Which European exchange crash in 1873 helped start the long international downturn called the Long Depression?

The Vienna Stock Exchange crash of May 1873 helped start the international downturn called the Long Depression.

Speculative investment had surged in Austria-Hungary after economic expansion, railway building, and financial liberalization. On 9 May 1873, confidence broke at the Vienna Stock Exchange, producing a panic known in German as the Gründerkrach, or founders’ crash. Many banks and companies failed or suffered severe losses.

Financial stress spread through connected European markets and later affected the United States, where the failure of Jay Cooke & Company in September 1873 helped trigger the American Panic of 1873. The resulting depression brought falling prices, bankruptcies, unemployment, and years of weak investment.

The term Long Depression is not perfectly uniform: some historians date it from 1873 to 1879, while others extend it into the 1890s for parts of Europe and North America. It should not be confused with the Great Depression of the 1930s, which had different causes and a different global setting.