Sirleaf shares the Nobel Peace Prize

Summary: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, jointly with two other women, for non-violent work on behalf of women's safety and participation in peacebuilding.


The Ebola epidemic

Summary: Liberia was among the countries worst hit by the West African Ebola epidemic, the largest in history, which killed thousands and overwhelmed a health system already weakened by war before transmission was halted.


Peaceful transfer to George Weah

Summary: Sirleaf handed power to George Weah, who won the 2017 election — Liberia's first peaceful democratic transfer of power between elected presidents in over seven decades.


Boakai defeats Weah

Summary: Joseph Boakai defeated the incumbent George Weah in the 2023 election and took office in 2024, marking another orderly transfer of power in post-war Liberia.


Phoenicians found Leptis Magna

Summary: Phoenician colonists establish Leptis Magna, which with Oea (Tripoli) and Sabratha forms the 'three cities' that give Tripolitania its name.


Greeks found Cyrene

Summary: Settlers from Thera, led by Battus, found Cyrene in eastern Libya; it becomes the chief city of the Cyrenaican Pentapolis and a renowned centre of Greek culture.


Cyrenaica passes to Rome

Summary: On the death of Ptolemy Apion, Cyrenaica is bequeathed to Rome; Tripolitania likewise comes under Roman authority, opening centuries of prosperity.


Leptis Magna's golden age under Septimius Severus

Summary: The emperor Septimius Severus, born at Leptis Magna, lavishes monuments on his home city, making it one of the foremost ports of Roman Africa.


Garamantes flourish in the Fezzan

Summary: From their capital at Garama, the Garamantes sustain a desert kingdom through foggara irrigation and command of trans-Saharan trade.


Arab conquest of Cyrenaica

Summary: Arab forces under Amr ibn al-As take Cyrenaica and advance into Tripolitania, beginning Libya's transformation into a Muslim, Arabic-speaking land.


Arab expeditions reach the Fezzan

Summary: Campaigns associated with Uqba ibn Nafi extend Arab-Muslim authority into the Saharan Fezzan, ending the autonomy of the Garamantes' heartland.


Banu Hilal migration

Summary: The westward migration of Arab Bedouin tribes such as the Banu Hilal accelerates the Arabisation of Libya's interior.


Ottomans capture Tripoli

Summary: Ottoman admirals Sinan Pasha and Turgut Reis take Tripoli, establishing the Regency of Tripoli within the Ottoman Empire.


Karamanli dynasty seizes power

Summary: Ahmed Karamanli founds a hereditary dynasty that rules Tripoli in semi-independence for 124 years under nominal Ottoman suzerainty.


First Barbary War with the United States

Summary: Yusuf Karamanli's tribute demands provoke war with the United States; the US Navy blockades Tripoli until a treaty ends the conflict in 1805.


Ottomans restore direct rule

Summary: Sultan Mahmud II ends the Karamanli dynasty and reimposes direct Ottoman administration over Tripolitania.


Founding of the Senussi order

Summary: Muhammad ibn Ali al-Senussi founds the Sanusi religious order, which from the 1840s becomes the leading power in Cyrenaica and the eastern Sahara.


Italo-Turkish War and the invasion of Libya

Summary: Italy attacks Tripoli on 3 October 1911 and seizes the Ottoman provinces; the 1912 Treaty of Lausanne cedes the territory to Italy.


Pacification of Libya

Summary: Italian forces wage a war of 'pacification', crushing resistance and deporting Cyrenaica's population into concentration camps where tens of thousands die.


Execution of Omar al-Mukhtar

Summary: The resistance leader Omar al-Mukhtar, the 'Lion of the Desert', is captured and publicly hanged at Soluch, breaking organised resistance in Cyrenaica.


Creation of Italian Libya

Summary: Governor Italo Balbo merges Tripolitania and Cyrenaica into a single colony, Italian Libya, reviving the classical name.


North African desert campaigns

Summary: The Second World War's desert war sweeps across Libya; by 1943 Allied forces expel the Axis, ending Italian rule and beginning Anglo-French administration.


Independence of the United Kingdom of Libya

Summary: Libya is proclaimed an independent federal monarchy under King Idris—the first state created through the United Nations.


Commercial oil discovered

Summary: The discovery of oil in commercial quantities at the Zelten field transforms Libya's prospects; exports begin in 1961.


Abolition of the federal system

Summary: A constitutional reform replaces Libya's three-province federation with a unitary kingdom.


Gaddafi's coup overthrows the monarchy

Summary: The Free Officers under Muammar Gaddafi depose King Idris in a near-bloodless coup and proclaim a republic, beginning 42 years of Gaddafi's rule.


Proclamation of the Jamahiriya

Summary: Gaddafi declares the 'state of the masses' (Jamahiriya), his idiosyncratic political system set out in the Green Book.


US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi

Summary: In Operation El Dorado Canyon, US aircraft strike Libyan targets in retaliation for a Berlin disco bombing, deepening Libya's confrontation with the West.


Uprising, NATO intervention and Gaddafi's fall

Summary: An uprising from February 2011 and a NATO air campaign from 19 March topple Gaddafi, who is captured and killed at Sirte on 20 October 2011.


Division and civil war

Summary: Disputed elections split Libya between rival governments in Tripoli and the east; Haftar's 2019–2020 assault on Tripoli fails, and a 2021 unity government cannot reunite the country.


The county of Vaduz takes shape

Summary: A separate county of Vaduz emerged in the fourteenth century in the upper Rhine valley, alongside the smaller lordship of Schellenberg, both small and often impoverished holdings within the Holy Roman Empire.


The House of Liechtenstein raised to princely rank

Summary: Karl von Liechtenstein received the hereditary dignity of an imperial prince in 1608, confirmed for his brothers soon after, raising the wealthy Austrian dynasty to the highest rank of the nobility.


Hohenems debts open the way

Summary: The counts of Hohenems, who held Vaduz and Schellenberg, fell into heavy debt, leaving the small Rhine territories available for sale to a buyer rich enough to redeem them.


Purchase of the lordship of Schellenberg

Summary: Prince Johann Adam Andreas I bought the lordship of Schellenberg from the indebted Hohenems, the first of the two acquisitions that would form the principality; the prince did not attend the homage ceremony in person.


Purchase of the county of Vaduz

Summary: Johann Adam Andreas I acquired the county of Vaduz, and from this time Vaduz Castle entered the possession of the princes of Liechtenstein, completing the territory of the future principality.


Foundation of the Principality of Liechtenstein

Summary: Emperor Charles VI united Schellenberg and Vaduz and raised them to an Imperial Principality named Liechtenstein, granting the family the immediate standing and Diet seat it had sought; the founding diploma survives in the Princely Collections.

LIE:princely-collections-founding LIE:princely-collections-300 LIE:swissmuseum-founding LIE:liechtenstein-history-britannica LIE:embassy-history


A prince visits at last

Summary: Prince Alois II became the first reigning prince to set foot in Liechtenstein, more than a century after its foundation, the dynasty having until then governed entirely from its Austrian and Bohemian seats.


Sovereignty through the Confederation of the Rhine

Summary: On the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, Liechtenstein was admitted to Napoleon's Confederation of the Rhine, gaining recognised sovereignty and surviving the Napoleonic reordering of Germany.


Membership of the German Confederation

Summary: After Napoleon's defeat, Liechtenstein joined the German Confederation created at the Congress of Vienna, remaining within it until 1866 while keeping close dynastic ties to Austria.


First constitution and the Landtag

Summary: A constitution granted in 1862 established a parliament, the Landtag, beginning the slow growth of constitutional and representative institutions alongside the prince.


Full independence

Summary: When the German Confederation dissolved after the Austro-Prussian War, Liechtenstein became a fully sovereign and independent state, its links thereafter resting on treaty and choice rather than confederation.


Abolition of the army and neutrality

Summary: Liechtenstein disbanded its small military force as too costly and committed itself to permanent neutrality, a policy it has maintained through every subsequent European conflict.


Liberal constitution of 1921

Summary: Following the First World War, Liechtenstein adopted a new constitution that combined the prince with an elected Landtag and instruments of direct democracy, modernising the state as it reoriented toward Switzerland.


Customs union with Switzerland and the Swiss franc

Summary: A customs treaty signed in 1923 and in force from 1 January 1924 joined Liechtenstein and Switzerland into a single customs and economic area; Liechtenstein adopted the Swiss franc, binding its economy to its western neighbour.


A prince moves to Vaduz

Summary: Prince Franz Josef II became the first reigning prince to take up permanent residence in Liechtenstein, ending more than two centuries of rule from abroad on the eve of the Second World War.


Confiscation under the Beneš decrees

Summary: Czechoslovakia confiscated the vast Bohemian and Moravian estates of the House of Liechtenstein under the Beneš decrees, treating the family as German; the seized land, around 1,600 square kilometres, far exceeded the area of the principality.


Women's suffrage introduced

Summary: By a referendum of male voters carried by a narrow margin, Liechtenstein granted women the right to vote in national elections, becoming the last country in Europe to do so.


Admission to the United Nations

Summary: Liechtenstein was admitted as the 160th member state of the United Nations, marking the small principality's full emergence as a recognised actor in international affairs.


Accession to the European Economic Area

Summary: Liechtenstein joined the European Economic Area, integrating into the European single market as an EFTA state while remaining outside the European Union and preserving its Swiss customs union.


Constitutional referendum expands the prince's powers

Summary: Voters approved Prince Hans-Adam II's constitutional revision, enlarging the reigning prince's powers including a veto over legislation and the right to dismiss the government, after he threatened to leave the country.


ICJ judgment in Liechtenstein v. Germany

Summary: In Certain Property (Liechtenstein v. Germany), brought to the International Court of Justice in 2001 over a confiscated van Laer painting, the Court ruled on 10 February 2005 that it had no jurisdiction, locating the dispute's source in the 1945 Beneš-era confiscations.


Diplomatic relations with the Czech Republic

Summary: After more than six decades without recognition arising from the 1945 confiscations, Liechtenstein and the Czech Republic established diplomatic relations in 2009 and created a joint commission of historians.


Sinhalese settlement and the founding of Anuradhapura

Summary: By tradition Prince Vijaya's followers settle the island; the kingdom of Anuradhapura is founded under Pandukabhaya and grows into the strongest Sinhalese state, capital for over a thousand years.


Buddhism introduced under Devanampiya Tissa

Summary: The missionary Mahinda, sent during the reign of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka, converts King Devanampiya Tissa near Mihintale, establishing Theravada Buddhism as the island's defining faith.


Hydraulic civilisation and South Indian invasions

Summary: Anuradhapura's kings build vast reservoir-and-channel systems to irrigate the dry plain, while recurrent invasions from South India culminate in the Chola conquest and the abandonment of the capital around 1017.


Kassapa I builds Sigiriya

Summary: A king who took the throne by killing his father moves the capital to the summit of a 180-metre granite peak, entered through a stair rising from the mouth of a brick lion.


Polonnaruwa becomes the capital

Summary: Following the Chola conquest and the abandonment of Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa is established as Sri Lanka's second great capital in the north-central dry zone.


Golden age under Parakramabahu I

Summary: Parakramabahu I rebuilds the city and its irrigation, creating the immense Parakrama Samudra reservoir and a garden-capital that marks the high point of the Polonnaruwa period.


Decline and the drift southward

Summary: Invasion, the breakdown of the dry-zone irrigation system and disease lead to the abandonment of the northern capitals and the migration of Sinhalese power toward the south-west and the Kandyan hills.


Arrival of the Portuguese

Summary: A Portuguese fleet reaches Colombo, opening more than a century of Portuguese control over Ceylon's coasts and its profitable cinnamon trade.


Dutch supplant the Portuguese

Summary: Allied with Kandy, the Dutch East India Company takes Galle (1640) and expels the Portuguese with the fall of Colombo (1656) and Jaffna (1658), ruling the maritime provinces for cinnamon.


Britain takes the Dutch coasts

Summary: With the Netherlands under French control in Europe, Britain begins taking over the maritime provinces — the island changes hands as a consequence of a war fought elsewhere.


Kandyan Convention unifies the island under Britain

Summary: The Kandyan chiefs cede the highland kingdom to the British crown, ending the last independent Sinhalese kingdom and placing the whole island under a single colonial administration.


Plantation economy and Tamil labour migration

Summary: British coffee and later tea estates transform the highlands; indentured South Indian Tamil labourers are brought in to work them, forming the Indian Tamil community of the plantation districts.


One administration for the whole island

Summary: Reform dissolves the separate systems of the maritime provinces and the highlands, governing Ceylon as a single colony for the first time.


Universal suffrage and reform

Summary: Constitutional reforms grant universal adult suffrage in Ceylon, far ahead of most colonies, strengthening a moderate movement for self-government.


Independence of the Dominion of Ceylon

Summary: Ceylon becomes an independent dominion within the Commonwealth as its 1947 constitution takes effect, with D. S. Senanayake as first prime minister.


Indian Tamil plantation workers disenfranchised

Summary: The estate workforce brought from South India is stripped of the vote a year after independence — the opening move of a nationalism that alienated the Tamil minority.


Ceylon becomes the Republic of Sri Lanka

Summary: A new republican constitution ends dominion status and changes the country's name from Ceylon to Sri Lanka, while it remains within the Commonwealth.


The Sinhala Only Act

Summary: S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike is elected on a wave of Sinhalese nationalism and makes Sinhala the sole official language, alongside measures elevating Buddhism.


The JVP insurrection

Summary: A Marxist rising is put down; its missing would still be uncounted in the state's own figures forty-five years later.


The LTTE is founded

Summary: The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam form to fight for Tamil rights, seven years before the war that would define them.


Civil war between the state and the LTTE

Summary: After the anti-Tamil violence of Black July in 1983, the LTTE fights for a separate Tamil state; the war ends with the group's military defeat in May 2009 after about twenty-six years.


The Indo-Lanka accords and the Indian peacekeepers

Summary: Accords create new councils for the Tamil north and east and bring in an Indian peacekeeping force, which spends three years bogged down in the fighting it came to end.


Indian withdrawal and the expulsion of northern Muslims

Summary: Indian troops leave and the war escalates; the LTTE expels thousands of Muslims from the northern districts.


Indian Ocean tsunami

Summary: Waves from a magnitude-9.1 undersea earthquake off Sumatra devastate Sri Lanka's coasts, killing more than 30,000 people in the country's deadliest natural disaster.


Economic crisis and sovereign default

Summary: A foreign-exchange crisis forces Sri Lanka's first sovereign default; shortages and protests topple President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, leading to an IMF bailout and, in 2024, the election of Anura Kumara Dissanayake.


The state counts its missing

Summary: The government acknowledges for the first time that some 65,000 people are missing from the 26-year war and the 1971 insurrection.


The Easter Sunday bombings

Summary: Jihadist suicide bombers attack churches and hotels, killing more than 350 people.


San rock art of the Maloti-Drakensberg

Summary: San hunter-gatherers occupy the mountain rock shelters, leaving one of the world's richest bodies of rock art depicting eland, dance and trance.


Sotho-Tswana settlement

Summary: Bantu-speaking Sotho-Tswana farmers and herders settle the region, bringing cattle, cultivation and iron-working alongside earlier San and Khoekhoe peoples.


Dispersed Sotho chiefdoms

Summary: Numerous small, rivalrous Sotho-speaking chiefdoms occupy the highveld and mountains, with no single overarching authority.


Moshoeshoe occupies Thaba Bosiu

Summary: Moshoeshoe I settles the defensible mountain of Thaba Bosiu, the stronghold from which he gathers difaqane refugees into the Basotho nation.


Paris missionaries arrive

Summary: Moshoeshoe invites the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society into his kingdom; the missionaries help create a written Sesotho and advise him on dealings with Europeans.


Senekal's War with the Orange Free State

Summary: Conflict erupts with the Boers of the Orange Free State over land in the western lowlands, the first of the Free State–Basotho Wars.


Seqiti War and loss of the lowlands

Summary: A devastating war with the Orange Free State sees Boer commandos overrun much of the fertile western lowlands and besiege Thaba Bosiu.


Basutoland declared a British protectorate

Summary: Britain takes Moshoeshoe's kingdom under its protection, halting Boer absorption and fixing the borders that broadly survive as modern Lesotho.


Convention of Aliwal North

Summary: The boundary settlement with the Orange Free State confirms the loss of the fertile western lowlands, the "Conquered Territory", to the Boers.


Annexation to the Cape Colony

Summary: Basutoland is annexed to the Cape Colony without Basotho consent, beginning a deeply unpopular period of colonial rule.


The Gun War

Summary: The Basotho rebel against Cape disarmament and taxation; they retain their guns and effectively repudiate Cape authority.


Return to direct British rule

Summary: Unable to control the territory, the Cape gives it up; Basutoland reverts to direct rule from Britain under a resident commissioner.


Kept out of the Union of South Africa

Summary: On the formation of the Union, Basutoland is excluded as a British High Commission Territory rather than incorporated into South Africa.


Migrant labour to South Africa

Summary: With little arable land, large numbers of Basotho men become migrant workers on South African farms and gold mines, and remittances become central to the economy.


Basotho National Party wins the pre-independence election

Summary: Leabua Jonathan's BNP narrowly defeats the Basutoland Congress Party, positioning him to lead the territory to independence.


Independence as the Kingdom of Lesotho

Summary: Basutoland becomes the independent Kingdom of Lesotho under King Moshoeshoe II and Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan, ending British rule.


Constitution suspended after lost election

Summary: Having apparently lost the first post-independence election, Leabua Jonathan annuls the result, suspends the constitution and rules by decree.


Military coup and the water treaty

Summary: A military coup overthrows Jonathan; in the same year the new government signs the treaty launching the Lesotho Highlands Water Project with South Africa.


Death of Moshoeshoe II

Summary: After exile and a brief restoration, King Moshoeshoe II dies in a car accident; his son Letsie III returns to the throne.


Disputed election and SADC intervention

Summary: A contested election sparks unrest and a South African-led SADC military intervention; much of Maseru is left in ruins.


Katse and Mohale dams completed

Summary: The Katse Dam (Phase 1A) and then the Mohale Dam are completed, sending Lesotho's mountain water to South Africa's Vaal system in exchange for royalties.


Coronation of Mindaugas

Summary: Having accepted baptism around 1251, Mindaugas was crowned King of Lithuania by authority of Pope Innocent IV, the only ruler ever crowned king of the country and the founder of the Lithuanian state.


Assassination of Mindaugas and pagan reversion

Summary: Mindaugas was murdered amid noble rivalry; Lithuania abandoned the royal title and Christianity, returning to paganism and to rule by grand dukes for more than a century.


Vilnius founded by Gediminas

Summary: The capital Vilnius is first recorded in Grand Duke Gediminas's letters of 1323, in which he invited merchants, craftsmen and clergy from across Europe to settle freely in his expanding realm.


Reign of Gediminas and the Gediminid dynasty

Summary: Gediminas consolidated the grand duchy, founded the dynasty that bears his name and began the expansion that carried Lithuanian power deep into the lands of the former Kievan Rus.


Union of Krewo

Summary: Grand Duke Jogaila agreed to marry Queen Jadwiga of Poland, convert to Christianity and unite the two realms; baptised as Wladyslaw II Jagiello, he founded the Jagiellonian dynasty.


Christianization of Lithuania

Summary: A bishopric was founded at Vilnius and Lithuania, the last major pagan state in Europe, formally accepted Latin Christianity following the union with Poland.


Battle of Grunwald (Zalgiris)

Summary: Polish and Lithuanian forces under Wladyslaw II Jagiello and Grand Duke Vytautas annihilated the army of the Teutonic Knights, ending the Order's expansion in the Baltic.


Reign of Vytautas the Great

Summary: Vytautas consolidated the Grand Duchy and extended its borders to the Black Sea, making Lithuania one of the largest states in Europe at the height of its power.


Union of Lublin

Summary: Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania united into the federal Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, ruled by an elected monarch and a common Sejm, with Lithuania keeping its own laws and institutions.


Final partition and annexation by Russia

Summary: In the third partition of the Commonwealth, Russia, Prussia and Austria completed its dismemberment; the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was annexed almost wholly by the Russian Empire, ending Lithuanian statehood.


The Lithuanian press ban

Summary: After the 1863 uprising the tsarist regime banned Lithuanian books in the Latin alphabet; the ban lasted forty years before being lifted in 1904.


The book smugglers (knygnesiai)

Summary: Defying the press ban, a clandestine network of book carriers smuggled Latin-script Lithuanian books across the Prussian frontier, preserving the language and fuelling the national revival.


Act of Independence

Summary: The Council of Lithuania in Vilnius proclaimed the restoration of an independent State of Lithuania on democratic principles, with Vilnius as its capital, severing all former ties to other states.


Zeligowski's Mutiny and the seizure of Vilnius

Summary: Polish forces under General Zeligowski, secretly directed by Pilsudski, seized Vilnius and its region; a 'Republic of Central Lithuania' was created and annexed by Poland in 1922.


The Klaipeda Revolt

Summary: Lithuania staged a revolt that seized the Allied-administered Klaipeda (Memel) Territory; the powers accepted the outcome and recognised Lithuanian sovereignty over the port and its region.


German ultimatum and loss of Klaipeda

Summary: Nazi Germany demanded the Klaipeda region by ultimatum on 20 March 1939, threatening invasion; Lithuania capitulated and German troops occupied the territory on 23 March.


Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Summary: The German-Soviet non-aggression pact and its secret protocol divided eastern Europe into spheres of influence; an adjustment that autumn assigned Lithuania, with the other Baltic states, to the Soviet sphere.


Soviet occupation and annexation

Summary: The Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in June 1940 and annexed it in August as the Lithuanian SSR, an incorporation never recognised as lawful by the United States and most Western states.


Mass deportations to Siberia

Summary: The Soviet regime deported well over one hundred thousand Lithuanians to camps and forced settlements, with the largest operations in 1948 and 1949, to crush resistance and impose collectivisation.


The Forest Brothers' partisan war

Summary: Thousands of Lithuanians fought a guerrilla war against the returning Soviet forces; the partisan movement controlled much of the countryside before being crushed by the early 1950s.


The rise of Sajudis

Summary: The reform movement Sajudis emerged as Soviet controls loosened, mobilising mass support for Lithuanian sovereignty and winning a majority in the 1990 elections to the republic's parliament.


Restoration of independence

Summary: The Supreme Council adopted the Act on the Re-establishment of the State of Lithuania, making Lithuania the first Soviet republic to declare the restoration of its independence.


The January events in Vilnius

Summary: Soviet forces stormed the Vilnius television tower and broadcasting centre, killing fourteen unarmed civilians; the defenders held parliament and the crackdown discredited Moscow.


Accession to NATO

Summary: Lithuania formally joined NATO on 29 March 2004, anchoring its security in the Atlantic alliance a little over a decade after the withdrawal of Soviet forces.


Accession to the European Union

Summary: Lithuania joined the European Union on 1 May 2004 and adopted the euro in 2015, completing its return to the institutions of the West.


Siegfried acquires Lucilinburhuc

Summary: Count Siegfried of the Ardennes obtained the rocky promontory of Lucilinburhuc above the Alzette and built a castle on the Bock, the founding act of the city, the country and the nation.


The town is walled

Summary: The settlement gathered beneath Siegfried's castle was enclosed with stone ramparts around the middle of the twelfth century, beginning its long evolution into a fortified city.


Henry of Luxembourg elected King of the Romans

Summary: Count Henry, head of the House of Luxembourg, was elected King of the Romans, opening the dynasty's rise to the imperial throne of the Holy Roman Empire.


John the Blind becomes King of Bohemia

Summary: John of Luxembourg, son of Henry VII, became king of Bohemia in 1310 and count of Luxembourg in 1313, a renowned warrior-prince later celebrated as a national hero of Luxembourg.


Death of John the Blind at Crecy

Summary: Blind in his final years, John of Luxembourg insisted on joining the fighting and was killed at the Battle of Crecy on the side of France, becoming an emblematic figure of Luxembourg's chivalric past.


Luxembourg raised to a duchy

Summary: Emperor Charles IV of the House of Luxembourg elevated the County of Luxembourg to the rank of a duchy, entrusting it to his half-brother Wenceslaus as its first duke.


Burgundy seizes Luxembourg

Summary: Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, took Luxembourg in 1443, ending the rule of the House of Luxembourg and absorbing the duchy into the Burgundian dominions.


Treaty of the Pyrenees: the First Partition

Summary: The peace between France and Spain ceded a southern band of the duchy, including Thionville, Montmedy and Stenay, to Louis XIV's France, the first partition of Luxembourg's territory.


Louis XIV takes the fortress; Vauban rebuilds it

Summary: French forces captured Luxembourg City in 1684, and the engineer Vauban remodelled its fortifications before the stronghold was later returned to Spanish rule.


Return to the Habsburgs

Summary: Luxembourg reverted to Habsburg rule, passing in the eighteenth century from the Spanish to the Austrian branch of the dynasty while remaining a frontier fortress.


Revolutionary France captures the fortress

Summary: After a long blockade, French Revolutionary forces took the fortress in 1795 and Luxembourg was annexed to the French Republic, ending the era of Habsburg rule.


Congress of Vienna creates the Grand Duchy

Summary: Luxembourg was raised to a Grand Duchy under William I of the Netherlands in personal union, placed within the German Confederation with a Prussian garrison, and lost an eastern slice to Prussia in a second partition.


Treaty of London: the cession to Belgium

Summary: The 1839 Treaty of London partitioned the Grand Duchy a third time, ceding its larger French-speaking western half to the new kingdom of Belgium while confirming the independence of the German-speaking remainder.


Entry into the Zollverein

Summary: The reduced Grand Duchy joined the German customs union in 1842, binding its economy closely to the neighbouring German territories for the rest of the century.


Treaty of London: neutrality and the razing of the fortress

Summary: After the Luxembourg Crisis between France and Prussia, the powers guaranteed the Grand Duchy's perpetual neutrality, withdrew the Prussian garrison and ordered the fortress dismantled, a demolition completed in 1883.


Separation of the crown from the Netherlands

Summary: On the death of William III the personal union ended; the Dutch crown passed to Wilhelmina while Luxembourg, under male-line succession, passed to Adolphe of Nassau-Weilburg, founding a national dynasty.


German invasion in the First World War

Summary: German forces occupied neutral Luxembourg on 2 August 1914 to control its railways for the advance on France, holding the country until November 1918 despite its formal protest.


Abdication of Marie-Adelaide

Summary: Criticised for her conduct under the German occupation, Grand Duchess Marie-Adelaide abdicated in January 1919 in favour of her sister Charlotte, who reigned until 1964.


Second German invasion and annexation

Summary: The Wehrmacht overran Luxembourg on 10 May 1940; the government and Grand Duchess fled into exile, and the territory was placed under a German civil administration aimed at its full integration into the Reich.


Conscription and the general strike

Summary: When the occupier imposed German citizenship and Wehrmacht conscription in August 1942, a general strike spread from 31 August, the first in Nazi-occupied Europe; the Germans declared martial law and executed twenty-one strikers.


Liberation and the Battle of the Bulge

Summary: Allied forces liberated Luxembourg in September 1944, but the German Ardennes offensive launched on 16 December 1944 overran the north of the country, which had to be liberated a second time before war's end.


The Benelux customs convention

Summary: The exiled governments of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg signed a customs union in London on 5 September 1944, launching the Benelux that entered into force in 1948 and was deepened by the 1958 Economic Union.


Founding member of NATO

Summary: Having renounced its enforced neutrality, Luxembourg was one of the twelve states that signed the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington on 4 April 1949, founding the Atlantic alliance.


Founding member of the ECSC

Summary: Following the Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950, Luxembourg joined Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and West Germany as a founding member of the European Coal and Steel Community, operating from 1952.


Founding member of the European Communities

Summary: Under the Treaties of Rome, Luxembourg became a founding member of the European Economic Community, joining what is now the European Union from 1 January 1958 and later adopting the euro.


The Schengen Agreement

Summary: On 14 June 1985 five states signed, at the village of Schengen on the Luxembourg Moselle, the agreement abolishing internal border controls that gave a Luxembourg name to Europe's borderless travel area.


Foundation of Riga by Bishop Albert

Summary: Bishop Albert of Buxhoevden founded Riga at the mouth of the Daugava as the base for the German mission and conquest, the city that became the centre of crusader Livonia and a great Hanseatic port.


Order of the Brothers of the Sword founded

Summary: With papal sanction Bishop Albert established the Order of the Brothers of the Sword to subjugate and convert the Baltic tribes, launching decades of crusading warfare in Livonia.


Absorption into the Teutonic Order

Summary: After heavy defeats the Sword Brothers were merged into the Teutonic Order as the autonomous Livonian Order; by this time the Latvian and Livonian tribal lands had largely been conquered and bound into Terra Mariana.


Riga joins the Hanseatic League

Summary: Riga entered the Hanseatic League, the powerful association of northern European merchant towns, cementing its prosperity as the chief trading city between Russia and western Europe.


Dissolution of Livonia and the Duchy of Courland

Summary: The collapse of the Livonian Order during the Livonian War split the land: Livonia passed under Polish-Lithuanian rule, while Gotthard Kettler founded the vassal Duchy of Courland and Semigallia.


Swedish conquest of Riga

Summary: Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden captured Riga and most of Livonia from Poland-Lithuania, opening the period of Swedish rule remembered by Latvians as the 'good Swedish times'.


Courland's overseas colonies

Summary: Under Duke Jacob Kettler the Duchy of Courland founded short-lived colonies on the Gambia River and on Tobago, a striking commercial venture by a small Baltic state before its decline.


Russia takes Riga

Summary: During the Great Northern War the forces of Peter the Great captured Riga from Sweden; the cession of Swedish Livonia was confirmed at the Peace of Nystad in 1721, bringing the region into the Russian Empire.


Courland annexed by Russia

Summary: In the third partition of Poland-Lithuania the Duchy of Courland was incorporated into the Russian Empire, completing Russian rule over all the Latvian lands.


The First National Awakening

Summary: The Young Latvians led a cultural revival that championed the Latvian language and folklore against Baltic German dominance, creating the basis for a modern Latvian nation.


Proclamation of the Republic of Latvia

Summary: As the empires collapsed at the end of the First World War, the People's Council of Latvia proclaimed an independent, democratic Republic of Latvia in Riga.


Latvian-Soviet Treaty of Riga

Summary: Concluding the War of Independence, Soviet Russia signed the Treaty of Riga, in which it voluntarily and irrevocably renounced all sovereign rights over the Latvian people and territory, recognising Latvia's independence.


Adoption of the Satversme

Summary: Latvia adopted its democratic constitution, the Satversme, in 1922, establishing the institutions of the parliamentary first republic.


The Ulmanis coup

Summary: Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis staged a self-coup, suspending the constitution, dissolving the Saeima and the parties, and establishing an authoritarian regime that lasted until 1940.


The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

Summary: The Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact and its secret protocol assigned Latvia and the other Baltic states to the Soviet sphere of influence, sealing the country's fate in the coming war.


Soviet occupation and annexation

Summary: The Red Army occupied Latvia in June 1940; after a staged election a puppet parliament requested incorporation, and the Soviet Union annexed the country in August 1940.


The June 1941 deportations

Summary: The Soviet regime deported some fifteen thousand people from Latvia to Siberia in a single operation, targeting the country's political, economic and intellectual elite; many never returned.


The Rumbula massacre

Summary: Under the Nazi occupation, SS units led by Friedrich Jeckeln shot about twenty-five thousand Jews, chiefly from the Riga ghetto, in the Rumbula forest, among the largest single massacres of the Holocaust.


The March 1949 deportations

Summary: In Operation Priboi the Soviet authorities deported tens of thousands of Latvians to Siberia, many of them farmers resisting collectivisation, in the largest single act of repression of the postwar years.


The Baltic Way

Summary: On the fiftieth anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, about two million people formed a human chain from Tallinn through Riga to Vilnius, demanding the restoration of Baltic independence.


Declaration on the Restoration of Independence

Summary: The Supreme Council of Latvia adopted the declaration restoring independence, reaffirming the 1918 constitution and declaring the 1940 Soviet occupation illegal.


Full restoration of independence

Summary: After the collapse of the Moscow coup, the Supreme Council adopted a constitutional law fully restoring the independence of the Republic of Latvia, soon recognised internationally.


Accession to NATO and the European Union

Summary: Latvia became a member of NATO on 29 March 2004 and of the European Union on 1 May 2004, anchoring the restored state firmly within Western institutions.


Latvia-Russia border treaty

Summary: The border treaty with Russia entered into force, fixing the frontier and renouncing Latvia's claim to the Abrene district transferred to the Russian SFSR in 1944, while the Constitutional Court reaffirmed state continuity.


Kingdom of Mauretania and Volubilis

Summary: The Amazigh kingdom of Mauretania emerges in the western Maghreb; Volubilis, founded around the third century BCE, becomes one of its leading cities.


Roman annexation of Mauretania

Summary: Rome annexes the kingdom of Mauretania and the emperor Claudius organises the western part as the province of Mauretania Tingitana, governed from Tingis (Tangier).


Volubilis flourishes as a Roman city

Summary: Volubilis reaches its height as a thriving provincial city, adorned with a basilica, triumphal arch, temples and elaborate mosaics before Rome withdraws from the interior.


Idris I and the founding of the dynasty

Summary: Idris ibn Abdallah, a sharif fleeing Abbasid persecution, wins the allegiance of the Awraba Berbers near Walila and founds the Idrisid dynasty, Morocco's first Muslim state.


Idris II founds Fez

Summary: Idris II establishes Fez as his capital; it becomes a leading political and religious centre of the western Islamic world.


Foundation of the Qarawiyyin

Summary: The mosque and centre of learning of al-Qarawiyyin is established in Fez, later regarded as one of the oldest continuously operating institutions of higher education in the world.


Almoravids found Marrakesh

Summary: The Almoravids establish Marrakesh as the capital of an empire uniting Morocco and the western Sahara under a reformist Islamic banner.


Almoravids enter al-Andalus

Summary: Yusuf ibn Tashfin leads the Almoravids into Spain, checking the Christian Reconquista and bringing Muslim al-Andalus under Moroccan rule.


Almohads capture Marrakesh

Summary: The Almohads under Abd al-Mu'min take Marrakesh, supplanting the Almoravids and building an empire across the whole Maghreb and al-Andalus.


Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa

Summary: A Christian coalition decisively defeats the Almohads in Spain, beginning the dynasty's decline and reopening al-Andalus to the Reconquista.


Fall of the Almohads

Summary: The Marinids capture Marrakesh, ending Almohad rule and inaugurating a new Berber dynasty centred on Fez.


Marinids master Morocco from Fez

Summary: Having taken Fez in 1248 and Marrakesh in 1269, the Marinids rule Morocco from Fez, endowing the city with famous madrasas.


Battle of the Three Kings

Summary: The Saadian sultan Abd al-Malik annihilates the invading Portuguese army of King Sebastian near Ksar el-Kebir; three kings die, and Morocco's independence is preserved.


Saadian conquest of Songhai

Summary: Ahmad al-Mansur sends an army across the Sahara that defeats the Songhai Empire at Tondibi, extending Saadian reach toward the gold of the Niger.


Alaouite dynasty unifies Morocco

Summary: Moulay al-Rashid reunites Morocco and establishes the rule of the Alaouite dynasty, which continues to reign today; his successor Moulay Ismail builds a strong centralised state from Meknes.


Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship

Summary: Morocco and the United States conclude a treaty of peace and friendship, recognised in 1786, making Morocco one of America's earliest treaty partners.


Treaty of Fez establishes the protectorates

Summary: Sultan Abd al-Hafid signs the Treaty of Fez, making Morocco a French protectorate; a Spanish zone in the north and south and an international zone at Tangier are settled the same year.


Battle of Annual and the Rif War

Summary: Abd el-Krim's Riffian fighters destroy a Spanish army at Annual and proclaim a Republic of the Rif; a Franco-Spanish coalition suppresses the rebellion by 1926.


Exile of Mohammed V

Summary: France deposes and exiles Sultan Mohammed V, an act that inflames the independence movement and unites Moroccans behind the monarchy.


Restoration of independence

Summary: France ends its protectorate by agreement with Morocco; Spain relinquishes most of its northern zone in April, restoring Moroccan independence under Sultan Mohammed V.


Mohammed V becomes king

Summary: Mohammed V adopts the title of king, formalising the modern Moroccan monarchy as the country builds its independent institutions.


The Green March

Summary: King Hassan II leads the Green March, in which about 350,000 unarmed Moroccans enter the Western Sahara to assert Morocco's claim as Spain withdraws; the territory's status remains disputed.


Accession of Mohammed VI

Summary: Mohammed VI succeeds Hassan II and undertakes gradual reforms, including a revised family law code and major development projects.


Constitutional reform

Summary: Following Arab Spring protests, a new constitution approved by referendum expands the powers of parliament and the prime minister and recognises Tamazight, while the king retains ultimate authority.


Monoikos named by Hecataeus

Summary: The Greek geographer Hecataeus of Miletus refers to Monoikos as a Ligurian town, the earliest known mention of the site that would become Monaco; later the Phocaeans of Massalia developed it as a port.


The harbour at its height

Summary: The port of Monoikos, associated with the cult of Hercules, flourished as part of Mediterranean trade, as shown by coins and goods recovered from the harbour.


Portus Herculis Monoeci under Rome

Summary: After Rome's conquest of the region the harbour became Portus Herculis Monoeci, a refuge on the route between Italy, Gaul and Hispania used by Roman expeditions.


Caesar uses the port

Summary: Julius Caesar is recorded as having used the harbour of Monoeci around 50 BCE, a measure of its importance as a Roman anchorage on the Ligurian coast.


Genoa fortifies the Rock

Summary: Genoese Ghibellines under Fulco del Cassello began building a fortress of four towers on the Rock of Monaco, offering land and tax exemptions to draw settlers to the new stronghold.


Grimaldi seizes the Rock

Summary: François Grimaldi, called Malizia, took the fortress disguised as a Franciscan monk, beginning the Grimaldi presence in Monaco, an event commemorated by the armed monks of the princely coat of arms.

MCO:gouv-grimaldi-1297 MCO:gouv-palace MCO:britannica-grimaldi MCO:britannica-summary


Purchase of Menton

Summary: Charles I Grimaldi, regarded as the founder of the principality, enlarged the Grimaldi domain by purchasing the lordship of Menton, which remained Monégasque until 1861.


Purchase of Roquebrune

Summary: The Grimaldi added the lordship of Roquebrune to their possessions, completing the territory that, with Monaco and Menton, would define the principality for five centuries.


Honoré II takes the title of Prince

Summary: Honoré II became the first Grimaldi to call himself Prince and Lord of Monaco, marking the principality's emergence as a sovereign state out of the medieval lordship.


Treaty of Péronne

Summary: Honoré II and Louis XIII signed the Treaty of Péronne, shifting Monaco from Spanish to French protection while recognising the principality's independence and the prince's sovereignty.


French titles for the Grimaldi

Summary: Under the Péronne settlement the prince of Monaco received French titles and estates, including the duchy of Valentinois, binding the dynasty to the French crown.


The fortress becomes a palace

Summary: Honoré I and Honoré II employed leading architects to transform the Genoese fortress into a princely residence, creating one of the most remarkable palaces of the seventeenth century.


Revolutionary France annexes Monaco

Summary: Revolutionary France abolished the Grimaldi sovereignty and annexed the principality, expelling the dynasty and scattering the palace's art collections.


Menton and Roquebrune secede

Summary: Amid the revolutions of 1848, Menton and Roquebrune declared themselves free towns, banished the prince and sought union with Sardinia, which then occupied them.


Cession of Menton and Roquebrune

Summary: By the Franco-Monégasque Treaty, Prince Charles III ceded Menton and Roquebrune to France for four million francs; France recognised Monaco's sovereignty over its remaining territory.


Founding of the Société des Bains de Mer

Summary: Charles III established the Société des Bains de Mer to develop a casino quarter, leasing the gambling monopoly to François Blanc, who had previously enriched the spa of Homburg.


Monte-Carlo named

Summary: Prince Charles III decreed that the new casino district be called Monte-Carlo in his honour; its gambling revenues rebuilt Monaco's finances and let the principality abolish direct taxation in 1869.


Monaco's first constitution

Summary: Prince Albert I granted Monaco a constitution on 5 January 1911, ending absolute princely rule and beginning the principality's evolution into a constitutional state.


Franco-Monégasque Treaty of 1918

Summary: Signed amid a succession crisis, the treaty aligned Monaco's policy with French interests and provided that the principality would fall under French protection should the Grimaldi line end; it was noted in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.


Rainier III marries Grace Kelly

Summary: Prince Rainier III married the American actress Grace Kelly, who became Princess Grace; their union brought the principality international glamour and helped drive its post-war revival.


The 1962 constitution

Summary: Rainier III promulgated a new constitution that reduced the sovereign's powers, abolished capital punishment and granted women the right to vote.


Monaco joins the United Nations

Summary: Monaco was admitted as the 183rd member state of the United Nations, an unambiguous international recognition of its full sovereignty.


Treaty of 2002 guarantees independence

Summary: A new Franco-Monégasque treaty, with the revised constitution and succession law, ended the clause returning Monaco to France if the Grimaldi line failed, guaranteeing the principality's continued independence.


Founding of the Principality of Moldavia

Summary: Vlach migrants from Maramures established a principality east of the Carpathians; its independence is traditionally attributed to the voivode Bogdan I, making Moldavia the second Romanian principality.


Reign of Stephen the Great

Summary: Stephen IV ruled Moldavia for nearly half a century, winning European renown for resisting the Ottomans while defending the principality against Hungary and Poland and endowing many churches and monasteries.


Battle of Vaslui

Summary: Stephen the Great destroyed a much larger Ottoman army at Vaslui, a victory celebrated across Christian Europe that briefly halted the Turkish advance into Moldavia.


Defeat at Valea Alba

Summary: An Ottoman counter-offensive under Sultan Mehmed II defeated Stephen at Valea Alba; though he survived and recovered, the campaign exposed the mounting pressure on the small principality.


Moldavia becomes an Ottoman tributary

Summary: Following the death of Stephen the Great, Moldavia was reduced to a tributary vassal of the Ottoman Empire, keeping its princes, church and laws but paying tribute and following the sultan's lead in foreign affairs.


Beginning of Phanariot rule

Summary: After Prince Dimitrie Cantemir's failed alliance with Russia, the Porte ended native rule and began appointing Greek princes from the Phanar district of Constantinople, who governed until 1821.


Partition of Moldavia at the Treaty of Bucharest

Summary: The Treaty of Bucharest ending the Russo-Turkish War allowed Russia to annex Bessarabia, the eastern half of the principality between the Prut and the Dniester, splitting Moldavia in two.


Annexation of Bessarabia

Summary: By the Treaty of Bucharest, Russia annexed the land between the Prut and the Dniester from the Ottoman Empire, organizing it as the province of Bessarabia and severing it from the rest of Moldavia.


Curtailment of Bessarabian autonomy

Summary: After an initial period of limited self-government, Russia integrated Bessarabia into the imperial administration, beginning a policy of Russification that made Russian the language of government and schooling.


Southern Bessarabia briefly returned

Summary: The Treaty of Paris ending the Crimean War returned the southern strip of Bessarabia to Moldavia; Russia recovered it in 1878 at the Congress of Berlin, underlining the province's status as a contested borderland.


Kishinev pogrom

Summary: A violent anti-Jewish pogrom in the provincial capital Kishinev (Chisinau) drew international condemnation and became a notorious symbol of the persecution of Jews in the late Russian Empire.


Moldavian Democratic Republic proclaimed

Summary: After the Russian Revolution, the Sfatul Tarii (national council) in Chisinau proclaimed the Moldavian Democratic Republic, soon declaring full independence from Russia amid the turmoil of 1917-1918.


Union of Bessarabia with Romania

Summary: The Sfatul Tarii voted to unite Bessarabia with Romania (27 March, Old Style; 9 April, New Style); the union, at first conditional on autonomy, was made unconditional in November 1918.


Creation of the Moldavian ASSR

Summary: Refusing to recognize the loss of Bessarabia, the Soviet Union established the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on the east bank of the Dniester within Soviet Ukraine, as a standing claim to the territory across the river.


International recognition of the union

Summary: A treaty signed in Paris by Romania, Britain, France, Italy and Japan recognized the union of Bessarabia with Romania, though the Soviet Union never accepted it.


Soviet annexation of Bessarabia

Summary: Acting on the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Red Army occupied Bessarabia after an ultimatum to Romania, ending more than two decades of Romanian rule.


Creation of the Moldavian SSR

Summary: The Soviet Union proclaimed the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, joining most of annexed Bessarabia to the Moldavian ASSR east of the Dniester, with the new republic's borders deliberately reshaped.


The man-made famine

Summary: A famine aggravated by harsh Soviet grain requisitioning swept Moldavia in 1946-1947, killing well over a hundred thousand people in one of the least-known episodes of Stalinist terror.


Operation South deportations

Summary: On the night of 5-6 July 1949 Soviet authorities deported tens of thousands of Moldavians condemned as kulaks to Siberia and Kazakhstan, accelerating the forced collectivization of agriculture.


Declaration of Independence

Summary: Moldova's parliament declared independence from the Soviet Union on 27 August 1991, in the wake of the failed Moscow coup, with Mircea Snegur as the new state's first president.


The Transnistria war and ceasefire

Summary: War with the Russian-backed Transnistrian separatists peaked in the battle for Bender; the intervention of the Russian 14th Army proved decisive, and a ceasefire on 21 July 1992 froze the conflict, leaving Russian troops in place.


OSCE Mission to Moldova

Summary: The OSCE established its Mission to Moldova to facilitate a comprehensive settlement consolidating Moldova's sovereignty and territorial integrity with a special status for Transnistria, later working through the 5+2 format.


Autonomy for Gagauzia

Summary: A Moldovan law granted broad self-government to the Turkic-speaking Gagauz of the south, creating the autonomous territorial unit of Gagauzia and peacefully resolving their bid for separation.


UN resolution on foreign forces

Summary: The UN General Assembly adopted resolution 72/282 by 64 votes to 15, urging Russia to complete the unconditional withdrawal of its Operational Group of Forces from Moldova, in line with the 1999 OSCE Istanbul commitments.


EU candidate status

Summary: After applying for membership on 3 March 2022, Moldova was granted European Union candidate status by the European Council on 23 June 2022, opening accession negotiations in 2024.


Austronesian settlement of Madagascar

Summary: Seafarers from the Borneo region cross the Indian Ocean and become the island's first lasting inhabitants.


Bantu African arrivals

Summary: Migrants from the East African mainland mix with Austronesian settlers, forming the Malagasy people and language.


Swahili and Arab trade contacts

Summary: Muslim Swahili traders (the Antalaotra) settle the northwest coast, linking Madagascar to Indian Ocean commerce.


Bantu and Tamil arrivals deepen the mix

Summary: Bantu-speaking migrants from southeast Africa arrive in numbers alongside Tamil merchants from southern India, drawing the island's population from three continents.


Rise of the Sakalava kingdom

Summary: The Maroseraña dynasty builds the island's largest realm on the west coast, later dividing into Menabe and Boina.


Île Sainte-Marie pirate haven

Summary: The northeastern island becomes a major base on the pirate 'Round'; legend later names it the site of Libertalia.


Ratsimilaho unites the Betsimisaraka

Summary: Ratsimilaho forges the eastern peoples into the Betsimisaraka confederation, becoming a dominant king by 1730.


Portuguese and French trading posts

Summary: European powers establish coastal posts but never hold ground inland; the island's kingdoms keep the terms of trade.


Andrianampoinimerina unifies Imerina

Summary: From Ambohimanga and Antananarivo, the king ends civil war and begins the conquest of much of the island.


Radama I, Britain and the missionaries

Summary: Radama I is recognised King of Madagascar by Britain and admits the London Missionary Society, bringing literacy and Christianity.


The London Missionary Society arrives

Summary: LMS missionaries open schools, render Malagasy in the Latin alphabet and translate the Bible — literacy arrives with a creed attached.


Ranavalona I bans Christianity

Summary: Fearing foreign influence, the queen proscribes Christian practice; persecution and executions follow over decades.


Treaty of peace, friendship and commerce with the United States

Summary: Following a commercial convention in 1867, Washington concludes a full treaty with the Kingdom of Madagascar — a sovereign state in the diplomatic record fifteen years before annexation.


First Franco-Hova War

Summary: France invades and takes Antsiranana (Diego Suarez), the deep northern harbour it had wanted for a generation.


Britain accepts a French protectorate

Summary: London concedes the imposition of a protectorate over the island; the government in Antananarivo, never consulted, refuses to accept it.


French capture Antananarivo

Summary: Franco-Hova war ends with the fall of the capital; Madagascar is forced into a French protectorate.


Monarchy abolished, Ranavalona III exiled

Summary: France ends the Merina monarchy and exiles the last queen, ultimately to Algiers, where she dies in 1917.


The 'pacification' campaign

Summary: The formal declaration of a colony opens fifteen years of French military operations against a resistance that never conceded the point.


The Battle of Madagascar

Summary: British forces invade the Vichy-administered island to deny its harbours to the Japanese navy; the colonial administration's prestige does not recover.


Madagascar becomes a French overseas territory

Summary: Reorganisation gives Malagasy deputies representation in Paris; its failure to deliver independence sends nationalists to arms the following year.


The Malagasy Uprising

Summary: A nationalist insurrection from March 1947 is suppressed with great loss of life; estimates range up to roughly 90,000 dead.


Independence from France

Summary: Madagascar becomes a sovereign republic; Philibert Tsiranana is its first president.


The rotaka topples Tsiranana

Summary: Economic stagnation triggers mass protests; the first president hands power to a military council, ending the First Republic.


Ratsiraka and the socialist republic

Summary: Didier Ratsiraka takes power, founds the Democratic Republic and nationalises the economy under the 'Red Book'.


Ravalomanana and the 2002 crisis

Summary: A disputed election triggers months of confrontation; Marc Ravalomanana takes power and Ratsiraka flees.


The 2009 coup

Summary: Andry Rajoelina ousts Ravalomanana with military backing, in a transfer widely condemned as unconstitutional.


The Third Republic constitution

Summary: Democratic reforms end the socialist republic and usher in a new constitution and multiparty politics.


Rainforests of the Atsinanana inscribed

Summary: Six eastern national parks — home to species found nowhere else after 60 million years of isolation — join the World Heritage List.


The rainforests are listed in Danger

Summary: Three years after inscription, illegal logging and lemur hunting put the Atsinanana on the List of World Heritage in Danger.


Drought and famine in the Grand Sud

Summary: The worst drought in four decades leaves over 1.14 million people food insecure and some 14,000 in IPC Phase 5 — catastrophe — in the island's far south.


Rajoelina wins a third term

Summary: An election boycotted by ten rivals, preceded by six weeks of protest, returns Rajoelina on the lowest turnout in the country's history.


Olmec civilisation flourishes

Summary: The Olmec arise on the Gulf coast as the first complex society of Mesoamerica, carving colossal stone heads and shaping a cultural template inherited by later peoples.


Teotihuacan, city of the gods

Summary: Teotihuacan grows into a metropolis of monumental pyramids and a planned ceremonial axis, dominating central Mexico before its decline around 550-650 CE.


Classic Maya civilisation

Summary: Maya city-states reach their height, producing hieroglyphic writing, advanced calendars, and astronomy, before the southern lowland centres are abandoned by about 900 CE.


Founding of Tenochtitlan

Summary: The Mexica establish their capital on an island in Lake Texcoco, the site of present-day Mexico City.


The Triple Alliance

Summary: Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan ally, inaugurating the tribute empire of the Aztecs across central Mexico.


Reign of Moctezuma II

Summary: Moctezuma II ascends as huey tlatoani, ruling the empire at its territorial peak until the Spanish arrival.


Cortes lands in Mexico

Summary: Hernan Cortes arrives on the Gulf coast and marches inland, allying with peoples opposed to Mexica rule.


Fall of Tenochtitlan

Summary: After a siege of some three months, the city falls to Cortes and his indigenous allies, ending the Aztec empire.


Viceroyalty of New Spain established

Summary: Spain formalises colonial government under a viceroy, with Mexico City as the capital of a vast realm.


Grito de Dolores

Summary: Miguel Hidalgo calls for rebellion against Spanish rule, beginning the Mexican War of Independence.


Independence consummated

Summary: The Army of the Three Guarantees enters Mexico City following the Treaty of Cordoba, ending Spanish rule.


First federal republic

Summary: The Constitution of 1824 founds the United Mexican States as a federal republic, with Guadalupe Victoria as first president.


Mexican-American War

Summary: Defeat by the United States costs Mexico roughly half its territory under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.


Constitution of the Reform

Summary: The liberal Constitution of 1857 limits church and army privileges and establishes a bill of rights, deepening conflict between liberals and conservatives.


Fall of the Second Empire

Summary: Mexican forces under Juarez defeat the French intervention; Emperor Maximilian is captured and executed, restoring the republic.


The Porfiriato

Summary: Porfirio Diaz rules Mexico for over three decades, modernising the economy while entrenching authoritarian government and land inequality.


Mexican Revolution

Summary: A decade of revolution and civil war overthrows Diaz, costs over a million lives, and produces the Constitution of 1917.


Oil nationalisation

Summary: President Lazaro Cardenas nationalises the petroleum industry, creating Pemex and asserting economic sovereignty.


NAFTA and the Zapatista uprising

Summary: The North American Free Trade Agreement takes effect as the Zapatistas rise in Chiapas; a peso crisis follows that December.


End of one-party rule

Summary: Vicente Fox's election ends 71 years of uninterrupted PRI government, marking Mexico's democratic alternation of power.


Reign of Philip II of Macedon

Summary: Philip II reformed the Macedonian army and won mastery over the Greek city-states at Chaeronea, laying the foundations for the empire his son Alexander the Great would build across Asia.


Conquests of Alexander the Great

Summary: Alexander III led Macedonian and Greek forces in the conquest of the Persian empire, carrying Hellenistic civilization from Egypt to the Indus before his death at Babylon in 323 BCE.


Macedonia becomes a Roman province

Summary: After Rome defeated the last Macedonian claimant near Pydna, Macedonia was organised as a Roman province, beginning centuries of Roman and later Byzantine rule over the region.


Destruction of Scupi

Summary: A devastating earthquake destroyed the Roman city of Scupi near present-day Skopje, an event marking the late-antique decline of the region's classical urban life on the eve of Slavic settlement.


Slavic settlement of the region

Summary: Slavic tribes migrated into the Macedonian interior from the sixth century, transforming the population of the region and laying the basis for its later Slavic-speaking identity.


The Ohrid literary school of Clement and Naum

Summary: Saint Clement of Ohrid, with Saint Naum, founded a Slavonic literary school at Ohrid, spreading the Slavic script and Christian learning and making the city a cradle of medieval Slavic culture.


Tsar Samuel's state centred on Ohrid

Summary: Samuel built a powerful western Bulgarian state with its capital and a patriarchate at Ohrid, resisting Byzantine expansion for decades until his defeat by the emperor Basil II.


Battle of Kleidion and the fall of Samuel

Summary: The Byzantine emperor Basil II destroyed Samuel's army at Kleidion; the tsar died shortly afterwards, and by 1018 the region was fully reabsorbed into the Byzantine Empire.


The Archbishopric of Ohrid

Summary: After the Byzantine reconquest an autocephalous archbishopric was established at Ohrid, sustaining the city's role as a centre of Orthodox church life and Slavonic learning.


Ottoman conquest of the region

Summary: Ottoman forces conquered Macedonia in the late fourteenth century, beginning roughly five centuries of Ottoman rule during which the region's name lapsed as an administrative term.


Founding of IMRO

Summary: The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization was founded at Salonika to work for an autonomous Macedonia, its early leaders combining a Macedonian regional with a Bulgarian national identity.


The Ilinden Uprising

Summary: On St Elijah's Day IMRO launched the Ilinden Uprising against Ottoman rule; though quickly crushed amid severe reprisals, it became a founding event of Macedonian national identity.


The Kruševo Republic

Summary: During the uprising the insurgents proclaimed a short-lived republic in the town of Kruševo, which the Ottoman army overran after about ten days.


The Balkan Wars and the partition of Macedonia

Summary: The Balkan Wars ended Ottoman rule and divided historic Macedonia among Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria; the northern Vardar region passed to Serbia, becoming the core of the future republic.


Vardar Macedonia within Yugoslavia

Summary: After the First World War the Vardar region was incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), where it was administered as part of Serbia and its Slavic identity discouraged.


Proclamation of a Macedonian state (ASNOM)

Summary: The Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia met on St Elijah's Day 1944 and proclaimed a Macedonian state within a future Yugoslav federation.


Socialist Republic of Macedonia and the codified language

Summary: A People's (later Socialist) Republic of Macedonia was constituted as one of Yugoslavia's six republics, and a standard Macedonian literary language was codified for the first time.


The Skopje earthquake

Summary: A powerful earthquake devastated Skopje, killing more than a thousand people; the city was rebuilt with international aid as the modern capital of the republic.


Independence referendum

Summary: Citizens voted by some 96 percent for independence, and the republic seceded peacefully from Yugoslavia under President Kiro Gligorov, alone among the Yugoslav republics in avoiding war.


UN admission as 'FYROM'

Summary: Owing to Greece's objection over the name, the country was admitted to the United Nations under the provisional designation 'the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia'.


The Interim Accord with Greece

Summary: Greece and the country signed an Interim Accord under which Greece agreed not to object to its membership of international bodies referred to by the provisional name.


ICJ rules against Greece

Summary: The International Court of Justice held that Greece had breached the Interim Accord by objecting to the country's admission to NATO at the 2008 Bucharest summit.


The Prespa Agreement

Summary: Greece and the country signed the Prespa Agreement, renaming it the Republic of North Macedonia (used erga omnes), terminating the 1995 accord and distinguishing the modern Slavic state from ancient Macedon.


The Ohrid Framework Agreement

Summary: The agreement ended the 2001 ethnic Albanian insurgency, rejecting territorial partition and granting the Albanian minority greater rights through decentralisation, equitable representation, language rights and double-majority voting.


EU candidate status

Summary: Having applied for membership in 2004, the country was granted European Union candidate status in December 2005, opening a long road toward accession.


North Macedonia joins NATO

Summary: After the Prespa Agreement lifted Greece's objection, North Macedonia deposited its instrument of accession and became NATO's thirtieth member on 27 March 2020.


Bulgaria blocks EU accession talks

Summary: Bulgaria vetoed the opening of EU accession negotiations over disputes about history, language and identity, including claims that Macedonian derives from Bulgarian.


EU accession negotiations open

Summary: Following a French-brokered compromise, North Macedonia formally opened European Union accession negotiations, though Bulgaria's conditions continued to complicate the process.


Ibn Hawqal records Ghana's wealth

Summary: The Arab geographer Ibn Hawqal, visiting the western Sudan, describes Ghana's ruler as among the richest kings in the world on account of his gold.


Apogee of the gold-and-salt trade

Summary: Ghana controls a broad swathe of the western Sahel, acting as the broker between southern goldfields and North African salt caravans.


Almoravids take Kumbi Saleh

Summary: Berber Almoravids from present-day Mauritania capture Ghana's chief city, weakening the empire and the trade routes it controlled.


Battle of Kirina and the founding of Mali

Summary: Sundiata Keita defeats Sumanguru Kanté of the Soso, unifying the Malinke and establishing the Mali Empire with its capital at Niani.


Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca

Summary: Mansa Musa journeys to Mecca with a vast retinue and quantities of gold so great his almsgiving is said to have disrupted Egypt's gold prices, spreading Mali's fame abroad.


Timbuktu and Djenné flourish

Summary: Under Mali's mansas the Niger cities grow into major centres of trans-Saharan trade and Islamic scholarship, attracting merchants and scholars.


Sonni Ali takes Timbuktu

Summary: Sonni Ali captures Timbuktu, and in 1473 Djenné, bringing the Niger trade cities under Songhai control and laying the foundation of the empire.


Askia Muhammad founds the Askiya dynasty

Summary: A former general seizes power as Askia Muhammad, reorganising the empire and ushering in the golden age of Timbuktu's scholarship.


Battle of Tondibi ends the Songhai Empire

Summary: Moroccan forces under Judar Pasha, armed with firearms, rout the Songhai army at Tondibi near Gao, collapsing the last of the great Niger empires.


Bitòn Coulibaly consolidates the Bambara kingdom of Segou

Summary: Mamari (Bitòn) Coulibaly transforms a youth society into an army, founding the centralised Bambara state of Segou on the middle Niger.


Umar Tal's Tukulor empire conquers Segou

Summary: Al-Hajj Umar Tal, leading the Tijaniyya jihad begun in the 1850s, overthrows the Bambara kingdom of Segou and extends the Tukulor empire across the upper Niger.


Death of Umar Tal

Summary: The Tukulor leader dies in 1864 near Hamdallahi amid revolt; his successors face mounting French pressure.


Capture of Samori Touré

Summary: French forces seize Samori Touré, founder of the Wassoulou Empire and Mali's last great armed resister, ending nearly two decades of war.


Colony of French Soudan

Summary: The conquered upper Niger is administered as French Soudan within French West Africa, its economy reoriented toward the colonial metropole.


The Mali Federation with Senegal

Summary: French Soudan and Senegal join in the short-lived Mali Federation, with Modibo Keïta as a leading figure; it dissolves in August 1960.


Independence of the Republic of Mali

Summary: The former French Soudan becomes the independent Republic of Mali; Modibo Keïta becomes its first president the following day.


Military coup ousts Modibo Keïta

Summary: Lieutenant Moussa Traoré leads a coup against the socialist one-party government, beginning 23 years of his rule.


Fall of Moussa Traoré and democratic transition

Summary: After a deadly crackdown on protesters on 22 March, officers led by Amadou Toumani Touré oust Traoré; a transition leads to multiparty rule under Alpha Oumar Konaré in 1992.


Tuareg rebellion, coup and jihadist seizure of the north

Summary: The MNLA's January rebellion and a 22 March coup precipitate collapse; AQIM, Ansar Dine and allied jihadists take Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal.


France launches Operation Serval

Summary: As jihadist forces drive toward Bamako, France intervenes militarily, stopping the advance and recapturing the northern cities.


Coup ousts President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta

Summary: Amid mass protests and a worsening insurgency, military officers arrest President Keïta, who resigns; a transitional government is formed.


Second coup brings Assimi Goïta to power

Summary: Colonel Assimi Goïta removes the transitional civilian president and prime minister and takes the presidency himself.


The temples of Ggantija raised on Gozo

Summary: The two megalithic temples of Ggantija were built on Gozo, the South Temple around 3600 BCE, ranking among the oldest free-standing monumental buildings in the world.


The Maltese temple culture flourishes

Summary: A Neolithic society raised the temples of Hagar Qim, Mnajdra, Tarxien, Skorba and Ta' Hagrat in successive phases, creating monumental architecture without the use of metal tools.


The Hal Saflieni Hypogeum

Summary: A vast underground necropolis was cut on three levels into the limestone, holding the remains of about 7,000 people and the famous Sleeping Lady figurine.


The temple builders disappear

Summary: Around 2500 BCE the temple-building culture came to an end for reasons still debated, and a new Bronze Age population succeeded the people who had raised the great monuments.


Carthaginian Malta

Summary: Following earlier Phoenician use of the islands as a trading station, the Carthaginians were firmly established in Malta by the sixth century BCE, leaving coins, inscriptions and Punic rock tombs.


Malta becomes Roman

Summary: During the Second Punic War Malta passed under Roman control and was attached to the praetorship of Sicily, beginning some seven centuries of Roman and then Byzantine rule.


The shipwreck of the Apostle Paul

Summary: Christian tradition, drawing on the Acts of the Apostles, holds that Paul was shipwrecked on Malta around 60 CE, welcomed by the islanders and the leading man Publius, and stayed three months, beginning the islands' conversion.


Roman municipium

Summary: Under Rome the Maltese were allowed to coin money, send delegations to Rome and manage their own affairs, and the islands were granted the status of a Roman municipium.


Arab conquest of Malta

Summary: An Arab force seized Malta from the Byzantine Empire, beginning a period of more than two centuries that would shape the islands' language and culture.


Birth of the Maltese language

Summary: The Arabic of the islands' settlers evolved into Maltese, a Semitic language that is unique in being written in the Latin alphabet and that survives as the national language today.


Norman conquest by Roger I

Summary: Count Roger I of Sicily took Malta from the Arabs in 1091, attaching the islands to the Kingdom of Sicily and beginning their return to Latin Christendom.


Rule under Sicily and Aragon

Summary: As part of the Kingdom of Sicily, Malta passed through Norman, Swabian, Angevin and Aragonese hands, governed by feudal lords and a local council, until 1530.


Charles V grants Malta to the Knights

Summary: Eight years after losing Rhodes to the Ottomans, the Order of St John received Malta from the Emperor Charles V, who held Sicily, in return for a token annual tribute, and made the islands their new sovereign base.


The Great Siege of Malta

Summary: An Ottoman army sent by Suleiman the Magnificent besieged the Knights and Maltese for nearly four months; under Grand Master Jean Parisot de la Valette the defenders held out until a Sicilian relief force compelled the Ottomans to withdraw.


Founding of Valletta

Summary: In the year after the siege the Knights began building a new fortified capital on Mount Sciberras, named Valletta after the Grand Master and conceived as a planned Renaissance fortress-city; it became the capital in 1570.


Two and a half centuries of the Order

Summary: From their new capital the Knights ruled Malta as a sovereign order-state, building auberges, hospitals and the conventual church of St John and shaping a baroque culture until their fall in 1798.


Napoleon seizes Malta

Summary: On his way to Egypt, Napoleon Bonaparte captured Malta from the Knights of St John, whose rule collapsed almost without a fight, ending two and a half centuries of the Order's sovereignty.


Maltese uprising and French surrender

Summary: French seizures of church property triggered a Maltese revolt; with British and Sicilian naval support the insurgents blockaded the French garrison in Valletta until it surrendered in 1800.


British rule confirmed by the Treaty of Paris

Summary: Having acknowledged British sovereignty, the Maltese saw the islands' attachment to Britain confirmed by the Treaty of Paris in 1814, making Malta a Crown colony.


Malta as a naval fortress

Summary: British development of the Grand Harbour dockyard made Malta one of the chief bases of the Royal Navy and the strategic centre of British power in the Mediterranean.


The siege of Malta

Summary: From 1940 Malta, lying between Sicily and Axis North Africa, was subjected to relentless Italian and German bombing and a near-starvation blockade while its forces struck at Axis supply convoys.


Malta awarded the George Cross

Summary: King George VI awarded the George Cross to the whole island of Malta to honour its heroism and endurance under siege, the only time the decoration has been given to an entire population.


Independence

Summary: Malta became an independent sovereign state within the Commonwealth on 21 September 1964, ending more than a century and a half of British colonial rule.


Malta becomes a republic

Summary: Constitutional amendments made Malta a republic on 13 December 1974, replacing the British monarch with a Maltese president as head of state.


Accession to the European Union

Summary: Malta joined the European Union on 1 May 2004 in its largest enlargement and adopted the euro on 1 January 2008, completing its integration into Europe.


Rise of the Pyu city-states

Summary: Tibeto-Burman Pyu peoples establish walled, moated cities such as Beikthano, Halin and Sri Ksetra in the Irrawaddy basin, founding the region's first urban civilization.


Buddhism takes root

Summary: The Pyu cities provide the earliest evidence of Buddhism's introduction into Southeast Asia, embedding the religion in the region's culture and statecraft.


Decline of the Pyu

Summary: Raids from the Nanzhao kingdom and the southward migration of the Burman people erode Pyu power, clearing the way for the rise of Bagan.


Founding of Bagan

Summary: The city of Bagan is traditionally established on a bend of the Irrawaddy, later to become the seat of the first Burmese kingdom.


Reign of Anawrahta

Summary: Anawrahta unifies the Burman north and the Mon south into the first Burmese kingdom and adopts Theravada Buddhism as the state religion.


Conquest of Thaton

Summary: Anawrahta captures the Mon city of Thaton, by tradition bringing Buddhist scriptures, monks and artisans that enrich Pagan's culture.


Mongol invasion and collapse

Summary: Armies of Kublai Khan's Mongol empire invade and shatter the kingdom; a further incursion in 1297 ends Bagan as a unifying power.


Reign of Bayinnaung

Summary: Bayinnaung of the Toungoo dynasty reunifies Myanmar and conquers the Shan states and Siam, building the most powerful empire in mainland Southeast Asia.


Alaungpaya founds the Konbaung dynasty

Summary: The village chief Alaungpaya leads a revolt against Mon overlords and establishes the Konbaung dynasty, the last royal house of Burma.


Reconquest of Lower Burma

Summary: Alaungpaya's forces capture Pegu and subdue the Mon south, reuniting the country under Konbaung rule.


Annexation of Arakan

Summary: Konbaung expansion absorbs the kingdom of Arakan on the western coast, bringing the Burmese frontier up against British-held Bengal.


First Anglo-Burmese War

Summary: War over the Arakan and Assam frontiers ends with the Treaty of Yandabo (1826), forcing Burma to cede Arakan and Tenasserim to Britain.


Second Anglo-Burmese War

Summary: British forces annex Lower Burma, including the Irrawaddy delta and the province renamed Pegu, tightening control of the coastline.


Third Anglo-Burmese War and the end of the monarchy

Summary: Britain takes Mandalay, exiles King Thibaw, and annexes Upper Burma on 1 January 1886, abolishing the Burmese monarchy and completing the conquest.


Burma separated from British India

Summary: Burma is made a distinct crown colony with limited self-government, administered separately from the Indian Empire.


Assassination of Aung San

Summary: Aung San, who had negotiated independence with Britain, is assassinated with most of his cabinet months before the transfer of power.


Independence of the Union of Burma

Summary: Burma becomes a fully independent republic outside the Commonwealth under Prime Minister U Nu, soon facing communist and ethnic insurgencies.


Ne Win's coup

Summary: General Ne Win overthrows the elected government, imprisons U Nu, and inaugurates decades of military rule under the Burmese Way to Socialism.


The 8888 uprising

Summary: A nationwide pro-democracy uprising is crushed by the military, which forms a new junta; Aung San Suu Kyi emerges as the democracy movement's leader.


Annulled NLD election victory

Summary: Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy wins elections in a landslide, but the junta ignores the result and detains her for years.


The Saffron Revolution

Summary: Buddhist monks lead mass protests against the regime that are violently suppressed, drawing renewed international condemnation.


Reforms under Thein Sein

Summary: A quasi-civilian government begins political and economic liberalization, releasing prisoners, easing censorship, and restoring Aung San Suu Kyi's freedoms.


NLD wins free elections

Summary: Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy wins Myanmar's first fairly contested elections; she becomes state counsellor in a government sharing power with the army.


Rohingya crisis in Rakhine State

Summary: Military 'clearance operations' drive more than 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh; a UN fact-finding mission later finds evidence of genocidal violence.


Military coup

Summary: The army seizes power, detains Aung San Suu Kyi and the elected leadership, and installs a junta under Min Aung Hlaing, triggering mass protests and civil war.


Duklja wins independence from Byzantium

Summary: Stefan Vojislav led a revolt that freed the principality of Duklja from Byzantine control and established the Vojislavljevic dynasty, the first medieval state on the territory of Montenegro.


Mihailo crowned king of Duklja

Summary: Mihailo of Duklja became the first ruler of the region to bear the royal title, the crown bestowed on him by Pope Gregory VII, marking Duklja's standing among Christian states.


Principality of Zeta under the Balsic

Summary: After the fall of the Serbian Empire an independent Zeta emerged, ruled by the House of Balsic and then from 1431 by the House of Crnojevic, under whom the name Montenegro came into use.


The Oktoih and the Crnojevic printing press

Summary: Djurdje Crnojevic founded the first South Slavic printing house at Cetinje, which produced the Oktoih, the first Cyrillic book printed in southeastern Europe, before closing around 1496 amid the Ottoman advance.


Rise of the theocratic Prince-Bishopric

Summary: Authority over the free Montenegrin highlands passed to the Orthodox bishops of Cetinje, who combined spiritual and temporal power as vladikas in a theocratic state that renounced Ottoman overlordship.


Petrovic-Njegos dynasty established

Summary: Metropolitan Danilo Petrovic-Njegos secured the right to name his successor, founding the hereditary Petrovic-Njegos line of prince-bishops that ruled Montenegro until 1918, the title passing from uncle to nephew.


Rule of Petar II Petrovic-Njegos

Summary: The poet-prince Petar II strengthened the state, founded schools and reformed taxation, and wrote The Mountain Wreath, becoming Montenegro's most celebrated cultural figure.


Publication of The Mountain Wreath

Summary: Njegos published Gorski vijenac (The Mountain Wreath), a dramatic epic in verse set in eighteenth-century Montenegro that became a defining work of the national literature.


Montenegro becomes a secular principality

Summary: Danilo renounced the office of prince-bishop, married and proclaimed himself prince, ending the theocracy; his 1855 code gave the principality its first modern legal framework.


Independence recognised at the Congress of Berlin

Summary: The Treaty of Berlin recognised Montenegro's independence under Article XXVI, ending Ottoman suzerainty, and under Article XXIX enlarged the state and granted it the port of Antivari (Bar).


First Montenegrin constitution

Summary: Prince Nikola I granted Montenegro its first constitution, establishing an assembly and modern institutions as the principality consolidated its recognised statehood.


Montenegro proclaimed a kingdom

Summary: On the fiftieth anniversary of his reign, Prince Nikola I proclaimed Montenegro a kingdom and assumed the title of king, the last monarchy created in the Balkans.


The Balkan Wars

Summary: Montenegro joined Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece in the First Balkan War against the Ottoman Empire and besieged Scutari, but was forced by the Great Powers to give up the captured city.


Battle of Mojkovac and Austro-Hungarian occupation

Summary: The Montenegrin army won the Battle of Mojkovac (7-8 January 1916) to cover the Serbian retreat, but the kingdom was overrun and occupied by Austria-Hungary, and King Nikola I fled into exile.


The Podgorica Assembly

Summary: An assembly in Podgorica deposed King Nikola I and the Petrovic-Njegos dynasty and proclaimed the unconditional union of Montenegro with Serbia in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.


The Christmas Uprising and the Greens-Whites split

Summary: Pro-independence 'Greens' rose against the union proclaimed at Podgorica but were defeated by the unionist 'Whites', a schism over Montenegro's statehood that endured for generations.


Socialist Republic of Montenegro

Summary: After wartime occupation and partisan resistance, Montenegro became one of the six federal republics of socialist Yugoslavia, with its capital at Titograd, today's Podgorica.


Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Summary: As the other republics broke away, Montenegro joined Serbia in forming the rump Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, remaining bound to Belgrade through the wars and sanctions of the 1990s.


Unilateral adoption of the euro

Summary: Montenegro made the euro its sole legal tender from March 2002, a unilateral euroisation undertaken without European Central Bank agreement that distanced its economy from Serbia's.


State Union of Serbia and Montenegro

Summary: European mediation transformed the federation into the loose State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, whose Constitutional Charter allowed either republic to hold an independence referendum after three years.


Independence referendum

Summary: On a turnout above 86 percent, 55.5 percent of voters chose independence, narrowly passing the EU-set 55 percent threshold; the OSCE/ODIHR found the vote met international standards.


Restoration of independence

Summary: The parliament in Podgorica formally declared Montenegro an independent sovereign state, recognised by Serbia, restoring the statehood lost at the Podgorica Assembly of 1918.


Application for EU membership

Summary: Montenegro applied to join the European Union, beginning the accession process that would make it one of the leading candidates among the Western Balkan countries.


EU candidate status

Summary: The European Union granted Montenegro candidate status, a milestone toward the accession negotiations the country has pursued while retaining the euro as its currency.


Kosovo border demarcation

Summary: Montenegro and Kosovo signed a demarcation of their 79-kilometre border in 2015; fiercely contested in Kosovo, it was finally ratified by Pristina's parliament in March 2018.


Accession to NATO

Summary: Montenegro became NATO's twenty-ninth member, depositing its instrument of accession in Washington, despite strong Russian opposition and a divided domestic public.


The Xiongnu confederation reaches its height

Summary: At the close of the third century BCE the Xiongnu unite the eastern steppe under a supreme chanyu, forming a nomadic empire that rivals the Qin and Han dynasties of China for centuries.


Break-up of the Xiongnu empire

Summary: After prolonged war with China and internal division, the Xiongnu confederation fractures; some tribes are absorbed into China while others scatter, ending the first great steppe empire centred on Mongolia.


Uyghur khaganate in the Orkhon valley

Summary: Turkic Uyghurs establish a khaganate centred on the Orkhon River, building the city of Khar Balgas; the valley remains the political and ceremonial heart of the eastern steppe.


Temüjin proclaimed Chinggis Khan

Summary: An assembly of steppe leaders by the River Onon proclaims Temüjin as Chinggis Khan, 'Universal Ruler,' uniting the Mongol tribes into one nation governed by the Yassa law code, the founding act of the Mongol state.


Conquest of the Khwarazmian empire

Summary: Mongol armies invade and destroy the powerful Khwarazmian empire of Central Asia, opening the way to Persia and the Russian steppe and demonstrating the reach of the new Mongol military.


Death of Chinggis Khan

Summary: Chinggis Khan dies in August 1227 during a campaign against the Tangut Xixia kingdom, leaving an empire reaching from northern China to the Caspian Sea and a realm divided among his four sons.


Karakorum becomes the imperial capital

Summary: Great Khan Ögödei walls the city of Karakorum in the Orkhon valley and builds a palace there, establishing a fixed capital for the Mongol Empire on the Mongolian steppe.


Kublai Khan founds the Yuan dynasty

Summary: Chinggis Khan's grandson Kublai proclaims the Yuan dynasty in 1271 and completes the conquest of China by 1279, ruling all of China from Khanbaliq (Beijing) as its first non-Chinese sovereign.


Fall of the Yuan and retreat to the steppe

Summary: The Chinese rebel Zhu Yuanzhang overthrows the Yuan and founds the Ming dynasty; the last Mongol emperor flees north into the steppes, ending Mongol rule over China.


Zanabazar enthroned as first Javzandamba

Summary: Zanabazar, recognized as a reincarnation in 1639, is enthroned with the title Javzandamba khutagt, becoming the first Bogd Gegeen and supreme head of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia.


Khalkha Mongols submit to the Qing

Summary: The Khalkha Mongols of the north accept Manchu overlordship, bringing Mongolia under the Qing dynasty; the Manchus govern through the Mongol nobility and impose religious controls to secure their rule.


Independence declared under the Bogd Khan

Summary: As the Qing collapses, Mongolia expels the Manchu official and proclaims the Javzandamba as Bogd Khan, head of an independent theocratic monarchy, though only autonomy under Chinese suzerainty is recognized abroad.


People's Revolution captures the capital

Summary: Damdin Sükhbaatar's People's Army, with the Soviet Red Army, drives out the White Russian forces of Baron Ungern-Sternberg and takes Niislel Khüree in July 1921, installing a people's government.


Mongolian People's Republic proclaimed

Summary: After the death of the Bogd Khan in May 1924, the monarchy lapses and the Mongolian People's Republic is proclaimed in November, the world's second socialist state and a satellite of the Soviet Union.


The Great Repression

Summary: Under Choibalsan and Soviet NKVD advisers, the state carries out mass purges, killing tens of thousands of people, executing thousands of lamas, and destroying hundreds of Buddhist monasteries.


Mongolia admitted to the United Nations

Summary: Mongolia is admitted to the United Nations in 1961, broadening international recognition of its independence after decades in which its sovereignty had been disputed between its powerful neighbours.


Peaceful democratic revolution

Summary: Demonstrations and hunger strikes in the capital lead the ruling party's leadership to resign in March 1990, ending one-party communist rule and opening the way to multiparty elections held that year.


Democratic constitution adopted

Summary: A new constitution transforms Mongolia from a people's republic into a multiparty parliamentary democracy with an elected president and the State Great Khural, and commits the country to a market economy.


Oyu Tolgoi and the mining boom

Summary: Agreement to develop the giant Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold deposit anchors a mining boom that multiplies Mongolia's income, reorients its economy from herding, and accelerates migration to Ulaanbaatar.


Sofala recorded as a gold port

Summary: The geographer al-Masʿudi describes Muslim trade in the Sofala region; Sofala becomes the chief outlet for gold carried down from the interior highlands.


Coastal trading towns flourish

Summary: Settlements at Sofala, Angoche, the Island of Mozambique, the Querimba Islands and the Zambezi mouth grow into nodes of the Swahili Indian Ocean trade.


Kilwa controls the Sofala gold trade

Summary: The sultanate of Kilwa dominates the export of interior gold through Sofala, drawing wealth from the Zimbabwe and Mutapa goldfields into the wider Islamic world.


Rise of the Mutapa state

Summary: The Mutapa (Monomotapa) state emerges on the Zimbabwean plateau, its gold and ivory passing down the Zambezi and out through the Mozambican ports.


Vasco da Gama reaches the coast

Summary: Bound for India, Vasco da Gama anchors off the Island of Mozambique, where Muslim merchants receive him with suspicion; he sails on, marking the first European contact with the coast.


Portuguese occupy Sofala

Summary: The Portuguese seize Sofala and build a fort to capture the gold trade, but find the port in decline and shift their base to the Island of Mozambique.


Chapel of Nossa Senhora do Baluarte built

Summary: On the Island of Mozambique the Portuguese raise the small chapel of Nossa Senhora do Baluarte, often called the oldest surviving European building in the southern hemisphere.


Fort São Sebastião is built

Summary: Construction begins on Fort São Sebastião on the Island of Mozambique, the largest Portuguese fortress in East Africa and the oldest complete fort still standing in sub-Saharan Africa.


Omanis take Fort Jesus at Mombasa

Summary: Omani Arabs capture Fort Jesus in Mombasa, rolling back Portuguese power on the northern Swahili coast and confining it largely to the territory of modern Mozambique.


Prazo estates along the Zambezi

Summary: The crown leases great estates, the prazos da coroa, to settlers along the Zambezi; their holders rule as semi-feudal lords with armies of slave-soldiers and a heavy stake in the slave trade.


Soshangane founds the Gaza Empire

Summary: Nguni warriors fleeing the upheavals of the Mfecane, led by Soshangane, conquer much of southern Mozambique and establish the Gaza Empire.


Berlin Conference and the scramble

Summary: The Berlin Conference requires Portugal to occupy the territory it claims, spurring a drive to subdue the Mozambican interior.


Defeat and capture of Gungunhana

Summary: Portuguese forces crush the Gaza army at Coolela and capture King Gungunhana at Chaimite, ending the Gaza Empire; he is exiled to the Azores, where he dies.


Mozambique Company chartered

Summary: The Mozambique Company receives a vast concession with powers to tax, govern and recruit labour, one of several chartered companies to which Portugal subcontracts colonial rule.


Estado Novo and tightened control

Summary: The authoritarian Estado Novo regime takes shape in Portugal, hardening colonial policy and entrenching forced labour and compulsory cultivation in Mozambique.


Forced cotton cultivation and chibalo

Summary: Compulsory cotton-growing for Portuguese industry and the chibalo forced-labour system compel Mozambicans to grow cash crops and build infrastructure, reducing food production and worsening rural diets.


Colonies redesignated 'overseas provinces'

Summary: Portugal renames its African colonies overseas provinces to resist decolonisation, while withholding citizenship and political rights from the African majority.


FRELIMO is founded

Summary: Exiled nationalist groups unite in Dar es Salaam to form FRELIMO under Eduardo Mondlane, dedicated to ending Portuguese rule in Mozambique.


War of independence begins

Summary: FRELIMO launches its first armed attacks in Cabo Delgado, opening a decade-long guerrilla war against Portuguese colonial forces.


Assassination of Eduardo Mondlane

Summary: FRELIMO's founding president is killed by a parcel bomb in Dar es Salaam; after a leadership struggle, Samora Machel emerges at the head of the movement.


Carnation Revolution and the Lusaka Accord

Summary: Lisbon's Carnation Revolution of April 1974 ends the dictatorship; in September Portugal and FRELIMO sign the Lusaka Accord, agreeing a transition to independence.


Independence of Mozambique

Summary: The People's Republic of Mozambique is proclaimed with Samora Machel as first president; most of the colony's Portuguese settlers depart, taking skills and capital with them.


Civil war and the rise of RENAMO

Summary: RENAMO, backed first by Rhodesia and then by apartheid South Africa, wages war on the FRELIMO government; the conflict devastates the countryside for fifteen years.


Death of Samora Machel

Summary: President Machel dies when his aircraft crashes near the South African border; Joaquim Chissano succeeds him and begins to move FRELIMO toward reform and negotiation.


Rome General Peace Accords

Summary: Mediated by the Community of Sant'Egidio, President Chissano and RENAMO leader Afonso Dhlakama sign a peace agreement in Rome, ending a war that killed about a million people.


First multiparty elections

Summary: Under UN supervision Mozambique holds its first multiparty elections, won by FRELIMO; the following year the country joins the Commonwealth.


Offshore gas discovered in the Rovuma basin

Summary: Major natural-gas finds in the deep waters of the Rovuma basin attract tens of billions of dollars in planned investment and reshape the country's economic prospects.


Cabo Delgado insurgency

Summary: An Islamist insurgency erupts in Cabo Delgado; its 2021 assault on Palma halts the main gas project, and the violence kills thousands and displaces close to a million people.


Ghana Empire dominates the trade routes

Summary: The Soninke kingdom of Ghana (Wagadou) controls the trans-Saharan gold-and-salt trade, with its influence reaching into the south of present-day Mauritania.


Koumbi Saleh as a Saharan emporium

Summary: Koumbi Saleh, widely identified as Ghana's capital, grows into a major trading town with a Muslim merchants' quarter and, at its peak, tens of thousands of inhabitants.


Break-up of the Sanhaja confederation

Summary: The confederation of veiled Sanhaja Berbers controlling the western Saharan trade routes fragments, producing warfare and unrest among the desert tribes.


Abdallah ibn Yasin founds the Almoravid movement

Summary: The theologian Abdallah ibn Yasin begins preaching a reformed Islam among the Sanhaja, gathering the disciplined religious-military following known as the al-Murabitun (Almoravids).


Death of Ibn Yasin; Abu Bakr leads the desert wing

Summary: After Ibn Yasin is killed in 1059, Abu Bakr ibn Umar takes command of the Almoravid forces in the Sahara, while Yusuf ibn Tashfin leads the northern conquests.