Vienna’s stock exchange crash in 1873 helped begin the Long Depression.
The Vienna stock market crash occurred on May 9, 1873, a day remembered as “Black Friday” in Austria. Speculative investment had surged during an expansion financed by credit, especially in railways, property, and construction. When confidence weakened, investors rushed to sell and several financial firms failed.
The panic spread internationally. A major US banking failure later that year, involving Jay Cooke & Company, helped transmit the crisis across the Atlantic. Bank failures, falling prices, reduced investment, and industrial weakness persisted in many countries for years.
Historians debate the exact duration and geographical boundaries of the Long Depression. It was not a single uniform collapse: some economies recovered at different times, and industrial output continued growing in several sectors. Vienna’s crash is nevertheless widely identified as the opening shock of the Panic of 1873, which became one of the nineteenth century’s most important global financial crises.