Alexander the Great conquers Bactria

Summary: Alexander of Macedon overruns Bactria and the lands of modern Afghanistan in a gruelling campaign, leaving Greek garrisons and settlers that seeded later Hellenistic kingdoms.


The Greco-Bactrian kingdom

Summary: Diodotus I breaks Bactria away from the Seleucid empire to found the independent Greco-Bactrian kingdom, a Hellenistic state that fused Greek and local traditions north of the Hindu Kush.


The Kushan empire and Gandhara art

Summary: Under rulers such as Kanishka the Kushans build an empire across Bactria and Gandhara, spreading Buddhism along the Silk Road and giving rise to the Greco-Buddhist Gandhara school of sculpture.


The Bamiyan Buddhas carved

Summary: Monks carve two colossal Buddhas, about 55 and 38 metres high, into the cliffs of the Bamiyan Valley, a great centre of Buddhist pilgrimage on the routes through the Hindu Kush.


Arab conquest and the coming of Islam

Summary: Arab Muslim forces take Herat in the wake of the conquest of Persia, beginning the gradual and long-contested Islamisation of the Afghan lands.


Mahmud of Ghazni and the Ghaznavid empire

Summary: Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni builds a vast empire from Afghanistan into Iran and India and turns his capital Ghazni into a centre of Islamic culture and learning.


The Ghurids sack Ghazni

Summary: The Ghurids of central Afghanistan overthrow Ghaznavid power, sacking Ghazni and extending Muslim rule into northern India; their Minaret of Jam survives as a UNESCO World Heritage site.


Herat, capital of the Timurid renaissance

Summary: Shah Rukh moves the Timurid capital to Herat, where he and Queen Gawhar Shad make the city a dazzling centre of architecture, poetry and miniature painting.


Ahmad Shah Durrani founds the Afghan state

Summary: A jirga at Kandahar elects Ahmad Shah Durrani ruler after Nadir Shah's death; the Durrani Empire he founds is regarded as the origin of the modern Afghan state.


First Anglo-Afghan War

Summary: Britain invades to install a friendly ruler but is overwhelmed; a British-Indian force is destroyed during its disastrous 1842 retreat from Kabul, an early clash of the Great Game.


Second Anglo-Afghan War and the Treaty of Gandamak

Summary: Britain invades again over fears of Russian influence; the 1879 Treaty of Gandamak gives Britain control of Afghan foreign affairs in return for subsidy and protection.


The Durand Line drawn

Summary: Amir Abdur Rahman Khan agrees the Durand Line with British India, fixing a frontier that divides Pashtun communities and remains a source of dispute with Pakistan to this day.


Independence and the Treaty of Rawalpindi

Summary: Amir Amanullah Khan repudiates British control of foreign affairs and, after the Third Anglo-Afghan War, secures the Treaty of Rawalpindi (8 August 1919) recognising Afghan control of its own foreign relations.


Amanullah's reforms collapse

Summary: Sweeping modernising reforms provoke tribal and religious revolt; Amanullah Khan abdicates and flees into exile in January 1929, plunging the country briefly into civil strife.


The long reign of Zahir Shah

Summary: Mohammad Zahir Shah rules for four decades of cautious modernisation and neutrality, introducing in 1964 a constitution that opens a brief era of parliamentary politics.


Daoud Khan founds the republic

Summary: Mohammad Daoud Khan overthrows his cousin Zahir Shah in a bloodless coup, abolishes the monarchy and proclaims Afghanistan a republic with himself as president.


The Saur Revolution

Summary: The communist PDPA overthrows and kills President Daoud Khan, seizing power in the Saur Revolution and imposing radical reforms that ignite armed rebellion across the country.


The Soviet invasion

Summary: Soviet forces invade on 24 December 1979, kill the Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin and install Babrak Karmal, beginning a decade-long war against the US-backed mujahideen.


Soviet withdrawal

Summary: Under the 1988 Geneva Accords the Soviet Union pulls out; the last troops leave on 15 February 1989 after a war that killed huge numbers of Afghans and displaced millions.


Collapse of the communist government and civil war

Summary: Najibullah's government falls in 1992 and rival mujahideen factions turn on one another, devastating Kabul in a civil war that opens the way for the Taliban.


The Taliban capture Kabul

Summary: The Taliban, led by Mullah Omar, seize Kabul and proclaim the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, imposing a severe religious order and isolating the country internationally.


Destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas

Summary: The Taliban dynamite the colossal sixth-century Buddhas of Bamiyan as idolatrous, destroying a unique monument of world heritage months before their own fall.


US-led intervention topples the Taliban

Summary: After the 11 September attacks a US-led coalition and the Northern Alliance overthrow the Taliban; the Bonn Agreement of December 2001 installs Hamid Karzai's interim government.


Taliban return to power

Summary: Following the 2020 Doha agreement and the withdrawal of foreign forces, the Afghan government collapses and the Taliban retake Kabul on 15 August 2021, re-establishing the Islamic Emirate.


Portuguese reach the Kingdom of Kongo

Summary: The navigator Diogo Cão reached the mouth of the Congo River and made contact with the Kingdom of Kongo, opening relations between this powerful Central African monarchy and Portugal.


Kongo adopts Christianity

Summary: The Kongo ruler was baptised and, under his son Afonso I, the kingdom embraced Catholicism, literacy and sustained diplomatic ties with Portugal and the papacy.


Rise of Ndongo under the ngola

Summary: The Kimbundu-speaking Kingdom of Ndongo grew in strength under its ruler the ngola, asserting independence from Kongo; the title would give the future colony its name.


Ovimbundu and Lunda states take shape

Summary: In the central highlands the Ovimbundu kingdoms emerged, while in the east the Lunda states built a wide commercial and political network across the interior savanna.


Portuguese found Luanda

Summary: Paulo Dias de Novais established São Paulo da Assunção de Loanda on the Angolan coast, creating the base from which Portuguese power and the slave trade would expand.


Founding of Benguela

Summary: The Portuguese established the port of Benguela to the south, which would become a second major outlet for the export of enslaved Africans to the Americas.


Njinga becomes queen of Ndongo

Summary: After leading a diplomatic mission to the Portuguese in 1621, Njinga Mbande took the throne of Ndongo, beginning a decades-long struggle against Portuguese expansion.


Njinga rules from Matamba

Summary: Driven from Ndongo by the Portuguese, Njinga rebuilt her power in the eastern kingdom of Matamba, from which she resisted, raided and negotiated with the colonisers until peace in 1656.


Atlantic slave trade at its height

Summary: Luanda became the leading slave-trading port of the entire Atlantic, funnelling vast numbers of captives seized in interior wars to the Americas, overwhelmingly to Brazil.


Portugal abolishes the slave trade

Summary: Portugal formally outlawed the transatlantic slave trade, ending Luanda's centuries as a slaving port, though clandestine traffic and later forced labour persisted in Angola.


Berlin Conference and the Scramble

Summary: The Berlin Conference required Portugal to demonstrate effective occupation of Angola, spurring the military campaigns that would subdue the independent interior kingdoms.


Conquest of the Ovimbundu kingdoms

Summary: Portuguese forces conquered the Ovimbundu kingdoms of the central highlands, bringing one of Angola's largest peoples under colonial control.


Battle of the Cunene

Summary: Heavy fighting against the Kwanhama (Ovambo) in the south marked the violent and protracted character of the Portuguese conquest of Angola's interior frontier.


Effective occupation completed

Summary: Only in the early twentieth century, with pacification campaigns continuing into the 1920s, did Portugal establish effective control over the whole of Angola.


Revolt breaks out

Summary: The Baixa de Cassanje cotton workers' revolt, the 4 February attack on a Luanda prison, and the UPA's 15 March uprising in the north marked the start of Angola's war of independence against Portugal.


Founding of UNITA

Summary: Jonas Savimbi founded the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, drawing support from the Ovimbundu and creating the third of the rival liberation movements alongside the MPLA and FNLA.


Carnation Revolution in Portugal

Summary: A military coup overthrew Portugal's dictatorship, and the new government moved to decolonise, opening the path to Angolan independence.


Alvor Agreement

Summary: Portugal, the MPLA, the FNLA and UNITA signed the Alvor Agreement, providing for a transitional government and independence, but trust between the movements quickly collapsed into open conflict.


Independence proclaimed

Summary: As the Portuguese departed, the MPLA proclaimed the People's Republic of Angola in Luanda under Agostinho Neto, marking the country's independence amid a contest with the rival movements.


Cold War intervention

Summary: As civil war erupted, South Africa invaded the south and Cuba sent troops to support the MPLA, turning Angola into a major proxy battleground between the superpower blocs.


Battle of Cuito Cuanavale

Summary: Cuban, Angolan and South African forces fought a major conventional battle around Cuito Cuanavale, a turning point that helped lead to negotiated foreign troop withdrawals.


Bicesse Accords

Summary: A ceasefire under the Bicesse Accords legalised UNITA as a party and set the stage for multiparty elections, briefly raising hopes of an end to the war.


Disputed elections and renewed war

Summary: The MPLA's dos Santos led UNITA's Savimbi in Angola's first multiparty elections, but Savimbi rejected the result and returned to war, plunging the country back into conflict.


Death of Savimbi ends the war

Summary: Jonas Savimbi was killed in an ambush by government forces; within weeks UNITA and the MPLA signed the Luena Memorandum, ending the twenty-seven-year civil war.


Reconstruction and the oil boom

Summary: Peace allowed Angola to rebuild on the back of surging oil revenues, driving rapid growth in the 2000s amid persistent inequality and corruption.


Angola joins OPEC

Summary: Angola became a member of OPEC, underscoring its standing as one of Africa's leading oil producers and the centrality of crude oil to its economy.


Lourenço succeeds dos Santos

Summary: After thirty-eight years in power, José Eduardo dos Santos stepped down and João Lourenço became president, with the MPLA retaining control of the government.


Illyrian and Greek Butrint

Summary: Illyrian tribes inhabited the eastern Adriatic coast, where Greek colonists from about the eighth century BCE helped develop the settlement of Buthrotum (Butrint) into a flourishing city.


Roman conquest of Illyria

Summary: Rome conquered the Illyrians in the second century BCE and absorbed their lands; Butrint flourished under Roman rule with a forum, aqueduct and public buildings.


Byzantine rule begins

Summary: After the division of the Roman Empire the Albanian lands passed to the Byzantine Empire, remaining a contested Christian borderland for much of the following eight centuries.


Early Christian Butrint

Summary: Butrint became an episcopal seat with an early Christian basilica and a baptistery whose mosaic floor survives, marking the spread of Christianity in the region under Byzantium.


Ottoman invasion of Albania

Summary: The Ottoman Turks invaded Albania in 1388 and, over the following decades, brought most of the divided and contested country under their control, largely completing the conquest by about 1430.


Skanderbeg's revolt and the return to Kruje

Summary: Gjergj Kastrioti (Skanderbeg) broke with the Ottomans after 1443, reconverted to Christianity and seized his ancestral fortress of Kruje, launching a national revolt against Ottoman rule.


League of Lezhe

Summary: Skanderbeg united Albanian princes in the League of Lezhe to coordinate resistance, giving the scattered lordships a measure of common purpose against the Ottoman Empire.


The sieges of Kruje

Summary: From his stronghold at Kruje Skanderbeg withstood repeated Ottoman sieges, including those of 1450 and 1466-67, keeping much of Albania free for some twenty-five years.


Death of Skanderbeg

Summary: Skanderbeg died at Lezhe in 1468; without his leadership Albanian resistance collapsed, and the Ottomans took Kruje in 1478 and Shkoder in 1479, completing the conquest.


Albania within the Ottoman Empire

Summary: Following the fall of Kruje and Shkoder, Albania was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire, beginning nearly five centuries of rule during which most Albanians converted to Islam.


Ottoman towns of Berat and Gjirokastra

Summary: The towns of Berat and Gjirokastra developed the distinctive Ottoman-era urban architecture, including fortified citadels and tall stone houses, that later earned them UNESCO World Heritage status.


The Rilindja national awakening

Summary: A cultural and political revival, the Rilindja, promoted the Albanian language, literature and a distinct national identity, led by writers and patriots such as the poet Naim Frasheri.


League of Prizren

Summary: Founded at Prizren in response to the Congress of Berlin, the Albanian League sought to unify the Albanian lands into one autonomous unit and to resist their partition among neighbouring states.


Declaration of independence at Vlore

Summary: An assembly at Vlore led by Ismail Qemali proclaimed Albania an independent state and raised the national flag, breaking from the Ottoman Empire during the First Balkan War.


Conference of London and the borders

Summary: The Great Powers recognised an autonomous Albania but, pressed by its neighbours, drew borders leaving about half the Albanian-populated lands, including Kosovo, outside the state, creating the Albanian national question.


The rise of Zog

Summary: Ahmed Zogu consolidated power, becoming president in 1925 and in 1928 proclaiming himself King Zog I, ruling an authoritarian monarchy increasingly dependent on Fascist Italy.


Italian invasion of Albania

Summary: Fascist Italy invaded Albania on 7 April 1939; King Zog fled into exile and the Italian king Victor Emmanuel III was proclaimed king of Albania, ending its independence.


Communist victory and Hoxha in power

Summary: As German forces withdrew, the communist-led partisans took Tirana and formed a provisional government under Enver Hoxha, who would rule Albania for over four decades.


Breaks with Yugoslavia and the USSR

Summary: Hoxha broke with Tito's Yugoslavia in 1948 and allied with the Soviet Union, then ruptured with Moscow in 1961 over de-Stalinisation, turning instead to Maoist China.


Albania declared an atheist state

Summary: The Hoxha regime launched a campaign against religion, closing mosques and churches and proclaiming Albania the world's first officially atheist state.


Rupture with China and total isolation

Summary: Hoxha broke with post-Maoist China in the late 1970s, leaving Albania almost completely isolated, its borders sealed and its economy self-reliant by decree.


Death of Enver Hoxha

Summary: Hoxha died in 1985 after ruling for over forty years, leaving the most tightly controlled society in Europe to his successor Ramiz Alia.


End of one-party rule

Summary: After the Tirana student protests of December 1990, Albania held its first multiparty elections in March 1991, and the Party of Labour's monopoly on power ended with the 1992 elections.


US-Albania relations resumed

Summary: The United States and Albania resumed diplomatic relations on 15 March 1991 after a break of more than half a century dating to the Italian takeover of 1939.


Pyramid scheme collapse and unrest

Summary: The collapse of fraudulent pyramid investment schemes in early 1997 wiped out the savings of many Albanians and triggered armed unrest that brought the state close to anarchy before order was restored.


Kosovo declares independence

Summary: Kosovo, whose population is overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian and which was left outside Albania in 1913, declared independence on 17 February 2008, recognised the next day by the United States.


Albania joins NATO

Summary: Albania, with Croatia, formally joined NATO on 1 April 2009 as the alliance's 27th and 28th members, completing its strategic reorientation toward the West.


EU candidate status

Summary: Albania, which applied for membership in April 2009, was granted European Union candidate status in June 2014; accession negotiations were formally opened in July 2022.


The Charlemagne tradition and the Marca Hispanica

Summary: Andorran tradition, recalled in the anthem 'El Gran Carlemany', credits Charlemagne with freeing the valleys from the Moors and granting their charter; the region lay within the Carolingian frontier zone of the Marca Hispanica.


Christianity and Carolingian order

Summary: As part of the Carolingian frontier, the valleys were integrated into Latin Christendom, with the church of Urgell emerging as the dominant local authority over the centuries that followed.


Lordship of the Bishop of Urgell

Summary: The Bishop of Urgell consolidated lordship over the Andorran valleys, entrusting their defence to secular protectors, among them the powerful counts of Foix.


The first paréage

Summary: A feudal charter signed at Lleida ended the dispute between the Bishop of Urgell and the Count of Foix by placing Andorra under their joint suzerainty, creating the co-principality.


The second paréage

Summary: A second charter settled questions of justice and defence left open in 1278; together the two paréages formed Andorra's first basic law and constitutional foundation until 1993.


The questia tribute and neutrality

Summary: Andorra rendered a symbolic annual tribute, the questia, to each co-prince as an act of homage; the settlement was understood to recognise the valleys' neutrality.


Self-government within divided lordship

Summary: Because neither co-prince could rule alone, Andorrans gained latitude to govern their own valleys, developing assemblies of the parishes that prefigured a national council.


Founding of the Consell de la Terra

Summary: The co-princes allowed Andorrans to create the Council of the Land, drawn from heads of households of the parishes, one of Europe's oldest representative assemblies and the ancestor of today's parliament.


The French crown becomes co-prince

Summary: After the rights of Foix passed through Navarre to Henry IV, an edict confirmed the King of France and the Bishop of Urgell as Andorra's co-princes; the French role later passed to the head of state.


The Casa de la Vall

Summary: The Andorran council established its seat and court at the Casa de la Vall in Andorra la Vella, long the symbolic home of the valleys' self-government.


Neutrality through revolution and war

Summary: Through the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars the co-principality survived; the French co-princely role transferred to each new French regime while Andorra guarded its neutrality.


The New Reform

Summary: A reform led by syndic Guillem d'Areny-Plandolit and decreed by the episcopal co-prince broadened the Council and regularised elections, modernising Andorra's institutions while keeping the co-principality.


Neutral through the First World War

Summary: Andorra remained outside the fighting of the Great War; an anomaly of its undefined status was that it was reportedly omitted from the peace settlement and stayed nominally at war for decades.


Boris Skossyreff, 'King Boris I'

Summary: A Russian-born adventurer briefly induced the Andorran council to proclaim him king during a period of unrest over voting rights; he was arrested and expelled within about two weeks.


Neutral in the Second World War

Summary: Andorra preserved its neutrality through the Second World War, its mountain passes serving as a quiet crossing-point between Vichy France and Spain.


The first written constitution

Summary: Andorrans approved by referendum a constitution that made Andorra a sovereign parliamentary democracy, with the two co-princes reduced to constitutional heads of state and power vested in an elected government and council.


Admission to the United Nations

Summary: Andorra was admitted as a member state of the United Nations, taking its place in the international community as a fully recognised sovereign state.


Member of the Council of Europe

Summary: Andorra joined the Council of Europe, committing the new democracy to European standards of human rights and the rule of law.


Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley inscribed by UNESCO

Summary: Andorra's only World Heritage Site, the Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley, was inscribed as a cultural landscape, recognised for its high-Pyrenean pastoralism and a communal land-ownership system surviving from the 13th century.


Monetary agreement and the euro

Summary: Andorra signed a monetary agreement with the European Union allowing it to use the euro as its official currency and to issue its own euro coins.


Association agreement with the EU

Summary: After concluding negotiations in 2023, the European Commission in 2024 proposed an association agreement to give Andorra (with San Marino) deep access to the EU single market, comparable to the European Economic Area.


Hafit-period tombs near Jebel Hafit

Summary: Beehive-shaped stone tombs of the Hafit period appear on the slopes of Jebel Hafit near Al Ain, the earliest monumental architecture of the region and a marker of settled life at the desert's edge.


The Umm an-Nar culture flourishes

Summary: Named for an island off Abu Dhabi, the Umm an-Nar culture built circular communal tombs, fortified towers and agricultural settlements at Hili, trading copper and goods with Mesopotamia and the Indus valley.


The aflaj irrigation system at Hili

Summary: Hili preserves one of the oldest known examples of the aflaj, underground channels that carried mountain groundwater to oasis date gardens, sustaining agriculture in an arid land.


Islam reaches the lower Gulf coast

Summary: Islam spread to southeastern Arabia during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad, drawing the coastal communities into the new faith and the trade networks of the Muslim world.


The Battle of Dibba in the Ridda Wars

Summary: After the Prophet's death, a campaign by the first caliph Abu Bakr against apostate tribes culminated in a battle at Dibba on the east coast, securing the region within the Islamic order.


Portuguese seize control of the coast

Summary: Portuguese naval expansion fortified Gulf ports to dominate the spice and pearl trade, beginning two centuries of European and Omani contest over the region's sea lanes.


Britain breaks the Qasimi sea power

Summary: After repeated clashes over Gulf shipping, British forces subdued the Qasimi dynasty and razed Ras al-Khaimah, ending the maritime dominance of the Qawasim in the lower Gulf.


The General Treaty of Peace

Summary: The coastal sheikhs signed the General Treaty of Peace with Britain, limiting maritime aggression and initiating the series of agreements that established British paramountcy over the future emirates.


The Perpetual Maritime Truce

Summary: The Treaty of Maritime Peace in Perpetuity committed the rulers to a permanent truce at sea, giving the coast the name Trucial Coast and its statelets the name Trucial States.


The Exclusive Agreement with Britain

Summary: The Trucial rulers agreed to cede no territory and form no foreign relations except through Britain, in return for British protection, making the coast in effect a British protected zone.


Collapse of the pearl trade

Summary: The Great Depression and the Japanese cultured pearl destroyed the natural-pearl economy that had sustained the Trucial Coast, bringing years of poverty and hunger.


Abu Dhabi exports its first oil

Summary: After commercial oil was struck in Abu Dhabi from 1958-1960, the first cargo of crude was exported from Das Island in 1962, beginning the transformation of the emirates' fortunes.


Sheikh Zayed becomes ruler of Abu Dhabi

Summary: Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan succeeded his brother Shakhbut as ruler of Abu Dhabi and began directing oil revenue into the building of a modern state.


Britain announces withdrawal from the Gulf

Summary: The British government declared it would withdraw its forces and end its treaty role in the Gulf by the end of 1971, prompting the Trucial rulers to plan a federation.


The United Arab Emirates is founded

Summary: The rulers of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al-Quwain and Fujairah proclaimed the United Arab Emirates, with Sheikh Zayed as first president and Sheikh Rashid as vice president.


Ras al-Khaimah joins the federation

Summary: The seventh emirate, Ras al-Khaimah, acceded to the union in February 1972, completing the United Arab Emirates as a federation of seven emirates.


A common currency and federal integration

Summary: The federation introduced the UAE dirham and advanced reforms to unify infrastructure and government, knitting the seven emirates into a single modern state.


The Burj Khalifa opens in Dubai

Summary: Dubai inaugurated the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, a symbol of the emirate's wager on trade, real estate and tourism rather than oil.


The Hope probe reaches Mars

Summary: The UAE's Hope spacecraft entered orbit around Mars, making the country the first Arab nation and the fifth worldwide to reach the planet.


Mohamed bin Zayed elected president

Summary: Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan was elected president of the United Arab Emirates, succeeding his late brother Khalifa and continuing the Al Nahyan leadership of the federation.


Ancient peopling of the land

Summary: Hunter-gatherer peoples occupy the Pampas, Patagonia and the Andean northwest over many millennia, leaving sites such as the painted hands of the Cueva de las Manos.


Diaguita and Guarani societies

Summary: Settled Diaguita farmers flourish in the northwest within the Andean world, while Guarani-speaking peoples cultivate the riverine northeast.


Spanish reach the Rio de la Plata

Summary: European expeditions begin to explore the great estuary of the Rio de la Plata, opening the region to Spanish ambitions.


First founding of Buenos Aires

Summary: Pedro de Mendoza founds a first settlement on the Rio de la Plata, soon abandoned amid famine and Indigenous resistance, its survivors retreating to Asuncion.


Refounding of Buenos Aires

Summary: Juan de Garay leads an expedition from Asuncion and permanently re-establishes Buenos Aires, fixing the future capital on the estuary.


Jesuit missions among the Guarani

Summary: The Jesuit Order founds mission towns among the Guarani that flourish until the order's expulsion from Spanish lands in 1767.


Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata created

Summary: Charles III establishes the new viceroyalty with Buenos Aires as capital, routing Potosi silver through the port and spurring its rise.


Free trade reforms

Summary: Bourbon commercial reforms loosen Spain's trade monopoly, allowing Buenos Aires to trade more freely and accelerating its growth as an Atlantic port.


British invasions repelled

Summary: British forces seize Buenos Aires twice and are twice expelled by local militias, kindling creole self-confidence and a taste for autonomy.


The May Revolution

Summary: An open cabildo in Buenos Aires deposes the viceroy and forms the Primera Junta, the first home government, launching the war of independence.


Belgrano raises the flag

Summary: Manuel Belgrano first flies the light-blue-and-white flag at Rosario; it is adopted by the Congress of Tucuman in 1816.


Declaration of Independence at Tucuman

Summary: The Congress of Tucuman declares independence from Spain as the United Provinces of South America, signed by twenty-nine delegates under the presidency of Laprida.


San Martin crosses the Andes

Summary: San Martin leads the Army of the Andes over the cordillera and defeats royalist forces at Chacabuco, opening the liberation of Chile.


Collapse of central authority

Summary: The United Provinces fragment as central government breaks down and provincial caudillos contend for power, beginning decades of civil war.


The rule of Rosas

Summary: The Federalist caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas dominates Argentina as governor of Buenos Aires until his fall, a period of strongman rule and conflict.


Battle of Caseros

Summary: Justo Jose de Urquiza defeats Rosas at Caseros, opening the way to the constitutional organisation of the country.


The National Constitution

Summary: A constituent congress at Santa Fe sanctions the Constitution of 1853, establishing a federal, representative and republican state.


The Conquest of the Desert

Summary: Military campaigns led by Julio Argentino Roca seize the Pampas and northern Patagonia from the Mapuche and other peoples through killing, subjugation and displacement.


Mass European immigration

Summary: Some four million immigrants, chiefly Italians and Spaniards, arrive to settle and work the land, so that by 1914 nearly a third of Argentines are foreign-born.


First election under universal male suffrage

Summary: Hipolito Yrigoyen of the Radical Civic Union wins the presidency in the first vote under the secret universal male ballot of 1912.


The first military coup

Summary: Amid the Great Depression the army overthrows Yrigoyen, opening the fraud-ridden Infamous Decade and a century of military intervention.


Peron elected president

Summary: Juan Peron wins the presidency with broad working-class support, launching the Peronist movement that will dominate Argentine politics.


Peron overthrown

Summary: The Revolucion Libertadora ousts Peron, who goes into an exile of nearly two decades while Peronism is banned at home.


Peron's return and death

Summary: Peron returns from exile and is re-elected president in 1973, but dies on 1 July 1974, leaving power to his wife Isabel amid deepening crisis.


Military coup and the Dirty War

Summary: The armed forces seize power and launch the National Reorganization Process, a dictatorship whose Dirty War forcibly disappears thousands of people; from 1977 the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo march weekly to demand their return.


The Falklands/Malvinas War

Summary: Argentina invades the Falklands/Malvinas on 2 April; after ten weeks of war its forces surrender to Britain on 14 June, discrediting the junta.


Return to democracy

Summary: Raul Alfonsin is inaugurated president, restoring civilian democratic rule after seven years of dictatorship.


Nunca Mas and the Trial of the Juntas

Summary: Following the CONADEP report Nunca Mas, civilian courts try and convict the junta leaders for the crimes of the Dirty War.


Economic and political crisis

Summary: A severe financial collapse forces a sovereign default and topples several presidents in days, the gravest crisis of the democratic era.


Founding of Erebuni

Summary: The Urartian king Argishti I founded the fortress of Erebuni on the site of present-day Yerevan, one of the oldest continuously inhabited city sites in the world.


Urartu at its height

Summary: In the 9th and 8th centuries BCE the kingdom of Urartu, centred on Lake Van, became a major power of the Middle East before being succeeded in the region by the Armenians.


Reign of Tigranes the Great

Summary: Tigranes II expanded Armenia until it briefly stretched from the Caspian toward the Mediterranean, taking the title 'king of kings' and making Armenia the strongest state in the Roman East before Roman armies forced his retreat.


End of the Armenian monarchy

Summary: The Sasanian Persians abolished the Arsacid kingdom of Armenia and ruled the territory through appointed officials, ending the ancient Armenian monarchy.


Armenia adopts Christianity

Summary: King Tiridates III proclaimed Christianity the religion of his kingdom after his conversion by Gregory the Illuminator, making Armenia the first nation to adopt Christianity as its state religion.


Mother Cathedral of Echmiatsin

Summary: The earliest of Armenia's great domed churches, the Mother Cathedral of Echmiatsin, was traditionally built by Tiridates III and Gregory the Illuminator; it remains the seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church.


Mesrop Mashtots creates the Armenian alphabet

Summary: The scholar Mesrop Mashtots devised the 36-letter Armenian alphabet, enabling Scripture and literature in Armenian and launching a 5th-century golden age of writing and translation.


Bagratid kingdom restored

Summary: Ashot I of the Bagratuni dynasty was recognised as king of Armenia by both the caliph and the Byzantine emperor, reviving an independent Armenian monarchy.


Ani becomes the Bagratid capital

Summary: King Ashot III moved the capital to Ani, which flourished as a major medieval city known as the 'city of a thousand churches' for its cathedral and monastic architecture.


Kingdom of Cilician Armenia

Summary: Leo II was crowned king Leo I, raising the Armenian principality in Cilicia to a kingdom that, allied with the Crusaders, lasted until its conquest by the Mamluks in 1375.


Fall of Cilician Armenia

Summary: The Mamluks of Egypt conquered the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, extinguishing the last independent medieval Armenian state.


Russia annexes eastern Armenia

Summary: Following war with Persia, Russia annexed the eastern (Persian) Armenian lands, dividing the Armenian homeland between the Russian and Ottoman empires.


The Armenian Genocide

Summary: From 24 April 1915 the Ottoman Young Turk government deported and massacred the empire's Armenian population in death marches toward the Syrian desert; widely recognised as the first genocide of the 20th century, with deaths estimated from roughly 600,000 to as many as 1.5 million.


First Republic of Armenia

Summary: As the Russian Empire collapsed, Armenians of the Caucasus declared an independent Republic of Armenia with its capital at Yerevan, the first modern Armenian state.


Sovietisation of Armenia

Summary: Squeezed between Turkish nationalist forces and the advancing Red Army, the First Republic fell and Armenia was Sovietised, ending its short-lived independence.


Armenian SSR established

Summary: The Transcaucasian federation was dissolved and Armenia became a separate union republic of the U.S.S.R., the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic.


Nagorno-Karabakh dispute erupts

Summary: The regional legislature of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-majority enclave within Soviet Azerbaijan, voted to join Armenia, triggering a conflict that escalated into open war.


Spitak earthquake

Summary: A catastrophic earthquake struck northern Armenia around Spitak and Gyumri, killing tens of thousands and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless in the final Soviet years.


Independence from the Soviet Union

Summary: Armenians approved independence by referendum and the Supreme Council declared secession from the U.S.S.R.; the United States recognised Armenia on 25 December 1991.


First Nagorno-Karabakh War ceasefire

Summary: After fighting that left roughly 30,000 dead (estimate) and hundreds of thousands displaced, a 1994 ceasefire left Armenian forces in de facto control of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent districts.


The Velvet Revolution

Summary: A peaceful protest movement led by Nikol Pashinyan brought down the governing elite and installed a new reform government, with Pashinyan elected prime minister.


Second Nagorno-Karabakh War

Summary: In a 44-day war Azerbaijan retook much of the territory around Nagorno-Karabakh; a Russian-brokered ceasefire on 9 November 2020 ended the fighting, with heavy casualties on both sides (estimates).


Azerbaijani offensive and the Karabakh exodus

Summary: An Azerbaijani offensive brought Nagorno-Karabakh fully under its control; within about a week well over 100,000 ethnic Armenians fled to Armenia, and the enclave's authorities were dissolved by 1 January 2024.


Aboriginal peoples settle the continent

Summary: Aboriginal peoples reached Australia at least 65,000 years ago, crossing from Southeast Asia to the joined landmass of Sahul and beginning the world's oldest continuous human occupation of a single territory.


Settlement across the whole continent

Summary: Within tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal peoples had spread across the entire continent, from tropical north to the cold south, developing diverse cultures adapted to every environment.


Hundreds of nations and languages

Summary: By the time of European contact the continent was home to hundreds of distinct nations speaking around 250 languages, sustaining complex law, kinship, trade, art, and spiritual systems centred on connection to Country.


Cook charts and claims the east coast

Summary: Lieutenant James Cook charted the eastern coast of the continent aboard HMB Endeavour and claimed it for Britain as New South Wales, opening the way to British colonisation.


The First Fleet founds the penal colony

Summary: Captain Arthur Phillip's First Fleet established a British penal colony at Sydney Cove, beginning permanent European settlement and the dispossession of Aboriginal peoples of the Sydney region.


Smallpox devastates Aboriginal peoples

Summary: A smallpox epidemic spread among Aboriginal peoples around Sydney, killing a large proportion of the Eora and neighbouring peoples and compounding the impact of land seizure and conflict.


The frontier wars

Summary: Across the continent, the expansion of pastoral settlement met Aboriginal resistance in a long, dispersed frontier conflict of raids, reprisals, and massacres that, with introduced disease, devastated Aboriginal peoples and dispossessed them of their land.


Gold rushes begin

Summary: Discoveries of gold in New South Wales and Victoria triggered rushes that drew hundreds of thousands of migrants, transforming the colonies' population, economy, and society within a decade.


Eureka Stockade

Summary: Goldminers at Ballarat rebelled against oppressive licensing and the denial of political rights; troops stormed their stockade, killing more than twenty, but the revolt helped secure democratic reforms.


Federation creates the Commonwealth of Australia

Summary: Six self-governing colonies federated under a written Constitution to form the Commonwealth of Australia, a new federal nation with a parliament in which power was shared between the Commonwealth and the states.


Immigration Restriction Act and 'White Australia'

Summary: One of the new parliament's first laws established the cornerstone of the 'White Australia' policy, using a dictation test to exclude non-European migrants and keep the nation overwhelmingly white and British.


Women win the federal vote

Summary: The Commonwealth Franchise Act gave most (non-Aboriginal) women the right to vote and to stand for the federal parliament, making Australia one of the first nations to enfranchise women nationally.


Gallipoli landing and the Anzac legend

Summary: Australian and New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli in a costly campaign that, despite ending in withdrawal, became a foundational national story commemorated each year on Anzac Day.


The Stolen Generations

Summary: Under official assimilation policies, governments and churches forcibly removed many thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families over decades, causing profound and lasting harm.


Bombing of Darwin

Summary: Japanese aircraft bombed Darwin during the Second World War, the largest attack ever mounted on Australia, prompting Australia to turn increasingly toward the United States for security.


Post-war mass immigration

Summary: A large post-war immigration programme brought millions of migrants, first from Europe and later from Asia and beyond, transforming Australia into a far more diverse society.


The 1967 referendum

Summary: Australians voted by nearly 91 per cent to let the Commonwealth make laws for Aboriginal people and to include them in the census, a landmark in the struggle for Aboriginal rights and recognition.


Australia Act and full legal independence

Summary: The Australia Act 1986, building on the Statute of Westminster adopted in 1942, ended the British Parliament's power to legislate for Australia and abolished appeals to the Privy Council, completing Australia's legal independence.


Mabo decision overturns terra nullius

Summary: The High Court ruled in Mabo v Queensland that the continent had not been terra nullius and that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples could hold native title, leading to the Native Title Act 1993.


National Apology to the Stolen Generations

Summary: Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered a formal apology in parliament to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and especially to the Stolen Generations harmed by past policies of forced child removal.


Voice to Parliament referendum

Summary: Australians voted against a constitutional amendment to recognise First Peoples and establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament, leaving questions of recognition and reconciliation unresolved.


The Eastern March granted to the Babenbergs

Summary: The marchia orientalis, a frontier march of the Holy Roman Empire on the Danube, was entrusted to Count Liutpold of the Bavarian house of Babenberg, beginning their long rule over the future Austria.


First mention of 'Ostarrîchi'

Summary: A charter of Emperor Otto III used the word 'Ostarrîchi', the 'eastern realm', the earliest recorded form of the name Österreich (Austria), referring to the Babenberg march.


The Privilegium Minus raises Austria to a duchy

Summary: Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa's Privilegium Minus elevated Austria from a march to a duchy and detached it from Bavaria, granting the Babenbergs wide hereditary rights; Vienna became their seat.


End of the Babenberg line

Summary: Duke Frederick II 'the Quarrelsome' was killed fighting the Hungarians, leaving no male heir; the extinction of the Babenbergs left the duchy of Austria contested among neighbouring powers.


Battle of the Marchfeld

Summary: Rudolf I of Habsburg defeated and killed the Bohemian king Ottokar II near Dürnkrut on the Marchfeld, seizing the Austrian lands; in 1282 he enfeoffed his sons with them, founding Habsburg rule in Austria.


First Ottoman siege of Vienna

Summary: The army of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent besieged Vienna for three weeks in the autumn of 1529 before withdrawing, the first great Ottoman assault on the Habsburg capital.


Second Ottoman siege and the relief of Vienna

Summary: An Ottoman army under Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa besieged Vienna until a relief force led by Charles V of Lorraine and King Jan III Sobieski of Poland routed it on 12 September 1683, a turning point against Ottoman expansion.


Prince Eugene and the conquest of Hungary

Summary: After Vienna's deliverance, Prince Eugene of Savoy won victories such as Zenta (1697) and the capture of Belgrade (1717); the Peace of Karlowitz (1699) secured Habsburg control of Hungary and Transylvania.


Reign of Maria Theresa

Summary: Inheriting the Habsburg lands under the Pragmatic Sanction, Maria Theresa survived the War of the Austrian Succession and reformed the administration, army and education across her dominions.


The Empire of Austria proclaimed

Summary: In response to Napoleon's imperial coronation, Franz II issued a patent assuming the hereditary title of Emperor of Austria as Franz I, formally constituting the Habsburg lands as an empire.


Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire

Summary: Franz II laid down the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, which was dissolved after some thousand years, leaving the Habsburg ruler as Emperor of Austria alone.


Revolution and the accession of Franz Joseph

Summary: The revolutions of 1848 shook the Austrian Empire, drove the chancellor Metternich into exile and brought the eighteen-year-old Franz Joseph to the throne, where he would remain until 1916.


The Austro-Hungarian Compromise

Summary: The Ausgleich of 1867 reorganised the empire into the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, two states sharing a common monarch, foreign policy, finance and army; Franz Joseph was crowned king of Hungary on 8 June.


Assassination at Sarajevo

Summary: Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne, and his wife Sophie were assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, the spark that led Austria-Hungary to war.


Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia

Summary: After the July Crisis, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, triggering a chain of alliances that plunged Europe into the First World War.


Collapse of Austria-Hungary and the First Republic

Summary: As the war was lost the empire disintegrated; Emperor Karl I renounced participation in government on 11 November and the Republic of German-Austria was proclaimed on 12 November 1918, ending Habsburg rule.


Treaty of Saint-Germain

Summary: Signed for Austria by Karl Renner, the treaty confirmed the breakup of Austria-Hungary, forbade union with Germany without League of Nations approval, limited Austria's army and ceded South Tyrol to Italy.


South Tyrol ceded to Italy

Summary: Under Saint-Germain the German-speaking southern part of historic Tyrol was awarded to Italy, placing a large German-speaking population under Italian rule and creating a lasting territorial grievance.


Dollfuss and the corporate state

Summary: Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss suspended parliament and established an authoritarian 'corporate state'; he was assassinated by Austrian Nazis in July 1934, deepening the First Republic's crisis.


The Anschluss

Summary: German troops entered Austria on 12 March 1938 and on 13 March a law proclaimed reunification with the Reich; Austrian independence ended and a manipulated April plebiscite recorded near-total approval.


The Austrian State Treaty

Summary: Signed at the Belvedere in Vienna by the four occupying powers and foreign minister Leopold Figl, the treaty restored Austria's full sovereignty and ended the four-power occupation; it came into force on 27 July 1955.


Declaration of permanent neutrality

Summary: After the last occupation troops left, the Austrian parliament passed a constitutional law declaring the republic's permanent neutrality, the condition on which the Soviet Union had agreed to withdraw.


Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement on South Tyrol

Summary: Austrian foreign minister Karl Gruber and Italian premier Alcide De Gasperi signed an accord committing Italy to grant autonomy and language and education rights to South Tyrol's German-speaking population.


South Tyrol's Second Autonomy Statute

Summary: After the dispute reached the UN (Resolutions 1497 of 1960 and 1661 of 1961) and the 'Package' of 1969, the Second Autonomy Statute took effect in 1972, granting real autonomy to the province of Bolzano.


Accession to the European Union

Summary: Following a referendum on 12 June 1994 in which about two-thirds voted in favour, Austria joined the European Union on 1 January 1995, integrating the neutral republic into the European mainstream.


The rock art of Gobustan

Summary: On a plateau south of Baku, prehistoric peoples carved more than 6,000 engravings of hunters, animals and boats, leaving a record of roughly 40,000 years of human activity later inscribed by UNESCO.


The kingdom of Caucasian Albania

Summary: The Caucasian Albanians established a kingdom in the eastern Caucasus, much of which overlaps present-day Azerbaijan, before falling under the suzerainty of the Sasanian Persian Empire.


Caucasian Albania adopts Christianity

Summary: King Urnayr made Christianity the state religion of Caucasian Albania, which kept its own church and alphabet as a Sasanian province until the Arab conquests.


Arab conquest and the coming of Islam

Summary: Arab armies brought the eastern Caucasus under Muslim rule, introducing Islam in the seventh century and beginning some four centuries of Arab control over the region.


Seljuk invasions and Turkic settlement

Summary: The Seljuk Turks invaded the Caucasus, changing the population and establishing the dominance of Oghuz Turkic, the basis of the modern Azerbaijani language.


The Shirvanshahs make Baku their capital

Summary: The Shirvanshahs, who had held Baku since the 11th century, made it their capital, walling the inner city and raising the Maiden Tower.


The Palace of the Shirvanshahs

Summary: The Shirvanshahs built their palace complex in Baku's inner city — reception hall, mosque, mausoleum and bath-house — later inscribed with the walled city by UNESCO in 2000.


Ismail I and the Safavid empire

Summary: Crowned shah at Tabriz with his base in Azerbaijan, Ismail I founded the Safavid dynasty and made Twelver Shia Islam the state religion, binding the land to Persia.


Treaty of Gulistan

Summary: Ending the Russo-Persian war of 1804–13, Persia ceded to Russia the eastern Caucasus khanates from Lankaran to Derbent, including Baku, Shirvan, Ganja and Karabakh.


Treaty of Turkmenchay

Summary: The second Russo-Persian war ended with Turkmenchay, confirming Russian rule and adding Nakhichevan and Yerevan, fixing the Aras-river border that still divides the two Azerbaijans.


The Baku oil boom begins

Summary: Modern commercial oil extraction began in Baku in 1872; by 1900 the Abşeron field was the largest in the world, turning the city into a global energy capital.


Azerbaijan Democratic Republic declared

Summary: On 28 May 1918 Azerbaijan declared independence under Musavat leadership, founding the first secular parliamentary republic in the Muslim world, with Mammad Amin Rasulzade among its leaders.


Soviet annexation

Summary: The Red Army entered Baku in April 1920 against little resistance, ending the democratic republic and bringing Azerbaijan under Soviet rule.


Azerbaijan SSR established

Summary: Following the Red Army's entry into Baku, the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic was formed, becoming a full union republic of the USSR from 1936.


Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous oblast created

Summary: The Armenian-majority mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh was constituted as an autonomous oblast within Soviet Azerbaijan, freezing a contested status that would later erupt.


Karabakh dispute reignites

Summary: Under perestroika, Nagorno-Karabakh's Armenian majority demonstrated for transfer to Armenia, triggering intercommunal violence that grew into open conflict as the Soviet Union collapsed.


Azerbaijan declares sovereignty

Summary: Azerbaijan declared its sovereignty in 1989 as Soviet authority weakened, a first step toward the restoration of independence two years later.


Independence restored

Summary: Azerbaijan adopted the Constitutional Act on State Independence, declaring itself successor to the 1918 republic; the US recognised it on 25 December 1991.


First Karabakh war ends in ceasefire

Summary: A 1994 ceasefire halted the first Nagorno-Karabakh war, leaving Armenian forces in de facto control of the region and surrounding districts, with large displacement on both sides (figures are estimates).


Ilham Aliyev succeeds his father

Summary: On the death of the gravely ill Heydar Aliyev, his son Ilham Aliyev became president, continuing a family-led order built on Caspian oil and gas wealth.


Second Nagorno-Karabakh war

Summary: In a 44-day war Azerbaijani forces retook much of Nagorno-Karabakh, capturing Shusha before a ceasefire on 9 November 2020; casualty figures are estimates.


Azerbaijan takes full control of Nagorno-Karabakh

Summary: A September 2023 offensive brought all of Nagorno-Karabakh under Azerbaijani control and dissolved the self-declared republic; by estimates over 100,000 of about 120,000 ethnic Armenians fled.


Foundation under Ntare Rushatsi

Summary: By tradition Ntare Rushatsi (Ntare I) founds the dynasty of the Kingdom of Burundi; oral histories credit him with ending a famine and unifying competing centres of power.


Expansion under Ntare IV Rugamba

Summary: The kingdom roughly doubles in size under Mwami Ntare IV Rutaganzwa Rugamba; by mid-century its borders broadly match those of present-day Burundi.


First European contact

Summary: European explorers and missionaries reach the Lake Tanganyika region for the first time, beginning sustained outside contact with the kingdom.


Burundi assigned to German East Africa

Summary: Burundi is incorporated into German East Africa; Germany rules indirectly through the mwami while establishing military posts over the following years.


Belgian conquest of Urundi

Summary: Belgian forces invade Urundi during the First World War, ending German control and beginning Belgian administration of the territory.


League of Nations mandate of Ruanda-Urundi

Summary: Belgium receives Ruanda-Urundi as a mandate; rule through Tutsi-favouring indigenous hierarchies deepens ethnic stratification. The mandate became a UN Trust Territory in 1946.


Assassination of Prince Louis Rwagasore

Summary: Weeks after UPRONA's electoral victory, Prime Minister Prince Louis Rwagasore, the independence hero and son of Mwami Mwambutsa IV, is shot dead; the killing is later traced to rival politicians with foreign involvement.


Independence under the monarchy

Summary: Burundi becomes independent from Belgium as a constitutional monarchy under Mwami Mwambutsa IV, separating from Rwanda and retaining its throne.


Assassination of PM Pierre Ngendandumwe

Summary: Hutu prime minister Pierre Ngendandumwe is assassinated, deepening the political crisis that followed independence.


Failed Hutu coup and reprisals

Summary: A Hutu-led coup attempt fails and is followed by army reprisals, foreshadowing later cycles of violence.


Monarchy abolished; republic declared

Summary: Mwami Mwambutsa IV is deposed in July; his son reigns briefly as Ntare V before Captain Michel Micombero overthrows him in November, abolishes the monarchy and proclaims a republic.


Micombero's military republic

Summary: Michel Micombero installs a Tutsi-dominated military republic, concentrating power in the army and state.


Insurrection and the killing of Ntare V

Summary: A Hutu-led insurrection erupts in southern Burundi; on 29 April the deposed king Ntare V is killed in Gitega, and large-scale state reprisals begin.


The Ikiza mass killings

Summary: State and army reprisals kill an estimated 100,000–300,000 people, overwhelmingly Hutu, with educated Hutu deliberately targeted; many scholars regard the events as a genocide. Hundreds of thousands flee abroad.


Bagaza seizes power

Summary: Colonel Jean-Baptiste Bagaza overthrows Micombero in a bloodless coup and pursues limited liberalisation through the late 1970s and early 1980s.


Buyoya takes power

Summary: Major Pierre Buyoya deposes Bagaza in a bloodless coup, becoming president and later steering the country toward reform.


Ntega and Marangara killings

Summary: Ethnic violence in the northern communes of Ntega and Marangara kills thousands, pressuring Buyoya to begin national reconciliation and democratisation.


Multiparty constitution

Summary: A new constitution approved by referendum and promulgated in 1992 opens the way to multiparty competition under President Buyoya.


Ndadaye elected first Hutu president

Summary: Melchior Ndadaye of FRODEBU defeats Buyoya to become Burundi's first democratically elected and first Hutu head of state.


Assassination of Ndadaye; civil war begins

Summary: Ndadaye is assassinated by soldiers after months in office, igniting reciprocal massacres and a civil war that would kill an estimated 300,000 people.


Arusha Peace Agreement

Summary: The Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement, mediated by Nyerere and then Mandela, sets out ethnic power-sharing and a path out of the war.


CNDD-FDD joins the peace process

Summary: The main rebel movement, the CNDD-FDD, agrees to the peace process and ceasefires; the war winds down toward the 2005 transition.


CNDD-FDD wins power; Nkurunziza president

Summary: Following the Arusha settlement, the former rebel CNDD-FDD wins the 2005 elections and Pierre Nkurunziza becomes president.


Third-term crisis

Summary: Nkurunziza's bid for a disputed third term triggers mass protests, a failed May coup and a deadly crackdown; over a thousand are killed and hundreds of thousands flee.


Constitutional referendum

Summary: A 2018 referendum amends the constitution and resets presidential term limits, potentially allowing Nkurunziza to remain in power until 2034.


Succession to Ndayishimiye

Summary: Nkurunziza declines to run; Évariste Ndayishimiye wins the May 2020 election. Nkurunziza dies on 8 June and Ndayishimiye is sworn in on 18 June 2020.


Battle of the Golden Spurs

Summary: A Flemish town militia, mostly craft guildsmen, destroyed a French army of knights near Courtrai, collecting the golden spurs of the slain nobles and asserting the independence of the Flemish towns.


The Flemish cloth boom

Summary: Importing English wool, Bruges, Ghent and Ypres became among the richest cloth-producing cities in Europe, with Bruges the leading port and financial centre of the north.


Foundation of the beguinages

Summary: Communities of beguines, women living a religious life without taking monastic vows, established enclosed beguinages in the Flemish towns; thirteen survive as a UNESCO World Heritage site bearing witness to this medieval tradition.


Flanders passes to Burgundy

Summary: On the death of the last count, the County of Flanders was inherited by Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, beginning the gathering of the Low Countries under a single dynasty.


The Habsburg inheritance

Summary: After Charles the Bold of Burgundy was killed, his daughter Mary married the Habsburg archduke Maximilian of Austria, passing the Low Countries to the Habsburg dynasty.


Abdication of Charles V in Brussels

Summary: The emperor Charles V, born in Ghent, abdicated the Netherlands to his son Philip II in Brussels in 1555, and the provinces passed under the rule of Habsburg Spain.


Union of Arras and the split of the Low Countries

Summary: The Catholic southern provinces reaffirmed loyalty to Spain in the Union of Arras while the northern provinces formed the Union of Utrecht, beginning the permanent division of the Low Countries into Belgium and the Netherlands.


Fall of Antwerp

Summary: After a siege of over a year, the Spanish commander Alessandro Farnese took the great Protestant port of Antwerp, confirming Spanish control of the southern Netherlands and driving its merchants and craftsmen north.


From Spanish to Austrian Netherlands

Summary: By the Treaty of Utrecht ending the War of the Spanish Succession, the southern Netherlands passed from Spain to the Austrian Habsburgs, becoming the Austrian Netherlands.


French annexation of the southern Netherlands

Summary: Revolutionary France annexed the Austrian Netherlands and the prince-bishopric of Liège, ending Habsburg rule and governing the region directly from Paris for twenty years.


Union with the Netherlands

Summary: After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo on Belgian soil, the Congress of Vienna merged the southern provinces with the Dutch into the United Kingdom of the Netherlands under William I, as a buffer against France.


The Belgian Revolution

Summary: Rebellion in Brussels drove out the Dutch garrison; a National Congress proclaimed independence and adopted a liberal constitution, breaking the southern provinces away from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.


Leopold I, first King of the Belgians

Summary: The German prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was installed as the first king and took his constitutional oath on 21 July 1831, a date still observed as Belgium's national day.


Treaty of London guarantees Belgian neutrality

Summary: Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, Russia and the Netherlands recognised Belgium as an independent and perpetually neutral state and guaranteed its neutrality, the treaty later cited by Britain to enter the First World War.


Accession of Leopold II

Summary: Leopold II succeeded Leopold I as King of the Belgians, ruling an industrialising kingdom while pursuing his own colonial ambitions in central Africa.


Foundation of the Congo Free State

Summary: After winning recognition at the Berlin Conference, Leopold II proclaimed the Congo Free State as his private possession, a regime whose forced labour and atrocities caused massive loss of life.


Annexation of the Congo by Belgium

Summary: Under international pressure over the atrocities, Leopold II was forced to cede his private colony to the Belgian state, which took it over as the Belgian Congo.


Neutral Moresnet

Summary: Unable to agree on ownership of a village and its zinc mine, the powers created Neutral Moresnet, a tiny condominium of about 3.5 square kilometres jointly administered by Prussia and the Netherlands, then Prussia and Belgium, until the Treaty of Versailles awarded it to Belgium.


The Baarle enclaves take shape

Summary: Medieval land deals between the lords of Breda and the dukes of Brabant scattered sovereignty across Baarle, leaving the Belgian Baarle-Hertog as a cluster of enclaves inside the Netherlands, some containing Dutch counter-enclaves.


Germany invades neutral Belgium

Summary: Executing the Schlieffen Plan, Germany invaded Belgium after King Albert I refused free passage; the violation of the 1839 neutrality treaty, dismissed as a 'scrap of paper', brought Britain into the First World War.


The Battle of the Yser

Summary: Falling back behind the river Yser, the Belgian army opened the sluices and flooded the polders to halt the German advance, holding a last strip of free Belgium around Nieuwpoort and Diksmuide for the rest of the war.


Versailles: Eupen-Malmedy and the end of Moresnet

Summary: The Treaty of Versailles ended Belgian neutrality, abolished Neutral Moresnet and transferred Eupen, Malmedy and Sankt Vith from Germany to Belgium, giving the kingdom a German-speaking minority after a much-criticised popular consultation in 1920.


Second German invasion

Summary: Germany again invaded neutral Belgium on 10 May 1940, this time thrusting through the Ardennes, and rapidly overwhelmed the defending Belgian, French and British forces.


Surrender of King Leopold III

Summary: After eighteen days of fighting Leopold III surrendered the Belgian army without consulting his government, beginning four years of German occupation and a political crisis over the king's conduct.


Founding member of NATO

Summary: Belgium was one of twelve states that signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington on 4 April 1949; NATO headquarters later moved to Brussels in 1967.


Founding the European Community

Summary: Belgium was one of the six founders of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 and the European Economic Community by the Treaty of Rome in 1957, with Brussels becoming the centre of European integration.


Independence of the Congo

Summary: The Belgian Congo became the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo, ending Belgium's central African colony amid turmoil and a swift descent into crisis.


The linguistic frontier fixed

Summary: Language laws drew a fixed border between Dutch-, French- and German-speaking areas and created four language regions, entrenching the divide between Belgium's communities.


Belgium becomes a federal state

Summary: The fourth state reform amended the constitution to declare Belgium a federal state composed of Communities and Regions, completing the devolution of the once-unitary kingdom.


Aja migrations from Tado

Summary: Aja-speaking peoples spread, by oral tradition, eastward from Tado on the Mono River across the coastal plain of southern Benin, founding a cluster of kin-based kingdoms including Allada.


Rise of the Kingdom of Allada

Summary: Allada (Great Ardra) emerged as the leading Aja kingdom of the coastal region and the dynastic source from which the kingdoms of Dahomey and Porto-Novo would branch.


Founding of Porto-Novo

Summary: The prince Te-Agbanlin, of the Allada royal house, founded the lagoon settlement of Hogbonu (Ajashe), later named Porto-Novo, which grew into a coastal port-kingdom of mixed Aja and Yoruba population.


Foundation of Dahomey at Abomey

Summary: Fon rulers established the Kingdom of Dahomey on the Abomey plateau; King Houegbadja is credited with beginning the Royal Palaces of Abomey and building a strongly centralised monarchy.


Dahomey conquers Allada

Summary: King Agaja's army overran Allada, the parent kingdom of the Fon dynasty, beginning Dahomey's drive toward the coast and the Atlantic trade.


Conquest of Ouidah (Whydah)

Summary: Agaja seized the major slaving port of Whydah (Ouidah), giving Dahomey direct control of one of the busiest points of embarkation on the Slave Coast.


Tributary to the Oyo Empire

Summary: Dahomey's expansion brought it into conflict with the Yoruba empire of Oyo to the east, to which it became tributary for much of the eighteenth century.


The Royal Palaces of Abomey

Summary: A line of kings built earthen palaces decorated with polychrome bas-reliefs within a single great enclosure at Abomey; the complex was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985.


Ouidah and the Atlantic slave trade

Summary: The port of Ouidah served for nearly two centuries as a leading point of embarkation on the Slave Coast, through which more than a million enslaved Africans are estimated to have been deported across the Atlantic.


Ghezo seizes the throne

Summary: Ghezo overthrew his brother Adandozan with the support of the Brazilian slave trader Francisco Félix de Sousa, beginning a reign that would expand Dahomey's army and its female Agojie regiment.


Dahomey breaks free of Oyo

Summary: Ghezo defeated the weakened Yoruba empire of Oyo, ending the tributary status Dahomey had borne since the early eighteenth century and asserting full independence.


British blockade of Dahomey's ports

Summary: Britain imposed a naval blockade to force Dahomey to end the slave trade; Ghezo agreed in 1852 but soon resumed slaving, as palm oil rose to become the kingdom's chief legitimate export.


First written record of the women warriors

Summary: European observers recorded Dahomey's distinctive all-female troops — the Agojie or Mino, later called the 'Amazons' — who would become an elite, high-status corps of the royal army.


First Franco-Dahomean War

Summary: King Behanzin's forces clashed with the French around Cotonou; though repelled by superior French weaponry, the war marked the opening of Dahomey's struggle against French expansion.


French conquest of Dahomey

Summary: A French expedition under Colonel Alfred-Amédée Dodds advanced on Abomey; Behanzin burned the capital rather than surrender it, and after further resistance capitulated in January 1894.


Behanzin deposed and exiled

Summary: France deposed the last independent king of Dahomey and exiled him to Martinique and later Algeria, where he died in 1906; the kingdom passed under French control.


Colony of French Dahomey

Summary: Dahomey was organised as a French colony with its capital at Porto-Novo and incorporated into the federation of French West Africa, where it remained for six decades.


Independence as the Republic of Dahomey

Summary: Dahomey became a fully independent state on 1 August 1960, with Hubert Maga as its first president, ending French colonial rule.


The cycle of coups begins

Summary: General Christophe Soglo deposed President Hubert Maga in Dahomey's first military coup, opening more than a decade of chronic instability and repeated seizures of power.


Kérékou seizes power

Summary: Major Mathieu Kérékou overthrew the Presidential Council in the last of Dahomey's coups, ending the era of regional deadlock and establishing a durable military government.


Adoption of Marxism-Leninism

Summary: Kérékou proclaimed Marxism-Leninism as the official ideology of the state, nationalising key sectors and aligning the country with the Eastern bloc.


Dahomey renamed Benin

Summary: Kérékou renamed the country the People's Republic of Benin, after the Bight of Benin, formally retiring the name Dahomey inherited from the precolonial Fon kingdom.


Collapse of the Marxist state

Summary: Amid economic ruin, unpaid wages and mass protest, Kérékou renounced Marxism-Leninism, setting the stage for a negotiated transition to democracy.


The National Conference

Summary: A sovereign National Conference of the nation's 'living forces' met in Cotonou, stripped Kérékou of power and launched a transitional government — a pioneering model of peaceful democratic transition for Africa.


Multiparty constitution adopted

Summary: Voters approved a new democratic constitution by referendum, establishing a multiparty presidential republic and ending the Marxist one-party state.


Soglo defeats Kérékou at the polls

Summary: Nicéphore Soglo won the presidential election, and Kérékou peacefully handed over power — a rare democratic alternation in the Africa of the time.


Kérékou returns by election

Summary: Having peacefully left office, Mathieu Kérékou returned to the presidency by winning the 1996 election, serving until term limits obliged him to step down in 2006.


France returns the Abomey treasures

Summary: France formally returned 26 royal artworks looted from the palaces of Abomey during the 1892 conquest, a landmark act of cultural restitution to be displayed in Benin.


Foundation of the Mossi states

Summary: Tradition attributes the Mossi kingdoms of Tenkodogo, Ouagadougou and Yatenga to the line of Ouédraogo, son of the princess Yennenga; the dating is uncertain and some accounts place the origins earlier.


Songhai campaigns against the Mossi

Summary: The Songhai emperor Askia Muhammad I campaigns against the non-Muslim Mossi, defeating Mossi of Yatenga but failing to subdue the kingdoms, which retain their religion and independence.


Yatenga becomes independent of Ouagadougou

Summary: As central authority weakens, the kingdom of Yatenga, with its capital at Ouahigouya, breaks free of Ouagadougou's overlordship.


Loropéni's gold-trade fortresses flourish

Summary: The stone enclosures of the Lobi country, including Loropéni, reach their height as the trans-Saharan gold trade peaks; the settlements are linked to the Lohron and Kulango peoples.


Loropéni settlement abandoned

Summary: The fortified settlement at Loropéni is abandoned, for reasons still debated by archaeologists.


Loropéni inscribed by UNESCO

Summary: The Ruins of Loropéni are added to the UNESCO World Heritage List, becoming Burkina Faso's first such site.


French conquest of the Mossi

Summary: France claims the Volta region and occupies Ouagadougou; Mossi resistance collapses and the Mogho Naba Wobgo goes into exile.


Colony of Upper Volta created

Summary: France establishes the separate colony of Upper Volta (Haute-Volta) within French West Africa.


Upper Volta partitioned

Summary: The colony is dismembered for economic reasons and divided among Côte d'Ivoire, French Sudan and Niger.


Upper Volta reconstituted

Summary: After the war and Mossi pressure, Upper Volta is re-established within its former boundaries as a French West African territory.


Independence of Upper Volta

Summary: Upper Volta gains full independence from France; Maurice Yaméogo becomes its first president.


Fall of Yaméogo; Lamizana takes power

Summary: A popular revolt against austerity forces President Yaméogo to resign; Lieutenant Colonel Sangoulé Lamizana leads the army into government.


Coup brings Saye Zerbo to power

Summary: Colonel Saye Zerbo overthrows Lamizana, continuing the pattern of military seizures of power.


Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo takes over

Summary: A further coup ousts Zerbo and installs Major Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo, in whose government radical young officers, including Thomas Sankara, gain influence.


Sankara seizes power

Summary: Captain Thomas Sankara comes to power in a coup, beginning a radical revolution oriented toward self-reliance and the rural poor.


Upper Volta renamed Burkina Faso

Summary: On the first anniversary of the revolution, the country is renamed Burkina Faso — 'land of upright (honest) people' — with a new flag and anthem.


Agacher Strip war with Mali

Summary: A brief border conflict, the 'Christmas War', is fought with Mali over the mineral-rich Agacher Strip before regional mediation ends it.


Assassination of Thomas Sankara

Summary: Sankara and twelve others are killed in a coup led by his comrade Blaise Compaoré, who takes the presidency.


Murder of Norbert Zongo

Summary: The investigative journalist Norbert Zongo is killed, a case that becomes a symbol of repression under Compaoré and triggers mass protests.


Popular uprising ousts Compaoré

Summary: Protests against Compaoré's bid to extend his rule culminate in the storming of the National Assembly; he resigns after 27 years and flees to Côte d'Ivoire.


Jihadist insurgency spreads to Burkina Faso

Summary: Sahelian jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, alongside the homegrown Ansarul Islam, escalate attacks, killing thousands and displacing more than a million people.


Coup ousts President Kaboré

Summary: Citing the government's failure to halt the insurgency, the military under Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Damiba removes elected president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré.


Second 2022 coup brings Ibrahim Traoré to power

Summary: Captain Ibrahim Traoré overthrows Damiba in a second coup, becoming transitional leader as jihadist violence continues to spread.


Gopala founds the Pala dynasty

Summary: Gopala is raised to power amid disorder and founds the Pala dynasty, a Buddhist imperial line that would rule Bengal and Bihar for some four centuries and spread Buddhism as far as Tibet.


Somapura Mahavihara built at Paharpur

Summary: The Pala king Dharmapala builds the great monastery of Somapura at Paharpur, one of the largest Buddhist viharas south of the Himalayas and a centre of learning for centuries; today a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


Turkish conquest ends Sena rule

Summary: The general Bakhtiyar Khalji conquers Bengal, ending the Hindu Sena dynasty and inaugurating centuries of Muslim rule in the delta.


Iliyas Shah founds the Bengal Sultanate

Summary: Shamsuddin Iliyas Shah unifies Bengal's principalities and establishes the independent Iliyas Shahi Sultanate at Lakhnauti, beginning more than two centuries of sovereign Muslim rule.


Reign of Husain Shah

Summary: Alauddin Husain Shah presides over a golden age of the Bengal Sultanate, patronising Bengali literature and extending the kingdom's frontiers.


Mughal conquest of Bengal

Summary: Akbar's forces defeat the last independent sultan at the Battle of Rajmahal, ending the Bengal Sultanate and absorbing the delta into the Mughal Empire.


Dhaka becomes the Mughal capital of Bengal

Summary: The Mughal governor establishes Dhaka as the capital of the Bengal subah, and the city grows into a hub of administration, military power and the global muslin trade.


Dhaka muslin and the wealth of Bengal

Summary: Mughal Bengal becomes the world's foremost exporter of fine muslin and a leading source of European trade with Asia, making the province the richest in the empire.


The nawabs of Bengal become autonomous

Summary: As Mughal central power fades after Aurangzeb's death, the governors of Bengal rule as near-independent nawabs over the empire's wealthiest province.


Battle of Plassey

Summary: Robert Clive's East India Company forces defeat Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah after the betrayal of Mir Jafar, beginning British political control of Bengal and, in time, of India.


The Great Bengal Famine

Summary: An estimated ten million people — about a third of Bengal's population — die as monsoon failure compounds the East India Company's insistence on collecting land revenue from a starving peasantry.


First Partition of Bengal

Summary: Viceroy Lord Curzon divides Bengal into a Muslim-majority east (capital Dacca) and a Hindu-majority west, sparking the Swadeshi movement; the partition is annulled in 1911.


Partition creates East Pakistan

Summary: The partition of British India makes Muslim-majority eastern Bengal into East Pakistan, a wing of the new state separated from its western half by a thousand miles of India.


The Bengali Language Movement

Summary: Students in Dhaka demanding that Bengali be a state language of Pakistan are shot by police; the martyrs become foundational to Bengali nationalism and, later, to UNESCO's International Mother Language Day.


The Awami League's Six-Point demand

Summary: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Awami League issues a six-point programme for the political and economic autonomy of East Pakistan, the charter of Bengali self-determination.


Awami League wins the election

Summary: The Awami League secures 167 of the 169 East Pakistani seats and a National Assembly majority; West Pakistan's refusal to hand over power ignites the crisis that leads to war.


Declaration of independence

Summary: After the Pakistani army launches Operation Searchlight on 25 March, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman proclaims Bangladesh's independence on 26 March, beginning the Liberation War.


Victory and the birth of Bangladesh

Summary: After a nine-month war in which possibly a million Bengalis were killed and ten million fled to India, Indian forces intervene and the Pakistani army surrenders at Dhaka, founding the People's Republic of Bangladesh.


Assassination of Mujib and military rule

Summary: Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family are killed in a coup; a counter-coup brings Ziaur Rahman to power, beginning fifteen years of military-dominated rule.


The 2024 uprising and Hasina's fall

Summary: A student-led mass uprising over a civil-service job-quota system forces Sheikh Hasina to resign after fifteen years and flee to India; the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus is appointed to head an interim government.


Thracian royal tombs of Kazanlak and Sveshtari

Summary: The painted tholos tomb at Kazanlak and the richly sculpted tomb at Sveshtari, among the finest monuments of the Thracian civilisation, were later inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979 and 1985.


Foundation of the First Bulgarian Empire

Summary: Khan Asparukh defeated the army of Emperor Constantine IV and forced Byzantium to recognise a Bulgar realm south of the Danube, with its capital at Pliska, the act conventionally regarded as the birth of the Bulgarian state.


Christianization under Boris I

Summary: Boris I adopted Eastern Orthodox Christianity for his court and people, anchoring Bulgaria to Constantinople and providing his Slav and Bulgar subjects with a unifying faith and church.


Cyrillic and the Preslav and Ohrid schools

Summary: Boris I gave refuge to the disciples of Saints Cyril and Methodius, who in the literary schools of Preslav and Ohrid developed the Cyrillic script and a Slavonic Christian literature that spread across the Orthodox Slavic world.


The golden age of Simeon the Great

Summary: Tsar Simeon I expanded Bulgaria toward three seas, took the title of tsar and raised the church to a patriarchate, presiding over a cultural golden age centred on his capital, Great Preslav.


Byzantine conquest of the First Empire

Summary: After long wars the Byzantine emperor Basil II, the 'Bulgar-Slayer', destroyed Bulgarian resistance and annexed the realm, ending the First Bulgarian Empire and absorbing it into Byzantium.


Revolt of Asen and Peter restores the state

Summary: The boyar brothers Asen and Peter rose against Byzantine rule and within a year won recognition of a restored Bulgarian realm, founding the Second Bulgarian Empire with its capital at Tarnovo.


Ivan Asen II and the Second Empire's apogee

Summary: Under Tsar Ivan Asen II Bulgaria reached its greatest extent and prosperity, dominating the Balkans and patronising an Orthodox cultural flowering centred on Tarnovo.


The frescoes of the Boyana Church

Summary: The second-layer frescoes of the Boyana Church near Sofia, painted in 1259, rank among the masterpieces of medieval European art and are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


Fall of Tarnovo to the Ottomans

Summary: The Ottoman army captured the Bulgarian capital of Tarnovo, breaking the heart of the Second Empire as the Ottomans absorbed the Bulgarian lands.


Ottoman conquest completed

Summary: With the subjection of the last Bulgarian territories by 1396, the Second Bulgarian Empire ended and Bulgaria passed under Ottoman rule that would last nearly five centuries.


Nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule

Summary: Bulgaria was governed for almost five hundred years as an Ottoman province, its medieval state destroyed but its language and identity preserved chiefly through the Orthodox Church and its monasteries.


Paisius of Hilendar and the National Revival

Summary: The monk Paisius of Hilendar completed his 'Slavonic-Bulgarian History', a passionate call to national pride conventionally taken as the start of the Bulgarian National Revival.


Creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate

Summary: An Ottoman decree established an autonomous Bulgarian Exarchate, separating the national church from Greek ecclesiastical control and giving institutional form to the awakening nation.


The April Uprising and the 'Bulgarian Horrors'

Summary: A rising organised by Bulgarian revolutionaries was crushed with massacres of civilians at Batak and elsewhere; reported across Europe as the 'Bulgarian Horrors', it inflamed opinion and helped precipitate the Russo-Turkish War.


Russo-Turkish War and liberation

Summary: Russia's war against the Ottoman Empire ended Ottoman rule over Bulgaria; the Treaty of San Stefano of 3 March 1878 restored a Bulgarian state, a date Bulgarians commemorate as Liberation Day.


Treaty of San Stefano creates 'Greater Bulgaria'

Summary: The Russo-Ottoman treaty created a large autonomous Bulgarian principality reaching from the Danube to the Aegean and embracing most of Macedonia, an expansive state soon known as Greater Bulgaria.


Treaty of Berlin dismembers the state

Summary: The Congress of Berlin revised San Stefano, splitting Greater Bulgaria into a small autonomous principality, the separate province of Eastern Rumelia, and Macedonia left under Ottoman rule, the foundational grievance of Bulgarian nationalism.


Unification with Eastern Rumelia

Summary: A bloodless revolution united the autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia with the Principality of Bulgaria; Bulgaria secured the union by defeating Serbia in the ensuing war, recovering part of the San Stefano territory.


Diplomatic relations with the United States

Summary: The United States established diplomatic relations with Bulgaria in 1903, the first US diplomatic agent presenting his credentials in Sofia on 19 September of that year.


Proclamation of independence

Summary: Prince Ferdinand proclaimed Bulgaria's full independence at Tarnovo and took the title of tsar, ending Ottoman suzerainty; the United States recognised the kingdom's independence in 1909.


First Balkan War

Summary: Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro of the Balkan League drove the Ottoman Empire almost entirely out of Europe, with Bulgarian armies bearing the heaviest fighting in Thrace.


Second Balkan War and the loss of Macedonia

Summary: Bulgaria attacked its former allies over the division of Macedonia and was crushed by Serbia, Greece, Romania and the Ottomans; the Treaty of Bucharest left most of Macedonia to its rivals and Southern Dobruja to Romania.


Treaty of Craiova returns Southern Dobruja

Summary: By the Treaty of Craiova, Romania ceded Southern Dobruja back to Bulgaria, restoring the 1912 frontier, the one Axis-era border change that was not reversed after the Second World War.


Bulgaria joins the Axis

Summary: Bulgaria adhered to the Tripartite Pact in March 1941 and joined the German-led attack on Yugoslavia and Greece, occupying parts of Macedonia and Thrace it had long claimed.


Deportations and the rescue of Bulgaria's Jews

Summary: Bulgaria deported over 11,000 Jews from occupied Thrace and Macedonia to Treblinka, but protests led by Dimitar Peshev and the Orthodox Church forced Tsar Boris III to cancel the deportation of the roughly 48,000 Jews of Bulgaria proper, who survived.


Communist seizure of power

Summary: As Soviet forces entered Bulgaria, a Communist-led Fatherland Front took power, beginning the communist era and the country's incorporation into the Soviet sphere.


People's Republic proclaimed

Summary: A referendum abolished the monarchy and Bulgaria was proclaimed a People's Republic, a one-party communist state allied to the Soviet Union.


Fall of Todor Zhivkov

Summary: The veteran communist leader Todor Zhivkov was ousted by his own party amid the collapse of the Soviet bloc, opening the way to a multi-party system and Bulgaria's first free elections in 1990.


Accession to NATO

Summary: Bulgaria became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in the alliance's largest wave of enlargement, anchoring the country in the Euro-Atlantic security community.


Accession to the European Union

Summary: Bulgaria joined the European Union on 1 January 2007, completing its return to Europe after the fall of communism and the hardships of transition.


Lucayan settlement of the islands

Summary: The Lucayans, a Taíno (Arawakan) people, migrated from Hispaniola and Cuba and settled the Bahamian archipelago, eventually numbering perhaps 40,000 across dozens of islands.


Columbus's first landfall at Guanahani

Summary: Christopher Columbus made his first landfall in the Americas at the Lucayan island of Guanahani, which he renamed San Salvador and claimed for Castile, opening the European encounter with the New World.


Spanish enslavement of the Lucayans

Summary: Spanish raiders began systematically seizing Lucayans as forced labour for the mines and pearl fisheries of the Greater Antilles and Venezuela, devastating the islands' population.


Depopulation of the Bahamas

Summary: By about 1520 enslavement and disease had all but exterminated the Lucayans; the islands were left effectively abandoned for more than a century.


The Eleutheran Adventurers settle Eleuthera

Summary: English Puritans led by William Sayle left Bermuda seeking religious freedom and founded the first lasting English settlement in the Bahamas on the island they named Eleuthera ("freedom").


Grant to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina

Summary: The Bahamas were granted to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, though their rule proved weak and largely nominal, leaving the scattered islands poorly governed.


Nassau becomes a pirate haven

Summary: Amid a collapse of royal authority, Nassau became the base of a loose pirate republic, home to Blackbeard, Charles Vane, Anne Bonny and others who preyed on Atlantic shipping.


Woodes Rogers ends the pirate republic

Summary: Royal governor Woodes Rogers arrived at Nassau with the King's Pardon, accepted the surrender of many pirates, drove out the rest and restored Crown authority under the motto "Pirates Expelled, Commerce Restored".


Spain cedes the Bahamas to Britain

Summary: Under the Treaty of Paris of 1783 Spain ceded the Bahamas to Britain, securing the colony's future under the Crown after years of contest and a brief Spanish occupation.


American Loyalists and enslaved Africans arrive

Summary: Loyalist refugees from the new United States emigrated to the Bahamas after the American Revolution, bringing thousands of enslaved Africans and roughly trebling the colony's population.


The failed cotton plantations

Summary: Loyalists planted cotton on the "Cotton Islands", but exhausted soils and pests ruined the crop within a couple of decades, collapsing the plantation economy.


Slavery Abolition Act takes effect

Summary: The British Slavery Abolition Act came into force in the Bahamas on 1 August 1834, beginning emancipation; after an apprenticeship period, full freedom followed in 1838.


An economy of wrecking and sponging

Summary: The poor post-emancipation colony lived largely on salvaging shipwrecks, sponge-fishing and salt, with wrecking for a time its single largest source of income.


Civil War blockade-running boom

Summary: During the American Civil War, Nassau became the chief hub for running the Union blockade, shipping arms to the Confederacy and cotton out, and growing fabulously wealthy in the process.


Collapse of the blockade boom

Summary: The defeat of the Confederacy in 1865 ended blockade-running overnight and plunged Nassau back into economic depression.


Prohibition-era rum-running

Summary: American Prohibition turned the Bahamas into a base for smuggling liquor across the Gulf Stream, enriching the colony until repeal in 1933 ended the trade.


Founding of the Progressive Liberal Party

Summary: Bahamians opposed to UBP and "Bay Street" dominance founded the Progressive Liberal Party, which became the vehicle of the movement for majority rule.


Internal self-government

Summary: A new constitution granted the Bahamas internal self-government with a cabinet and a first premier, while Britain retained defence and external affairs.


Majority rule — the Quiet Revolution

Summary: Lynden Pindling's PLP gained power after the 1967 election, making him the first Black premier and ending the long political dominance of the white "Bay Street" elite.


Independence of The Bahamas

Summary: The Commonwealth of The Bahamas became independent of the United Kingdom on 10 July 1973 under Prime Minister Lynden Pindling, remaining a Commonwealth realm and joining the United Nations.


First peaceful change of government

Summary: Hubert Ingraham's Free National Movement defeated the PLP in 1992, ending Lynden Pindling's twenty-five years in power in the country's first democratic alternation of government.


Hurricane Dorian devastates Abaco and Grand Bahama

Summary: Category 5 Hurricane Dorian stalled over the northern Bahamas, killing scores, leaving hundreds missing and causing about US$3.4 billion in damage — roughly a quarter of GDP.


Philip Davis and the PLP return to power

Summary: Philip Davis led the Progressive Liberal Party to victory in the 2021 general election, becoming prime minister, in another peaceful transfer of power.


Charter of Ban Kulin

Summary: Ban Kulin granted the merchants of Dubrovnik (Ragusa) freedom to trade across Bosnia; the document is one of the oldest state charters of the South Slavs and a landmark of early Bosnian statehood.


Stjepan Kotromanić expands Bosnia

Summary: Ban Stjepan Kotromanić of the Kotromanić dynasty enlarged Bosnia southward, incorporating the principality of Hum, the territory later known as Herzegovina.


Coronation of Tvrtko I

Summary: Tvrtko I was crowned king, raising Bosnia from a banate to a kingdom; under him it reached the Dalmatian coast and became, briefly, the most powerful state in the western Balkans.


The stećci tombstones

Summary: Across medieval Bosnia, communities raised monumental carved limestone tombstones known as stećci; sites in Bosnia and neighbouring lands were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage in 2016.


Ottoman conquest of Bosnia

Summary: The armies of Sultan Mehmed II conquered most of Bosnia in 1463, ending the medieval kingdom and beginning more than four centuries of Ottoman rule.


Bosnia incorporated into the Ottoman Empire

Summary: Following the conquest, Bosnia became an Ottoman province; the settlement of Vrhbosna was developed into Sarajevo, the future provincial capital.


Islamization and a multi-confessional society

Summary: Over generations much of Bosnia's Slavic population converted to Islam, creating, alongside Orthodox, Catholic and Jewish communities, the uniquely interwoven multi-confessional society that defines the country.


The Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge, Višegrad

Summary: The eleven-arch Ottoman bridge over the Drina at Višegrad was built to designs by the imperial architect Sinan; it was inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage in 2007.


The Old Bridge at Mostar (Stari Most)

Summary: The single-arch Old Bridge over the Neretva, a masterpiece of Ottoman engineering, gave Mostar its name; the Old City of Mostar was inscribed by UNESCO in 2005 after the bridge's wartime destruction and reconstruction.


Herzegovinian uprising and the Eastern Crisis

Summary: A peasant revolt in Herzegovina widened into a great-power crisis over the 'Eastern Question', ending Ottoman rule and leading to Austro-Hungarian occupation in 1878.


Austro-Hungarian occupation

Summary: The Congress of Berlin authorised Austria-Hungary to occupy and administer Bosnia and Herzegovina, ending effective Ottoman rule while leaving nominal sovereignty in Istanbul.


Annexation by Austria-Hungary

Summary: Vienna formally annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, triggering a European diplomatic crisis and inflaming South Slav nationalist opposition to Habsburg rule.


Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand

Summary: In Sarajevo, Gavrilo Princip of the Young Bosnia movement shot dead Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, the act that triggered the outbreak of the First World War.


Bosnia joins the Yugoslav kingdom

Summary: With Austria-Hungary's collapse, Bosnia was incorporated into the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later renamed Yugoslavia, losing its separate administrative identity.


Axis invasion and the NDH

Summary: The Axis dismembered Yugoslavia and incorporated Bosnia into the Ustaša-led Independent State of Croatia, whose terror against Serbs, Jews and Roma helped ignite a brutal multi-sided civil war.


First session of ZAVNOBiH

Summary: At Mrkonjić Grad the anti-fascist council ZAVNOBiH proclaimed Bosnia and Herzegovina a federal unit of its equal peoples, ensuring it would be restored as a distinct republic within Yugoslavia.


Bosnia a republic of socialist Yugoslavia

Summary: After the Partisan victory, Bosnia and Herzegovina became one of the six federal republics of Tito's socialist Yugoslavia, with its multi-ethnic society constitutionally recognised.


Sarajevo Winter Olympics

Summary: Sarajevo hosted the 1984 Winter Olympic Games, a high point of confidence for the multi-ethnic socialist republic less than a decade before war engulfed the city.


Independence referendum

Summary: Bosnians voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum largely boycotted by Serbs; the country was recognised internationally and joined the UN on 22 May 1992.


Siege of Sarajevo begins

Summary: Bosnian Serb forces encircled and shelled the capital from the surrounding hills; lasting about 1,425 days, it became the longest siege of a capital city in modern history.


Ethnic cleansing and the Bosnian War

Summary: Campaigns to expel and destroy rival communities through killings, deportation, detention camps and sexual violence devastated Bosnia, crimes later prosecuted before the ICTY.


The Srebrenica genocide

Summary: After overrunning the UN 'safe area', Bosnian Serb forces under Ratko Mladić executed up to 8,000 Bosniak men and boys; the ICTY and ICJ ruled the killings genocide.


ICJ Genocide judgment (Bosnia v. Serbia)

Summary: The International Court of Justice held that genocide was committed at Srebrenica and that Serbia had violated the Genocide Convention by failing to prevent it and to cooperate with the ICTY.


Dayton Agreement initialled

Summary: After negotiations led by Richard Holbrooke, the General Framework Agreement for Peace was initialled at Dayton, Ohio, ending the Bosnian War.


Dayton Agreement signed in Paris

Summary: The peace agreement was formally signed in Paris, preserving a single Bosnian state divided into two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, with an Office of the High Representative.


Brčko District established

Summary: Binding arbitration under Annex 2 created the Brčko District, a self-governing unit held in condominium by both entities under the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina.


EU candidate status granted

Summary: The European Council granted Bosnia and Herzegovina the status of EU candidate country, conditional on reforms to the rule of law and the constitutional and electoral system.


Rise of the Principality of Polotsk

Summary: The Krivichi formed a principality around Polotsk on the Western Dvina, the oldest centre of statehood on Belarusian soil and an early constituent of Kievan Rus with a strong tradition of autonomy.


Christianization of the Rus lands

Summary: The conversion of Kievan Rus to Orthodox Christianity in the late tenth century bound Polotsk and the Belarusian lands to Byzantine Christendom and its written, ecclesiastical culture.


Vseslav of Polotsk seizes Kiev

Summary: Prince Vseslav of Polotsk, the principality's most celebrated ruler, briefly held the throne of Kiev itself, a measure of Polotsk's ambition and its rivalry with the senior princes of Rus.


The Mongol invasion of Rus

Summary: The Mongol onslaught destroyed Kievan Rus and shattered the old federation of principalities; the western Belarusian lands, comparatively sheltered, were soon drawn into the orbit of rising Lithuania.


Belarusian lands within the Grand Duchy

Summary: Over the 150 years after the Mongol invasion the Grand Duchy of Lithuania expanded to absorb the Belarusian lands, whose Ruthenian (Old Belarusian) tongue became the chancery language of the state.


Skaryna prints the first East Slavic book

Summary: Francysk Skaryna, born in Polotsk, issued his Psalter from his press in Prague, the first book printed in an East Slavic language, followed by further biblical books in 1517-1519.


A printing press in Vilnius

Summary: Moving his workshop to Vilnius, capital of the Grand Duchy, Skaryna produced the Little Travel Book and later The Apostle, the first books printed within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania itself.


Mir Castle and the Radziwiłł magnates

Summary: The Gothic castle at Mir, begun in the 1520s and rebuilt in Renaissance style under the Radziwiłł family, became one of the great fortified residences of the Grand Duchy and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.


Union of Lublin and the Commonwealth

Summary: The Union of Lublin merged Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, placing the Belarusian lands at the heart of a vast federal state and accelerating the Polonisation of their elites.


Partitions of Poland and Russian annexation

Summary: In three partitions Russia, Prussia and Austria divided the Commonwealth; Russia took most of the Belarusian lands, and after 1795 all of Belarus was ruled by the Russian Empire.


Suppression of the Uniate Church and Russification

Summary: The Uniate (Greek Catholic) Church was abolished and absorbed into Russian Orthodoxy, part of a sustained imperial policy of Russification that discouraged the Belarusian language and name.