The 1890s (pronounced "eighteen-nineties") was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, 1890, and ended on December 31, 1899. In American popular culture, the decade would later be nostalgically referred to as the "gay nineties" ("gay" meaning carefree or cheerful). In the British Empire, the 1890s epitomised the late Victorian period.
As European powers continued their colonial expansion, the decade saw the defeat of Edi (1890), Siam (1893), Morocco (1894), Dahomey (1894), Arab-Swahili warlords (1894), Lombork (1894), Pahang (1895), Merina (1895), Zanzibar (1896), Khaua and Mbandjeru (1896), Ashanti (1896), Matabeleland (1897), Pedir (1898), Sudan (1899), and various north-west Indian tribes and states. Whereas most colonial campaigns were successful, Italy faced a significant defeat as it failed to conquer Ethiopia, being decisively defeated at Adwa (1896). Furthermore, the second half of the decade saw the final unravelling of Spanish America, which began with insurrections in Cuba (1895) and the Philippines (1896) and ended with the Spaniards' defeat at the hands of the United States in 1898. Following the sale of various Pacific islands to Germany in 1899, the Spanish colonial empire would be restricted to Africa. Further in the east, Japan sought to expand its own empire, waging wars against Donghak (1894–1895), Qing China (1894–1895) and the Republic of Formosa (1895). Other conflicts included the Garza War (1891–1893), the Greco-Turkish War (1897) and internal conflicts in Samoa (1886–1894, 1898–1899), Afghanistan (1888–1893), Argentina (1890), Chile (1891), the Ottoman Empire (1891, 1893, 1894, 1895–96, 1896–1897, 1896), Mexico (1891–1892), Brazil (1893–1894, 1893–1895, 1899–1903), Peru (1894–1895), the South African Republic (1894), northwest China (1895–1896), Bolivia (1898–1899) and Columbia (1899–1902).