The 1873 stock-exchange crash that helped begin the Long Depression after the Vienna bourse collapsed was the Panic of 1873.
The panic began in Europe after the Vienna Stock Exchange crashed on May 9, 1873, a day remembered as “Black Friday” in Austria. Speculative investment in railways, property, and construction had created fragile financial conditions. The collapse spread to Germany and then across the Atlantic, where the failure of Jay Cooke & Company in September intensified the U.S. panic.
The resulting downturn affected banks, railroads, manufacturers, and workers. Historians debate how long the associated depression lasted and whether it should be called a single global depression, but the period of falling prices and weak growth was exceptionally prolonged for the nineteenth century.
The Panic of 1873 is not the same event as the U.S. Panics of 1857, 1893, or 1907. It was also not a purely American crisis: its European starting point is central to understanding why the episode became an international financial shock.