the term “Great Depression” is normally reserved for the crisis beginning in 1929. Another common mix-up is assuming that the crash started only in the United States; the initial shock was European, while American railroad financing and banking problems magnified the North American impact. The episode also exposed how closely connected nineteenth-century capital markets had become through railways, credit, and international investment.