In most American high school educations, students are told briefly about the French Revolution and War of 1812 before significant content on the Civil War, then poof! Nothing happened until World War One it seems!
General pop culture discussions and references in my experiences including living in Euro reflect this notion of: Age of Discovery/Colonization wound down, 19th century happened, then poof! World Wars.
What is the cause of this? It seems like a ton of interesting stuff happened in the 19th century both in North America and globally.
Thanks!
(First ever post, thanks for patience)
It's hard to speak on account of a school board, let alone hundreds, and many from countries we do not live in. However, at least for American education, the point is to hit highlights. It's simply a matter of time frame. If we're talking about a September to beginning of June time frame for a High School student, it can and usually does take up until, like, May for students just to get through: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Ancient Greece, Roman Republic, Roman Empire, "Dark Ages", Protestant Revolution, Christopher Columbus, Spanish colonization, French colonization, English colonization (Jamestown et. al), Lewis & Clarke and other explorers, colonial relations and genocides, Westphalia if your teacher is real adventurous, the French-Indian War, the buildup to the American Revolution, the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, 1812, and the Civil War.
This is a recurring theme in non-AP World History in the United States (in general). It's not so much "world history", it's "how world history led to our country". In that respect, they cover the highlights that Western society is built off of, then the focus begins to shift more and more on colonization and then the rise of modern ideals (Enlightenment, American/French revolutions), and then it focuses on our impact on the world stage. That is, 1812, the Civil War, and then after that America really did do just about nothing until the Spanish-American War and then WWI and WWII. Add into this that we only get to the 20th century with less than a month class left if you're lucky, and it leads to a lot of rushing through these events. Especially considering the Holocaust usually gets at least a full week, rushing those other topics even more.
If you take an American History course in a U.S. high school, they just start right at the beginning of the 18th century. They jump right into the Enlightenment and the Revolution and they're talking about the Trail of Tears, the Indian Wars, the Gilded Age, Federalists and other burgeoning parties, country organization, a lot more in depth 19th and 20th century stuff in American history. So you get that 19th century depth you're wondering about.
I can only assume for our European friends, but I would make an educated guess that the reason many Europeans don't focus much on the 19th century is because the 20th was far more impacting, both in general and in their lives. The 19th century, after obviously the French Revolution (which everyone knows about), had Pax Brittanica, 4 or 5 French Revolutions again, the 1848 German revolutions, Italian unification, the Franco-Prussian War and the unification of Germany, and...that's really it in terms of content in the grand scheme of things. However, I imagine the German education will obviously talk about the rise of ethnic nationalism more in depth and the Austro-Prussian War and the German Federation and all that stuff, and a French education will talk more in depth about all the revolutions and the Third Republic and Napoleon III, and an Italian education will talk more about their wars with Austria and France, and a Polish education will obviously talk more about their occupation. I imagine it's incredibly region specific, in that regard, and you can't say that there's one overarching "European" education.
But, at the end of the day, most of these events are taken more in respect to how they lead to the world wars if they're ever talked about in the United States. How did German unification lead to the world war. How did nationalism lead to the world war. How did Pax Brittanica lead to the world war. All the events past 1871, how did Bismark and then Willy II help cause the conditions leading to the first world war? They are interesting to study in their own right, but I imagine they also have time constraints over there and it's more important to hit those highlights to get to the stuff that is immediately relevant -- the world wars.
TL;DR:
For Americans, generally by the time we reach the 19th century we're almost out of time in the school year. Even more, American World History courses are more "how the world lead up to our countries existence" and then "how our country affected the world" and, to be frank, between 1812 and the Spanish American War that wasn't very much in the 19th century. So there's little to talk about.
For Europeans, I would love to hear an opinion on this, but I would imagine it is because the World Wars overshadow everything. In that respect, 19th century history exists solely to explain how the World Wars came to be, rather than exist to be studied in their own right. However, I find it likely that, especially in Germany and surrounding countries, the 19th century would likely get a lot of press in its own right; especially Poland.
I'm not sure I agree with the premise of your question. On both sides of the Atlantic Ocean there is a great deal of popular cultural energy invested in Westerns and the culture of the American West. This ranges from the 1830s, as in the recent Oscar-winning film The Revenant, to the early twentieth century, as in the critically-acclaimed video game Red Dead Redemption. In between you have such phenomena as John Wayne, the novels of the German author Karl May, Deadwood, and any number of films, not to mention the German practice of American Indian reenactment and playacting.
Other nineteenth century period pieces about something other than war and the West that I can think of include The Last of the Mohicans and Gangs of New York, just off the top of my head. Heck, there's a great satirical TV show on Comedy Central called Another Period that does a great job of melding our own dumb celebrity culture with the culture of wealth in Newport, Rhode Island in 1902 (part of the so-called 'long nineteenth century,' but still). And that just includes popular culture on nineteenth century American subjects, not even considering European, Asian, African, and Latin American subjects. Off the top of my head: Moulin Rouge!; Mr. Turner; Les Miserables, etc.
It's really interesting that you say that to you the 19th Century seems under-taught, because as a 16-year-old I got it in depth for a year, and would have been interested to get a more varied range of history than Britain in the mid-1800s. That said, we did learn a lot:
Political, Social and Technological
Warfare and Foreign Policy
And there was plenty more, in retrospect, that we could have gotten into if we'd widened our focus beyond the British Empire.
Here in California there is a strong emphasis placed on the history of the California Gold Rush, which all school children are taught (in addition to the history of the Spanish missions of the late 18th Century).
For most of the 20th Century the Old West of the 1860s to 1880's was a key cultural touch point. A large percentage of the most popular films and TV shows were Westerns. John Wayne, who's films were mostly Westerns, was probably the most popular and famous movie actor. Sometime around the 1970's this changed and now Westerns few and far between.