The Panic of 1873 began in Vienna in May 1873 and helped trigger a prolonged global depression.
A speculative boom had developed in European property, railways, and finance after the Franco-Prussian War. When the Vienna stock market collapsed on May 9, 1873, confidence weakened across financial centers. The crisis soon reached Germany and the United States, where the failure of Jay Cooke & Company in September intensified the panic.
The downturn is often called the Long Depression, although historians debate its exact duration and severity in different countries. Falling prices, bankruptcies, reduced investment, and industrial weakness affected economies on both sides of the Atlantic.
This panic is distinct from the Vienna crash known as the Gründerkrach, even though the terms are closely connected. The Gründerkrach describes the 1873 crash in the German-speaking financial world, while the Panic of 1873 is the broader international crisis.