Almoravids said to take Koumbi Saleh

Summary: Tradition records that Almoravid forces under Abu Bakr captured the Ghanaian capital of Koumbi Saleh around 1076, contributing to the decline of the Ghana Empire—though the campaign's scale is debated.


Fall of the Almoravid empire

Summary: The Almoravid empire, which had stretched from the Senegal River to Spain, is overthrown by the Almohads, but Islam remains firmly rooted in the western Sahara.


Beni Hassan Arab migration

Summary: Waves of Banu Maqil Arabs, including the Beni Hassan, migrate south into the western Sahara, spreading Hassaniya Arabic and gradually transforming the region's Berber society.


Foundation of the caravan ksour

Summary: The fortified towns of Ouadane, Chinguetti, Tichitt and Oualata are founded to serve the trans-Saharan caravans, becoming trading and religious centres of Islamic culture.


The Char Bouba (Marabout) war

Summary: Sanhaja Berber religious leaders fight the Arab Beni Hassan tribes; the war's outcome confirms Arab warrior dominance and the social hierarchy of Moorish society.


Rise of the Moorish emirates

Summary: Moorish society consolidates into the emirates of Trarza, Brakna, Tagant and Adrar, each governed by an emir of the Hassan warrior elite.


Coppolani's pacification campaign begins

Summary: Xavier Coppolani launches France's drive to extend control over Mauritania, combining alliances with marabout tribes and military pressure on the emirates.


Mauritania organised within French West Africa

Summary: The territory is formally constituted as the civil territory of Mauritania within French West Africa.


Assassination of Coppolani

Summary: Xavier Coppolani is killed at Tidjikja, a setback to the French advance, though the conquest of the interior continues afterward.


Completion of the conquest

Summary: After decades of resistance by the desert emirates and nomadic tribes, French military control over the far north of Mauritania is finally consolidated in the 1930s.


Autonomous republic and Nouakchott

Summary: Mauritania becomes an autonomous republic within the French Community, and the new capital of Nouakchott is established on the coast.


Independence of the Islamic Republic

Summary: Mauritania gains full independence from France; Moktar Ould Daddah leads the new state and becomes its first president in 1961.


National currency and Arab orientation

Summary: Mauritania leaves the franc zone and introduces the ouguiya, reflecting Ould Daddah's policy of national consolidation and a turn toward the Arab world.


Annexation of southern Western Sahara

Summary: Following the 1975 Madrid Accords, Mauritania and Morocco partition Western Sahara; Mauritania annexes the southern third as Tiris al-Gharbiyya, drawing it into war with the Polisario Front.


Coup ends the Daddah era

Summary: A military coup deposes President Moktar Ould Daddah after eighteen years in power, as the costly Western Sahara war destabilises the country.


Withdrawal from Western Sahara

Summary: Mauritania renounces its claim to Tiris al-Gharbiyya and withdraws its forces, ending its part in the Western Sahara war; Morocco then absorbs the vacated territory.


Slavery formally abolished

Summary: Mauritania abolishes slavery by decree—frequently cited as the last country in the world to do so—though no penalties were initially attached to the ban.


Ould Taya takes power

Summary: Colonel Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya seizes power in a coup and goes on to rule Mauritania for some twenty years.


Coup ends the Taya era

Summary: A military council overthrows President Ould Taya, beginning a period of transition punctuated by a further coup in 2008.


Slavery criminalised

Summary: A law makes slavery a criminal offence; the constitution later recognises it as a crime against humanity in 2012, although rights groups report that descent-based slavery has persisted in practice.


Known to Arab and Malay sailors

Summary: Mariners crossing the Indian Ocean are thought to have known the uninhabited island, reputedly recorded on Arab maps as 'Dina Arobi'.


Portuguese chart the Mascarenes

Summary: Portuguese navigators sight and map Mauritius and the neighbouring islands as a provisioning stop, but found no colony.


The Dutch name the island Mauritius

Summary: Admiral Wybrand van Warwijck claims the island and names it for Maurice of Nassau, stadtholder of the Dutch Republic.


First permanent Dutch settlement

Summary: The Dutch East India Company establishes a settlement, exploiting ebony forests and introducing sugar cane and livestock.


Extinction of the dodo

Summary: Hunting, deforestation and introduced animals wipe out the flightless dodo within decades of human arrival; last accepted sightings fall in the 1660s.


The Dutch abandon Mauritius

Summary: After unprofitable settlements plagued by storms, pests and disease, the Dutch East India Company leaves the island.


France claims the Isle de France

Summary: France takes formal possession of the uninhabited island, renaming it Isle de France; colonisation begins under the French East India Company from 1721.


La Bourdonnais founds Port Louis

Summary: Governor Mahé de La Bourdonnais develops Port Louis as a fortified naval base, dockyard and capital, anchoring French power in the Indian Ocean.


A slave-worked plantation economy

Summary: Enslaved Africans, Malagasy and others are imported in large numbers to work sugar and other estates; they become the majority of the population.


Maroons of Le Morne Brabant

Summary: Escaped slaves take refuge on the isolated cliffs of Le Morne, later inscribed by UNESCO as a symbol of the struggle for freedom.


British capture of the Isle de France

Summary: After the French naval victory at Grand Port, a large British force lands and compels the surrender of the island in December 1810.


Treaty of Paris confirms British rule

Summary: Britain retains the island and renames it Mauritius, while French settlers keep their language, laws and religion.


Abolition of slavery

Summary: Slavery is formally ended in Mauritius, freeing tens of thousands of enslaved people, followed by a transitional 'apprenticeship'.


Indian indenture and the Aapravasi Ghat

Summary: Around half a million indentured labourers from India arrive through the Port Louis depot, the 'Great Experiment', reshaping the island's population.


Founding of the Labour Party

Summary: The Mauritius Labour Party is founded, channelling demands of workers and the indentured-descended majority for rights and representation.


Chagos detached as the BIOT

Summary: Before independence, Britain separates the Chagos Archipelago to create the British Indian Ocean Territory, leasing Diego Garcia for a US base.


Independence from the United Kingdom

Summary: Mauritius becomes an independent state within the Commonwealth, with Seewoosagur Ramgoolam as first prime minister.


Diversification beyond sugar

Summary: An export-processing zone, tourism and financial services transform a one-crop colony into a diversified, growing economy.


Mauritius becomes a republic

Summary: The island replaces the British monarch with a Mauritian president as head of state, retaining its parliamentary democracy.


ICJ advisory opinion on Chagos

Summary: The International Court of Justice finds Britain's continued administration of the Chagos Archipelago unlawful; the UN General Assembly concurs.


UK–Mauritius Chagos agreement

Summary: The two states sign a treaty recognising Mauritian sovereignty over the archipelago while leasing the Diego Garcia base to the UK for an initial 99 years.


Bantu-speaking farmers settle the plateau

Summary: Bantu-speaking peoples moved into the Lake Malawi region during the early centuries of the Common Era, introducing ironworking and settled agriculture and absorbing or displacing earlier hunter-gatherer communities.


The Chewa rock-painting tradition at Chongoni

Summary: Chewa farming communities, especially women, developed a distinctive rock-painting tradition on the granite hills of the central plateau, linked to initiation, funerals and rainmaking, building on far older paintings by BaTwa hunter-gatherers.


Founding of the Maravi Confederacy

Summary: The Amaravi, ancestors of the Chewa, established a confederacy under the Kalonga on the southwestern shores of Lake Nyasa, ruling from Mankhamba — the state that gave Malawi its name.


Gaspar Bocarro crosses the region

Summary: The Portuguese traveller Gaspar Bocarro journeyed through the territory, leaving what is generally regarded as the first European account of the land and peoples of the future Malawi.


The Maravi Empire at its peak

Summary: In the seventeenth century the confederacy administered a broad domain reaching across parts of modern Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia, trading ivory and iron with Portuguese and Swahili merchants on the coast.


Decline of the confederacy

Summary: Fighting among the sub-chiefs and the spreading slave trade eroded the Kalonga's authority, and the Maravi state fragmented into smaller Chewa chiefdoms.


Ngoni and Yao migrations reshape the region

Summary: Ngoni warrior bands fleeing the Mfecane settled around Lake Nyasa, while the Yao migrated from northern Mozambique and the Tumbuka occupied the northern highlands, overlaying new peoples on the older Chewa chiefdoms.


The Jumbe and the slave trade at Nkhotakota

Summary: The Swahili-Arab trader Salim bin Abdallah, the Jumbe, established himself at Nkhotakota, which became a major slaving entrepôt on the western lakeshore; the Yao became leading participants in the trade across the lake.


Livingstone reaches Lake Nyasa

Summary: David Livingstone, on the Zambezi expedition, reached Lake Nyasa and reported it as a corridor of the slave caravans, calling for commerce and Christianity to end the trade.


Scottish missions founded at Livingstonia and Blantyre

Summary: Inspired by Livingstone, the Free Church of Scotland established the Livingstonia mission in 1875 and the Church of Scotland the Blantyre mission in 1876; both campaigned against the slave trade and trained an African Christian elite.


British Central Africa Protectorate proclaimed

Summary: Britain proclaimed a protectorate over the lake region and the Shire highlands, with Harry Johnston as first commissioner; he suppressed the slave trade by force and parcelled out land to European settlers through certificates of claim.


The protectorate renamed Nyasaland

Summary: The British Central Africa Protectorate was renamed the Nyasaland Protectorate, the name by which the territory would be known until independence.


The Chilembwe rising

Summary: Reverend John Chilembwe led an uprising against colonial rule, forced labour and wartime conscription; his followers attacked the A. L. Bruce estate at Magomero and killed William Jervis Livingstone before British forces swiftly suppressed the revolt.


Chilembwe killed

Summary: John Chilembwe was shot dead as he fled toward Mozambique; though the rising failed, he became an enduring symbol of Malawian nationalism and is honoured as a national martyr.


Founding of the Nyasaland African Congress

Summary: African political associations coalesced into the Nyasaland African Congress, the first territory-wide nationalist body, which would later spearhead opposition to federation.


Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland created

Summary: Britain bound Nyasaland into a settler-dominated federation with Southern and Northern Rhodesia, provoking deep and sustained African opposition across Nyasaland.


State of emergency and Operation Sunrise

Summary: Amid mounting agitation against federation, the governor declared a state of emergency and detained Banda and over a thousand Congress members; the Devlin Commission later condemned the use of force and likened Nyasaland to a police state.


Malawi Congress Party wins the elections

Summary: Banda's Malawi Congress Party won the 1961 legislative elections decisively, securing African control of the colonial legislature and accelerating the path to self-government.


The Federation dissolved

Summary: Faced with African opposition and irreconcilable tensions, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was dissolved at the end of 1963, clearing the way for the separate independence of Malawi, Zambia and Rhodesia.


Malawi independent

Summary: Nyasaland became the independent state of Malawi within the Commonwealth, with Hastings Kamuzu Banda as prime minister; the United States recognised the new nation the same day.


Banda declared President for Life

Summary: After Malawi became a republic in 1966 with the Malawi Congress Party as sole legal party, the National Assembly in 1971 proclaimed Banda President for Life, completing the one-party state.


Three decades of one-party rule

Summary: Banda ruled as life-president through the Malawi Congress Party, detaining, exiling or killing opponents and maintaining a tightly controlled, conservative and pro-Western state.


Referendum ends the one-party state

Summary: Malawians voted by roughly two to one to abandon single-party rule and adopt multiparty democracy, opening the way to free elections.


First multiparty elections; Banda defeated

Summary: In the first multiparty general election since independence, Bakili Muluzi of the United Democratic Front defeated Hastings Banda, who peacefully gave up power after three decades.


Joyce Banda becomes head of state

Summary: After the death in office of President Bingu wa Mutharika, Vice-President Joyce Banda succeeded him, becoming Malawi's first woman president.


Court-ordered election re-run

Summary: After the Constitutional Court annulled the 2019 presidential election for irregularities, Lazarus Chakwera won the court-ordered re-run, a rare judicial reversal of a presidential result on the continent.


Peaceful alternation of power

Summary: Peter Mutharika won the 2025 general election, defeating the incumbent Lazarus Chakwera, who conceded — marking another peaceful transfer of power in multiparty Malawi.


Rise of the Srivijaya thalassocracy

Summary: Based at Palembang in Sumatra, the Buddhist kingdom of Srivijaya comes to control the Strait of Malacca and the maritime trade between India and China, becoming the dominant commercial power of the Malay world.


Chola naval raid weakens Srivijaya

Summary: A naval expedition from the south Indian Chola dynasty strikes Srivijaya's ports, contributing to the long decline of its dominance over the strait.


Founding of Malacca by Paramesvara

Summary: The Sumatran prince Paramesvara, having fled Palembang and Tumasik before Majapahit's forces, settles at Malacca and founds a city that becomes the leading port of the Malay world.


Malacca, Islam and ties with Ming China

Summary: Through marriage to a Muslim princess and the adoption of the title Sultan, Malacca's court embraces Islam, while tributary relations with Ming China, marked by Zheng He's visits, secure its trade.


Malacca, the great entrepot of the strait

Summary: Malacca grows into the most important trade centre in the region, where gold, spices, silk and tea pass between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, and Malay court culture flourishes.


Portuguese capture of Malacca

Summary: Afonso de Albuquerque storms Malacca after a siege, ending the independent sultanate and beginning sustained European control of the strait and its trade.


Dutch conquest of Malacca

Summary: The Dutch East India Company, allied with the Sultanate of Johor, takes Malacca from the Portuguese, holding it as a lesser outpost while focusing power on Batavia.


Penang, Singapore and the Straits Settlements

Summary: Britain founds Penang in 1786 and Singapore in 1819 and, with Malacca, combines them in 1826 as the Straits Settlements, the base for expanding British control over the peninsula.


James Brooke becomes Raja of Sarawak

Summary: The Sultan of Brunei appoints the Englishman James Brooke raja of Sarawak, founding the 'White Raja' dynasty and beginning the absorption of the Borneo territories into the British sphere.


Japanese occupation and the fall of Singapore

Summary: Japanese forces overrun Malaya and capture Singapore on 15 February 1942, beginning a three-and-a-half-year occupation that shatters British prestige and deepens communal divisions.


Malayan Union opposition and the founding of UMNO

Summary: Malay opposition to the centralising Malayan Union proposal gives rise to the United Malays National Organisation, the country's first major political party, and the union is soon replaced by the Federation of Malaya.


The Malayan Emergency

Summary: After the Malayan Communist Party launches a guerrilla insurgency, the government declares a state of emergency on 18 June 1948, beginning a counterinsurgency that lasts until 1960.


Merdeka: independence of Malaya

Summary: The Federation of Malaya achieves independence under Tunku Abdul Rahman, who proclaims a sovereign, democratic state at Merdeka Stadium in Kuala Lumpur.


Formation of the Federation of Malaysia

Summary: Malaya joins with Singapore, Sabah (North Borneo) and Sarawak under the Malaysia Agreement to form Malaysia, the founding act of the modern federation.


Indonesian Confrontation (Konfrontasi)

Summary: Indonesia's President Sukarno opposes the new federation and wages an undeclared campaign of armed confrontation against Malaysia until 1966, drawing in Britain, Australia and the United States.


Singapore's separation from Malaysia

Summary: Amid deepening communal and political friction, Singapore is separated from Malaysia by mutual agreement and becomes an independent state.


The 13 May communal riots

Summary: Racial rioting between Malays and Chinese in Kuala Lumpur follows a divisive general election, leaving many dead and leading to a suspension of parliament that transforms Malaysian politics.


The New Economic Policy

Summary: In the wake of the 1969 riots, the government launches a twenty-year programme of affirmative action to reduce poverty and raise the economic share of the Bumiputera majority, reshaping Malaysian society.


The Mahathir era and rapid modernisation

Summary: Mahathir Mohamad serves as prime minister for twenty-two years, driving industrialisation and signature projects such as the Petronas Twin Towers while centralising political power.


Melaka and George Town inscribed by UNESCO

Summary: UNESCO lists Melaka and George Town, Historic Cities of the Straits of Malacca, recognising more than five centuries of trade and multicultural exchange between East and West.


1MDB scandal ends Barisan Nasional rule

Summary: Amid the 1MDB corruption scandal, an opposition alliance led by Mahathir defeats Najib Razak, ending more than six decades of Barisan Nasional government; Najib is later convicted and jailed.


Anwar Ibrahim becomes prime minister

Summary: After years of imprisonment and opposition and a period of post-2020 instability, Anwar Ibrahim is appointed Malaysia's tenth prime minister following an inconclusive general election.


San hunter-gatherers of the Namib

Summary: The San, among the oldest human populations on Earth, ranged across the Namib and its margins for tens of thousands of years, hunting, gathering and recording their world in rock art.


The engravings of Twyfelfontein

Summary: San artists pecked thousands of petroglyphs into the sandstone at Twyfelfontein over roughly two thousand years, depicting animals and tracks bound up with hunter-gatherer ritual; the site was inscribed by UNESCO in 2007.


Khoekhoe and Damara herders

Summary: Khoekhoe pastoralists, including the Nama, and the Damara established themselves across central and southern Namibia, herding cattle and sheep and speaking Khoekhoe click languages.


Bantu-speaking peoples settle the north

Summary: Over the past fifteen hundred years Bantu-speaking Ovambo, Kavango and Herero peoples migrated into the north and centre, bringing iron-working, agriculture and cattle pastoralism.


Diogo Cão reaches the coast

Summary: The Portuguese navigator Diogo Cão landed on the Namib coast and raised a stone cross at Cape Cross; the waterless, harbourless shore — later the Skeleton Coast — long deterred European settlement.


Jonker Afrikaner and the Orlam

Summary: Jonker Afrikaner led his Orlam followers north into the central highlands, founding a settlement at Windhoek around 1840 and building a mounted, gun-armed state that dominated the interior until 1861.


Britain annexes Walvis Bay

Summary: Britain annexed Walvis Bay, the territory's only deep-water harbour, creating an enclave that would remain in South African hands long after the rest of the country, until 1994.


Germany declares a protectorate

Summary: Following Adolf Lüderitz's purchase at Angra Pequena in 1883, Bismarck declared a German protectorate over the territory in 1884, founding the colony of German South West Africa.


The Herero uprising begins

Summary: Herero forces under paramount chief Samuel Maharero rose against German colonial rule, killing more than a hundred settlers and triggering a brutal German military response.


Battle of Waterberg

Summary: German forces under Lothar von Trotha defeated the main Herero force at Waterberg and drove the survivors into the Omaheke desert, where thousands, including women and children, died of thirst.


Von Trotha's extermination order

Summary: Von Trotha issued the Vernichtungsbefehl, ordering that every Herero within the colony, armed or not, be shot; a second order against the Nama followed in April 1905, opening a war of extermination.


Shark Island and the concentration camps

Summary: Herero and Nama survivors were imprisoned in concentration camps, most notoriously on Shark Island at Lüderitz, where up to 80 percent of prisoners died; by 1908 tens of thousands of Herero and Nama had perished in what is widely called the first genocide of the twentieth century.

NAM:wiki-genocide NAM:wiki-shark-island NAM:montreal-herero NAM:britannica-genocide


South Africa conquers the colony

Summary: South African forces invaded German South West Africa during the First World War and forced the German garrison to surrender, beginning seventy-five years of South African rule.


League of Nations mandate

Summary: The League of Nations granted South Africa a mandate to administer the territory as a trust for its inhabitants; South Africa instead governed it as a near-province, settling white farmers and suppressing African political life.


South Africa refuses UN trusteeship

Summary: After the founding of the United Nations, South Africa refused to place the territory under UN trusteeship and sought to annex it, beginning a long international dispute over its status.


The Old Location shootings

Summary: Police killed about a dozen residents of Windhoek's Old Location protesting forced removal to Katutura township, an atrocity that helped galvanise the nationalist movement.


Founding of SWAPO

Summary: The South West African People's Organisation was founded under Sam Nujoma as successor to the Ovamboland People's Organisation, becoming the leading movement for Namibian independence.


Armed struggle begins at Omugulugwombashe

Summary: SWAPO's military wing, PLAN, fought South African forces at Omugulugwombashe, marking the start of the armed liberation war and of South Africa's long Border War.


UN revokes the mandate

Summary: The UN General Assembly terminated South Africa's mandate over the territory, declaring its continued administration illegal, and later renamed the territory Namibia in 1968.


ICJ rules the occupation illegal

Summary: The International Court of Justice held that South Africa's continued presence in Namibia was illegal and that it was obliged to withdraw its administration immediately.


Security Council Resolution 435

Summary: The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 435, setting out a plan for a ceasefire and UN-supervised elections that would eventually frame Namibia's transition to independence.


UN-supervised elections

Summary: With Resolution 435 in force from 1 April 1989 under the UN Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG), Namibians elected a Constituent Assembly that SWAPO won with about 57 percent of the vote; the assembly drafted a democratic constitution adopted in February 1990.


Independence and Nujoma's inauguration

Summary: At midnight on 21 March 1990 the Namibian flag was raised in Windhoek, ending South African rule, and Sam Nujoma was sworn in as the first president of the independent Republic of Namibia.


Reincorporation of Walvis Bay

Summary: South Africa transferred the port enclave of Walvis Bay and the offshore islands to Namibia, completing the country's territory and giving it sovereignty over its only deep-water harbour.


First peaceful transfer of power

Summary: Sam Nujoma stepped down after fifteen years and was succeeded as president by Hifikepunye Pohamba, the first of several peaceful handovers within SWAPO governments.


Germany acknowledges the genocide

Summary: Germany formally recognised the 1904–1908 killings of the Herero and Nama as genocide and pledged development funding, though many descendants rejected the terms as inadequate.


First woman president elected

Summary: Namibians elected Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, a veteran of the liberation struggle, as the country's first woman president, extending SWAPO's continuous tenure since independence.


Lapita settlement of New Caledonia

Summary: Austronesian voyagers of the Lapita culture reached the archipelago, establishing the earliest human presence and leaving the dentate-stamped pottery first studied at the New Caledonian site that gives the culture its name.


Emergence of the Kanak

Summary: Successive waves of Melanesian migrants intermarried with the Lapita settlers, giving rise to the Kanak, the Melanesian people indigenous to New Caledonia, with a clan-based society organised around chiefs, yam cultivation and ancestral land.


Cook names New Caledonia

Summary: The British explorer James Cook landed at Balade on the east coast and named the territory New Caledonia after the classical name for Scotland, marking the first recorded European contact.


Sandalwood traders and missionaries arrive

Summary: From the 1840s sandalwood traders and Christian missionaries — Protestant and, from 1843, French Catholic Marists — established themselves among the Kanak, bringing trade goods, conversion, firearms and epidemic disease.


France annexes New Caledonia

Summary: Rear Admiral Febvrier-Despointes took possession of the archipelago for France, beginning formal colonial rule and pre-empting British ambitions in the region.


Penal colony established

Summary: France made New Caledonia a penal settlement, transporting tens of thousands of convicts — including Communards after 1871 — whose forced labour helped build the colonial economy until transportation ended in the 1890s.


The revolt of Ataï

Summary: The high chief Ataï led a major Kanak insurrection against land dispossession; the rising killed about 200 colonists and gendarmes and was crushed at the cost of roughly a thousand Kanak lives, with Ataï killed and his head sent to Paris.


Nickel mining begins

Summary: The Société Le Nickel began industrial exploitation of New Caledonia's nickel — among the largest deposits in the world — making mining the economic engine that drew settlers and accelerated Kanak dispossession.


FLNKS founded

Summary: Pro-independence parties united in the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) under Jean-Marie Tjibaou, demanding sovereignty for a country it called Kanaky and opening the most intense phase of the independence struggle.


Re-inscribed on the UN decolonisation list

Summary: The UN General Assembly re-inscribed New Caledonia on its list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, formally recognising the Kanak people's right to self-determination and placing the territory back on the UN decolonisation agenda.


Ouvéa cave crisis

Summary: FLNKS militants killed four gendarmes and seized hostages in a cave on Ouvéa; a French military assault on 5 May freed the hostages but left nineteen Kanak dead, a tragedy that became a turning point toward negotiation.


Matignon Accords

Summary: The French state, FLNKS and RPCR signed the Matignon Accords, ending les Événements, dividing the territory into three provinces and scheduling a self-determination referendum for 1998.


Nouméa Accord signed

Summary: The Nouméa Accord set out a gradual, declared-irreversible transfer of powers, recognition of Kanak identity and up to three referendums on full sovereignty, making New Caledonia a sui generis collectivity within the French Republic.


Accord ratified by referendum

Summary: New Caledonian voters approved the Nouméa Accord by about 72%, and its provisions were written into the French Constitution (Articles 76–77).


The Tjibaou Cultural Centre opens

Summary: Named for the assassinated Kanak leader and built at Nouméa by the Agence de developpement de la culture kanak, it opened the same month the Nouméa Accord was signed — the accord's cultural half made permanent in wood and steel.


The lagoons join the World Heritage List

Summary: UNESCO inscribes the Lagoons of New Caledonia for reef diversity and intact ecosystems — the territory's other inheritance, held in common by both of its political camps.


First independence referendum

Summary: In the first Nouméa Accord referendum, voters chose to remain part of France by about 56.7% to 43.3%, with the independence vote concentrated among the Kanak.


Second independence referendum

Summary: Independence was again rejected, but by a narrower margin of about 53.3% to 46.7%, a closing gap that sharpened the political contest.


Third referendum and Kanak boycott

Summary: The final referendum rejected independence by about 96% to 4%, but turnout was only ~44%: pro-independence parties and most Kanak voters boycotted after France declined to postpone the vote, and the two sides drew opposite conclusions about its legitimacy.


Deadly unrest over electoral reform

Summary: A French move to widen the provincial electorate — feared to dilute the Kanak vote — triggered the worst violence in decades from 13 May: fourteen dead, some €2 billion in damage and a state of emergency.


Bougival agreement

Summary: France and most local parties signed the Bougival agreement proposing a "State of New Caledonia" within the Republic with a Caledonian nationality; the pro-independence FLNKS rejected it and the ratifying referendum was delayed, leaving the territory's status unresolved into 2026.


The census counts a shrinking territory

Summary: The first census since the unrest finds the population down by 6,811 since 2019 — a fall of about 4 per cent, roughly 1,200 people a year.


The Elysée-Oudinot agreement

Summary: A further accord is signed in Paris in Macron's presence by the parties represented in the Congress, including the moderate pro-independence PALIKA and UPM who have split from the FLNKS; the FLNKS itself stayed away and rejected it.


The FLNKS loses its moderates

Summary: PALIKA and then the UPM quit the coalition that had carried the independence cause since 1984, and five FLNKS members resign from the eleven-member executive.


Nickel, still the ground everyone stands on

Summary: Through the unrest and its aftermath the territory mined 116,000 tonnes of nickel in 2024 and an estimated 140,000 in 2025 — one of the largest outputs on earth, and the revenue any future status has to be paid for out of.


Burials begin at Gobero

Summary: Beside a lake in the present-day Ténéré, the Kiffian people began burying their dead at Gobero, creating what archaeologists identify as the oldest known cemetery in the Sahara.


The Tenerean herders

Summary: After a dry interval, the more lightly built Tenerean people reoccupied Gobero, herding cattle as the lake shallowed; their graves include the famous burial of a woman with two children, hands interlinked.


Rock art of a green Sahara

Summary: Across the Aïr and Ténéré, engraved and painted rock art recorded cattle, giraffes and elephants, documenting a watered landscape utterly unlike the desert that exists today.


The desert returns

Summary: As the climate dried, the lakes retreated and the Sahara hardened into desert, pushing human settlement and trade southward toward the Sahel.


Founding of the Sultanate of Aïr

Summary: Tuareg clans of the Aïr massif organised the Sultanate of Aïr, choosing a sultan to mediate their rivalries; its capital Agadez became a major trans-Saharan trading and religious centre. (Some accounts place the city's rise nearer 1449.)


Songhai pushes into Aïr

Summary: The Songhai emperor Askia Muhammad campaigned into the Aïr mountains and established a Songhai presence at Agadez to control the northern caravan markets, the empire's eastern reach into present-day Niger.


The salt caravans of Bilma

Summary: The azalai salt caravans carried Bilma and Fachi salt and dates southward to the Hausa markets, making Agadez and the eastern oases pillars of the trans-Saharan trade alongside the traffic in enslaved people.


Agadez inscribed by UNESCO

Summary: The Historic Centre of Agadez — the mudbrick capital of the Sultanate of Aïr, with its tall earthen mosque minaret — was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognising its role in trans-Saharan trade and Islam.


Founding of the Sultanate of Damagaram

Summary: Muslim aristocrats founded the Sultanate of Damagaram around Zinder; beginning as a vassal of the declining empire of Bornu, it would expand to dominate much of the southeast of present-day Niger.


Zinder, a trans-Saharan hub

Summary: Damagaram's capital Zinder grew rich astride the desert route linking Tripoli to Kano, becoming a walled and well-armed trading state and one of the strongest powers in the region.


Sokoto jihad reshapes the Hausa lands

Summary: The Sokoto Caliphate's rise to the south drove Hausa rivals such as Gobir and the Katsina rulers northward into present-day Niger, recasting the politics of the southern savanna.


Bornu's enduring influence

Summary: The empire of Kanem-Bornu near Lake Chad continued to project Islamic culture and political weight over Niger's east, where many small states had begun as its tributaries.


The Voulet-Chanoine mission

Summary: A French military column under Captains Voulet and Chanoine drove across the region with extreme brutality, massacring the people of Birni-N'Konni on 8 May 1899 before disintegrating into mutiny and the murder of Colonel Klobb.


The Kaocen revolt at Agadez

Summary: During the First World War the Tuareg leader Kaocen led a major revolt against French rule, besieging the garrison at Agadez before the rising was crushed.


Niger becomes a French colony

Summary: After the desert Tuareg were finally subdued in the early 1920s, Niger was constituted as a colony within French West Africa, administered through the federation's governor-general in Dakar.


Autonomous republic within the French Community

Summary: In the 1958 referendum Niger voted to become a self-governing republic within the French Community, with Hamani Diori emerging at the head of its government on the road to independence.


Niger gains independence

Summary: Niger became a sovereign republic on 3 August 1960 with Hamani Diori as its first president; the United States recognised it the same day. Diori established a one-party state closely tied to France.


The Great Sahel drought

Summary: A catastrophic drought devastated Niger's crops and herds; the famine of this period and the 1980s killed many and left hundreds of thousands dependent on food aid, deepening the crisis of the Diori regime.


Uranium mining begins at Arlit

Summary: After deposits were developed from 1968 through the company SOMAÏR, the open-pit mine at Arlit began commercial uranium production in 1971, founding the industry that became Niger's leading export.


Kountché's coup ousts Diori

Summary: Amid famine, corruption allegations over relief supplies, and a dispute with France over uranium prices, Lieutenant-Colonel Seyni Kountché overthrew President Diori, beginning thirteen years of military rule.


Transition to multiparty democracy

Summary: A 1991 national conference opened Niger's politics; elections in 1993 brought the first freely chosen government, beginning a turbulent experiment in multiparty rule.


First Tuareg rebellion

Summary: Tuareg fighters in the north rebelled over marginalisation and the distribution of uranium wealth; the rising was ended by a 1995 peace accord promising decentralisation.


Second Tuareg rebellion

Summary: The Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ) launched a new insurgency, attacking the army and the uranium-mining zone around Agadez and Arlit, before a settlement was reached in 2009.


Coup ousts President Tandja

Summary: The army removed President Mamadou Tandja after he manoeuvred to extend his term, one of a series of military interventions that punctuated Niger's democratic experiment.


Coup against President Bazoum

Summary: The presidential guard detained elected president Mohamed Bazoum and General Abdourahamane Tchiani proclaimed a military junta — Niger's fifth coup since independence — drawing condemnation from ECOWAS and the West.


Rise of the Nok culture

Summary: On the central Nigerian plateau the Nok culture emerged, producing distinctive terracotta sculpture and, in its later phases, smelting iron — among the earliest such traditions in sub-Saharan Africa.


Nok terracottas first recognised

Summary: Terracotta heads unearthed near the village of Nok during tin-mining drew scholarly attention, giving the ancient culture its name and revealing the antiquity of Nigerian art.


The bronzes of Igbo-Ukwu

Summary: An Igbo community at Igbo-Ukwu produced sophisticated cast-bronze ritual objects and vast quantities of trade beads, evidence of advanced metalworking and long-distance trade in the southeastern forests.


Rise of the Kanem empire

Summary: Around Lake Chad the empire of Kanem emerged under the Sayfawa dynasty, growing wealthy as the southern terminus of the trans-Saharan trade and gradually adopting Islam.


Shift from Kanem to Bornu

Summary: After conflict with the Bulala forced the dynasty to abandon its eastern heartland, the state re-centred west of Lake Chad at Bornu, beginning the era of the Bornu Empire.


Peak of Bornu under Idris Alooma

Summary: Mai Idris Alooma reformed Bornu's army and administration, extended its control over central Saharan trade routes, and deepened the role of Islamic law at its height of power.


Flourishing of Benin and Oyo

Summary: The Edo kingdom of Benin and the Yoruba empire of Oyo rose as major forest powers, Benin renowned for its court art and Oyo for the cavalry empire of its Alaafin.


The Atlantic slave trade

Summary: European demand drew the Bights of Benin and Biafra into the transatlantic slave trade; ports such as Bonny and Old Calabar became major export points, and vast numbers of people were deported in conditions of extreme violence.


Usman dan Fodio launches his jihad

Summary: The Fulani scholar Usman dan Fodio began a jihad in the Hausa lands, rallying followers against the existing rulers and igniting a religious and political revolution across the north.


Founding of the Sokoto Caliphate

Summary: Dan Fodio's victories consolidated into the Sokoto Caliphate, a vast confederation of emirates under Islamic law that became one of nineteenth-century Africa's largest states.


Britain abolishes its slave trade

Summary: Britain outlawed its own transatlantic slave trade and began naval patrols of the West African coast, though illegal slaving from the region continued for decades.


Britain annexes Lagos

Summary: After occupying Lagos in 1851, Britain annexed it as a crown colony in 1861, establishing a coastal foothold from which colonial power spread into the interior.


British sack of Benin City

Summary: A British punitive expedition destroyed Benin City, exiled the Oba, and looted thousands of the Benin Bronzes, dispersing centuries of court art to foreign museums and collectors.


Fall of the Sokoto Caliphate

Summary: Frederick Lugard's forces defeated the Sokoto army in March 1903; the last independent sultan, Attahiru I, was killed at Burmi in July, ending the caliphate's independence and bringing the north under British control.


Amalgamation of Nigeria

Summary: Lord Lugard joined the Northern and Southern Protectorates into a single Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria, creating the territorial shape of the modern country under indirect rule.


Nigeria gains independence

Summary: Nigeria became an independent state within the Commonwealth on 1 October 1960, with Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa as its first prime minister; it became a republic in 1963.


Military coups and unrest

Summary: A January 1966 coup killed Prime Minister Balewa; a July counter-coup and ensuing violence against Igbo communities deepened the crisis that would lead to civil war.


Secession of Biafra

Summary: Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu declared the Eastern Region an independent Republic of Biafra, precipitating the Nigerian Civil War.


The Nigerian Civil War

Summary: Federal forces under General Gowon fought to reunify the country and blockaded Biafra; the resulting famine and fighting killed an estimated one to two million people, mostly civilians, before Biafra surrendered in January 1970.


Abuja chosen as new capital

Summary: Amid an oil-fuelled boom, the federal government decided to build a new, centrally located capital at Abuja to replace Lagos, a project realised over the following decades.


Annulled election and Abacha's rule

Summary: The military annulled the 1993 presidential election, widely believed won by Moshood Abiola, ushering in the repressive regime of General Sani Abacha until his death in 1998.


Return to civilian rule and the Fourth Republic

Summary: The military handed power to the elected president Olusegun Obasanjo, ending sixteen years of military government and inaugurating the Fourth Republic, Nigeria's longest period of continuous civilian rule.


Africa's largest economy

Summary: After rebasing its GDP, Nigeria was confirmed as the largest economy in Africa, underscoring its weight as the continent's most populous nation and a major oil producer.


First opposition election victory

Summary: Muhammadu Buhari defeated the sitting president Goodluck Jonathan, the first time an opposition candidate won Nigeria's presidency through the ballot box, marking a democratic milestone.


Nicarao and Chorotega settle the Pacific lowlands

Summary: Nahua-speaking Nicarao and Oto-Manguean Chorotega establish chiefdoms in western Nicaragua, farming the volcanic lowlands around Lakes Managua and Nicaragua.


First Spanish contact

Summary: The expedition of Gil González Dávila reaches the Pacific coast and encounters the Nicarao, opening the way to Spanish conquest.


Founding of León and Granada

Summary: Francisco Hernández de Córdoba founds León and Granada, the rival cities whose Liberal and Conservative elites would shape Nicaraguan politics for generations.


León Viejo abandoned

Summary: The original León, struck by the Momotombo eruption of 1578 and the earthquake of 1610, is abandoned; its buried ruins later become Nicaragua's first UNESCO World Heritage Site.


British protectorate over the Mosquito Coast

Summary: Great Britain allies with the Miskito kings and treats the Caribbean Mosquito Coast as a protectorate, leaving the region distinct from Hispanic Pacific Nicaragua.


Independence from Spain

Summary: Nicaragua, with the other provinces of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, declares independence from Spain in the Act of Independence of Central America.


Separation from the Central American federation

Summary: Amid regional rivalry, Nicaragua withdraws from the Federal Republic of Central America to become a fully sovereign state.


William Walker's filibuster

Summary: Hired by León's Liberals, the American filibuster William Walker seizes Granada and makes himself president of Nicaragua in 1856 before a coalition of Central American states expels him.


Treaty of Managua

Summary: Britain cedes its claims on the Caribbean coast to Nicaraguan sovereignty, creating a self-governing Mosquito Reserve.


Incorporation of the Mosquito Coast

Summary: President José Santos Zelaya militarily incorporates the British-influenced Caribbean coast into the Nicaraguan state.


United States Marine occupation

Summary: US Marines are stationed in Nicaragua to support Conservative governments and oversee its finances, with only a brief interruption, until 1933.


Sandino's resistance

Summary: Augusto César Sandino wages guerrilla war against the Marines and National Guard, becoming a hemispheric symbol of resistance to US intervention.


Assassination of Sandino

Summary: Sandino is lured to Managua and murdered by National Guard officers under Anastasio Somoza García, opening the way to the Somoza dictatorship.


Rise of the Somoza dynasty

Summary: Anastasio Somoza García seizes the presidency, founding a family dictatorship that, directly or through proxies, rules Nicaragua until 1979.


Sandinista Revolution

Summary: The FSLN overthrows Anastasio Somoza Debayle, ending the dynasty; the insurrection is estimated to have cost about 50,000 lives.


The Contra war

Summary: The United States finances and arms the Contra insurgency against the Sandinista government; the war kills an estimated tens of thousands and devastates the economy. Casualty figures vary and are estimates.


Esquipulas II peace accord

Summary: Central American presidents sign a regional peace plan committing to democratisation and an end to support for insurgencies.


Chamorro defeats Ortega

Summary: Violeta Barrios de Chamorro wins the presidency for an opposition coalition; Ortega cedes power in a peaceful transfer that ends the war.


Ortega returns to power

Summary: Having won the 2006 election, Daniel Ortega is inaugurated president again, beginning a long second period in office.


Re-election limits removed

Summary: A 2009 court ruling and 2014 constitutional reform abolish term limits, enabling Ortega's continued re-election and the consolidation of FSLN control.


The 2018 crisis

Summary: Protests against social-security cuts become a mass anti-government movement met with deadly force; the UN and IACHR document a death toll estimated upward of 300 (figures are estimates).


Contested re-election

Summary: Ortega wins a further term after leading opposition candidates are detained, in an election widely criticised internationally.


Caesar campaigns in the Low Countries

Summary: Julius Caesar's wars in Gaul bring Roman power to the peoples of the Rhine and Meuse delta, opening the region to Roman influence.


The Batavian Revolt

Summary: Julius Civilis leads the Batavians and allied tribes in a revolt against Rome during the chaos after Nero's death; it is suppressed after roughly a year.


Christianisation of the Frisians

Summary: Missionaries such as Willibrord begin converting the Frisians, tying the delta into the Christian, Frankish world of western Europe.


St. Lucia's flood

Summary: A catastrophic North Sea storm surge drowns tens of thousands and reshapes the coastline, helping form the Zuiderzee and underlining the delta's perpetual struggle with water.


St. Elizabeth's flood

Summary: A storm surge breaks the dikes of the Grote Hollandse Waard, drowning villages and thousands of people and creating the Biesbosch wetlands.


Habsburg inheritance

Summary: Mary of Burgundy marries Maximilian of Habsburg, bringing the Low Countries under Habsburg rule after the death of Charles the Bold.


The Seventeen Provinces united

Summary: Charles V's acquisition of Guelders completes the union of the Seventeen Provinces under a single Habsburg ruler.


Pragmatic Sanction

Summary: Charles V decrees that the Seventeen Provinces shall be inherited together as an indivisible whole, treating the Low Countries as a single political entity.


Abdication of Charles V

Summary: Charles V cedes the Low Countries to his son Philip II of Spain, whose centralising and anti-Protestant policies will ignite the Dutch Revolt.


The Beeldenstorm (Iconoclasm)

Summary: Calvinist crowds destroy religious images in churches across the Low Countries, provoking a harsh Spanish crackdown and pushing the provinces toward revolt.


Eighty Years' War begins

Summary: Open revolt against Spanish rule breaks out under William of Orange, beginning a struggle for independence that will last eighty years.


Union of Utrecht

Summary: The northern provinces sign a defensive alliance that becomes the constitutional foundation of the Dutch Republic.


Act of Abjuration

Summary: The States General formally renounce allegiance to Philip II of Spain, a de facto declaration of independence giving rise to the Republic of the Seven United Provinces.


Peace of Münster (Westphalia)

Summary: Spain formally recognises Dutch independence in the Peace of Münster, part of the Peace of Westphalia, ending the Eighty Years' War.


Founding of the VOC

Summary: The Dutch East India Company is chartered as the world's first publicly traded joint-stock company, with a monopoly on Dutch trade in Asia and powers to wage war and govern.


Founding of the Dutch West India Company

Summary: The WIC is chartered for trade and conquest in the Americas and West Africa, becoming central to Dutch participation in the transatlantic slave trade.


Rembrandt paints The Night Watch

Summary: Rembrandt completes his monumental militia portrait, an emblem of the artistic achievement of the Dutch Golden Age, now in the Rijksmuseum.


The Rampjaar (Disaster Year)

Summary: France, England and allied bishops invade the Republic; the Dutch open the dikes to flood the land and halt the advance, and William III rises to power.


The Batavian Republic

Summary: French Revolutionary forces and Dutch Patriots overthrow the stadtholderate and proclaim the Batavian Republic, ending the old Dutch Republic.


Kingdom of the Netherlands founded

Summary: After Napoleon's defeat, the Congress of Vienna establishes the Kingdom of the Netherlands under William I, uniting the northern and southern Low Countries.


Belgian Revolution

Summary: The southern provinces rebel and declare independence as Belgium, dividing the United Kingdom of the Netherlands; separation is recognised in 1839.


Liberal constitution of Thorbecke

Summary: A new constitution drafted by Johan Rudolf Thorbecke establishes ministerial responsibility and parliamentary government, founding modern Dutch democracy.


Abolition of slavery

Summary: The Netherlands abolishes slavery in Suriname and the Caribbean, freeing enslaved people, though most are forced into ten more years of supervised plantation labour.


German invasion and occupation

Summary: Nazi Germany invades the neutral Netherlands; after the bombing of Rotterdam the country surrenders, beginning five years of occupation.


The Holocaust in the Netherlands

Summary: From July 1942 the occupiers and Dutch collaborators deport some 107,000 Jews, mostly to Auschwitz and Sobibor; about 104,000 Dutch Jews are murdered, the highest proportion in Western Europe.


Indonesian independence

Summary: After a violent four-year war, the Netherlands transfers sovereignty over the Dutch East Indies to the Republic of Indonesia.


North Sea flood and the Delta Works

Summary: A storm surge floods the southwest, killing more than 1,800 people in the Netherlands and prompting the construction of the Delta Works flood defences.


Suriname becomes independent

Summary: Suriname leaves the Kingdom of the Netherlands to become a sovereign state, while several Caribbean islands remain within the Kingdom. In 2022–2023 the Dutch government and King Willem-Alexander formally apologised for the Netherlands' role in slavery.


Battle of Hafrsfjord

Summary: Harald Fairhair defeated a coalition of petty kings from the south-west at Hafrsfjord, the decisive victory by which tradition holds he became the first king over all of Norway.


Control of the coastal trade routes

Summary: From his base at Avaldsnes on Karmøy, Harald Fairhair dominated the coastal sailing route that linked northern Norway with the markets of Kaupang and Hedeby, anchoring royal power in trade.


Death of Harald Fairhair and fragmentation

Summary: On Harald's death his realm broke apart among his sons, beginning decades of dynastic conflict, though the idea of a single Norwegian kingship endured.


Conventional close of the Viking Age

Summary: The era of large-scale Scandinavian raiding is conventionally closed in 1066, by which time Norway was a Christianising kingdom rather than a society of independent sea-kings.


Moster assembly and Christian law

Summary: Olaf II established a nationwide church organisation and Christian law at Moster, banning non-Christian worship and making Christianity the kingdom's only permitted religion.


Battle of Stiklestad and the death of St Olaf

Summary: King Olaf II was killed at Stiklestad. Declared holy within a year and enshrined at Nidaros, he became Norway's patron saint and eternal king, accelerating the Christianisation of the realm.


The national law of Magnus the Lawmender

Summary: King Magnus VI codified a national law for the whole kingdom, one of the most advanced legal codes in medieval Europe and a mark of the consolidated Christian monarchy.


The Hanseatic Kontor at Bryggen

Summary: German merchants of the Hanseatic League established their trading office at Bryggen in Bergen, which became Norway's foremost town and a hub of northern commerce for some four centuries, until 1754.


The Black Death reaches Norway

Summary: Plague arrived by ship at Bergen and spread through the country, killing about half the population and devastating the native aristocracy and clergy, a turning point in Norwegian history.


The Kalmar Union

Summary: Under Queen Margaret I of Denmark, Denmark, Norway and Sweden were united in the Kalmar Union, with Erik of Pomerania crowned common king; Norway became the weakest of the three partners.


Norway reduced to a Danish province

Summary: After Sweden left the union, Norway remained tied to Denmark and was governed from Copenhagen, becoming in effect a Danish province while keeping its own laws and church.


The Treaty of Kiel

Summary: Defeated in the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark-Norway was forced to cede Norway: by the Treaty of Kiel the Danish king renounced all claims to Norway in favour of the king of Sweden.


The Constitution of Eidsvoll

Summary: A constituent assembly at Eidsvoll signed Norway's constitution on 17 May 1814, declaring the country a free kingdom with an elected Storting; the date became the national day.


Union with Sweden

Summary: After a short war, Sweden accepted the Eidsvoll constitution and the Storting voted to enter a personal union with Sweden under a shared king, with Norway keeping its parliament and laws.


Romantic nationalism and a national culture

Summary: A movement of romantic nationalism drew on Norwegian history, landscape and folk tradition; Ibsen, Grieg and Munch gave the nation a place in world culture and reinforced a separate identity.


Parliamentarism and the consular dispute

Summary: The introduction of parliamentary government strengthened the Storting, while the conflict with Sweden over Norway's right to its own consular service drove the two countries apart.


Dissolution of the union with Sweden

Summary: The Storting declared the union with Sweden dissolved; confirmed by referendum and settled peacefully at Karlstad, it made Norway a fully sovereign state for the first time in centuries.


Election of King Haakon VII

Summary: After a plebiscite to retain a monarchy, the Storting elected Prince Carl of Denmark as king; he took the name Haakon VII, founding the modern Norwegian royal house.


The Svalbard (Spitsbergen) Treaty

Summary: Signed in Paris, the treaty recognised Norwegian sovereignty over Svalbard while granting all signatories equal rights to economic activity and barring warlike use; Norway took over administration in 1925.


Eastern Greenland case

Summary: The Permanent Court of International Justice ruled against Norway's claim to part of eastern Greenland, upholding Danish sovereignty over the whole island; Norway abandoned its claim.


German invasion and the Quisling regime

Summary: Germany invaded on 9 April 1940; the king and government went into exile while Vidkun Quisling proclaimed a government, beginning five years of occupation and collaboration.


Norway joins NATO

Summary: Abandoning prewar neutrality, Norway became a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, anchoring its security in the Western alliance.


Oil discovered at Ekofisk

Summary: Phillips Petroleum struck oil at the Ekofisk field in the North Sea, confirmed on Christmas Eve 1969; the discovery transformed Norway into a wealthy petroleum state with a vast sovereign wealth fund.


First referendum rejects the European Community

Summary: A majority of 53.5 per cent of Norwegians voted against joining the European Community, keeping the country outside the integration process.


Second referendum rejects the European Union

Summary: A majority of 52.2 per cent again rejected membership, this time of the European Union; Norway remained outside the EU while joining its single market through the EEA.


Barents Sea delimitation treaty with Russia

Summary: Norway and Russia signed a treaty dividing the disputed 175,000 sq km of the Barents Sea and Arctic Ocean, ending a roughly forty-year dispute; in force from 2011, it replaced the Grey Zone arrangement.


Rise of the Licchavi dynasty

Summary: The Licchavis establish the first well-documented dynasty of the Kathmandu Valley, using Sanskrit, minting coins and linking India and Tibet by trade.


Licchavi stone inscriptions

Summary: Dense Licchavi-era inscriptions and chronicles make the valley one of the best-documented early states of the Himalayas, recording Hindu and Buddhist patronage alike.


Traditional founding of Kathmandu

Summary: Tradition credits Raja Gunakamadeva with founding the town of Kathmandu during the Licchavi period; it would later give its name to the valley and the nation's capital.


Birth of the Buddha at Lumbini

Summary: Siddhartha Gautama, of the Shakya clan, is born at Lumbini to Queen Mayadevi and King Suddhodana of Kapilavastu; he later founds Buddhism.


Ashoka's pillar at Lumbini

Summary: The Mauryan emperor Ashoka visits Lumbini and erects an inscribed sandstone pillar, the earliest material evidence identifying the Buddha's birthplace.


Lumbini inscribed as World Heritage

Summary: UNESCO inscribes Lumbini on the World Heritage List, recognising it as the birthplace of the Buddha and a centre of Buddhist pilgrimage since the 3rd century BCE.


Malla dynasty rules the valley

Summary: The Mallas govern the Kathmandu Valley, codifying Hindu-influenced law and patronising the Newar temple architecture for which the valley becomes famous.


Valley divided into three kingdoms

Summary: Yaksha Malla partitions the valley among his sons, founding the rival city-states of Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur, which compete over Tibet–India trade.


The Durbar squares and Newar art

Summary: Malla patronage produces the palace squares, pagoda temples and stupas later recognised as the seven monument zones of the Kathmandu Valley World Heritage Site.


Conquest of the Kathmandu Valley

Summary: Prithvi Narayan Shah of Gorkha captures Kathmandu in 1768 and the Malla kingdoms by 1769, unifying the hill states into the kingdom of Nepal.


Anglo-Nepalese War

Summary: A border dispute with British India erupts into the Gurkha War; Nepali resistance is fierce but the East India Company prevails.


Treaty of Sugauli

Summary: Nepal cedes the Tarai and western conquests and admits a British resident, but keeps its independence and monarchy — never becoming a colony.


Jung Bahadur founds Rana rule

Summary: After a violent seizure of power, Jung Bahadur becomes prime minister for life with the hereditary title of Rana, sidelining the Shah kings for a century.


Revolution restores the monarchy

Summary: A palace revolt and popular movement end Rana dominance and restore the sovereignty of the Shah crown under King Tribhuvan.


Panchayat autocracy

Summary: King Mahendra dissolves parliament in 1960 and bans parties; the 1962 constitution installs the partyless panchayat system under royal control.


People's Movement restores democracy

Summary: Nationwide protests force King Birendra to legalise political parties and accept a multiparty parliamentary system, ending the panchayat era.


Maoist insurgency

Summary: The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) wages a decade-long armed insurgency that kills more than 12,000 people before a 2006 UN-mediated peace accord.


Monarchy abolished, republic declared

Summary: A newly elected constituent assembly ends more than two centuries of Shah rule and declares Nepal a federal democratic republic.


Gorkha earthquake

Summary: A magnitude-7.8 quake near Gorkha kills about 9,000 people and devastates Kathmandu Valley heritage, including Durbar squares and the Dharahara tower.


Federal constitution promulgated

Summary: Nepal adopts a permanent constitution establishing a secular federal republic of seven provinces with a bicameral Federal Parliament.


Polynesian voyagers settle Aotearoa

Summary: The ancestors of the Māori reached New Zealand from East Polynesia in great voyaging canoes around 1300 CE, making it one of the last large landmasses on Earth to be permanently settled.


The Māori world takes shape

Summary: Settlers adapted to a temperate land and developed the distinct Māori culture of iwi and hapū, organised by whakapapa and rangatira and expressed through carving, weaving, and the working of pounamu.


Settlement of the Chatham Islands

Summary: Māori reached the remote Chatham Islands (Rēkohu) over 750 km east of the mainland, where the settlers became the distinct Moriori people with their own traditions.


Abel Tasman sights New Zealand

Summary: The Dutch navigator Abel Tasman became the first European to sight New Zealand, charting a fragment of the west coast but leaving without landing after a deadly clash with Māori in Golden Bay.


James Cook charts the islands

Summary: James Cook sighted New Zealand and over 175 days circumnavigated and accurately charted both main islands aboard HMB Endeavour, fixing the country's outline for European maps.


First Christian mission

Summary: Samuel Marsden conducted New Zealand's first Christian service at Rangihoua in the Bay of Islands, beginning the missionary presence that spread Christianity, literacy, and new ideas among Māori.


The musket wars

Summary: The spread of firearms unleashed a generation of devastating inter-tribal warfare, with leaders such as Te Rauparaha driving migrations and conquests that killed tens of thousands and reshaped the tribal map.


Treaty of Waitangi signed

Summary: The Crown and Māori rangatira signed the Treaty of Waitangi, founding British New Zealand; its differing English and Māori texts — over sovereignty versus governorship — left a meaning contested to this day.


The New Zealand Wars

Summary: Disputes over land and sovereignty erupted into war in Taranaki in 1860 and spread across the North Island, pitting imperial and colonial forces against iwi defending their land and autonomy until about 1872.


Land confiscation legalised (raupatu)

Summary: The New Zealand Settlements Act 1863 gave a legal cloak to the confiscation of about 1.2 million hectares of Māori land, chiefly in the Waikato and Taranaki, often taking land from iwi who had not fought the Crown.


First refrigerated meat shipment

Summary: The first cargo of frozen meat sailed from New Zealand to Britain, launching the refrigerated export trade in meat and dairy that would underpin the country's economy for a century.


Women win the vote

Summary: New Zealand became the first self-governing nation in the world to grant women the parliamentary vote, the culmination of a petition campaign led by Kate Sheppard and the temperance movement.


New Zealand becomes a Dominion

Summary: New Zealand's status was raised from colony to Dominion within the British Empire, a symbolic advance toward nationhood that left its close ties to Britain largely intact.


Gallipoli and the Anzac legend

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


The welfare state

Summary: The first Labour government's Social Security Act 1938 created a comprehensive system of pensions, benefits, and public health, building a 'cradle to grave' welfare state admired around the world.


Statute of Westminster adopted

Summary: New Zealand adopted the Statute of Westminster, ending the British Parliament's power to legislate for it and confirming the country's full legal independence — the last Dominion to do so.


Waitangi Tribunal established

Summary: The Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 created the Waitangi Tribunal to investigate Crown breaches of the Treaty's principles; in 1985 its mandate was extended back to 1840, enabling redress for historic wrongs.


Te reo Māori made official

Summary: The Māori Language Act 1987 recognised te reo Māori as an official language and created a commission to promote it, a landmark in the post-1970s Māori cultural renaissance.


Waikato-Tainui settlement and Crown apology

Summary: The Crown signed a Deed of Settlement with Waikato-Tainui including a formal royal apology for the wars and confiscations of the 1860s, a model for later Treaty settlements such as Ngāi Tahu in 1998.


UNESCO World Heritage recognition

Summary: Tongariro National Park — inscribed for its dual natural and Māori cultural significance — and Te Wahipounamu in the south were recognised by UNESCO, honouring both landscape and Māori heritage.


Magan supplies copper to Mesopotamia

Summary: Sumerian texts record a land called Magan, identified with Oman, as a source of copper and diorite carried by sea to the city-states of Mesopotamia.


Beehive tombs and towers at Bat

Summary: The Bronze Age communities of Bat, Al-Khutm and Al-Ayn raised monumental stone towers and dry-stone beehive tombs, later inscribed by UNESCO in 1988 as the most complete such collection in the world.


The frankincense trade flourishes in Dhofar

Summary: The resin of the Boswellia sacra tree, harvested in Dhofar, became one of antiquity's great luxury goods, carried by caravan and ship from southern Arabia to the Mediterranean.


Khor Rori and the incense ports

Summary: The port of Khor Rori (Sumhuram) and later Al-Baleed served as gateways for the export of frankincense and goods across the Indian Ocean, anchoring the Land of Frankincense.


Oman accepts Islam

Summary: According to tradition, the inhabitants of Oman embraced Islam during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad, beginning the country's long Islamic history.


The first Ibadi imamate

Summary: Around 750 CE the Ibadis established their first imamate in Oman under al-Julanda ibn Masud, an elected imam uniting temporal and religious authority and giving Oman a distinctive political identity.


Ibadism becomes Oman's defining school

Summary: The Ibadi school of Islam took root across the Omani interior, making Oman its principal home and shaping a tradition of imams chosen for learning and piety rather than heredity.


Albuquerque captures Muscat

Summary: The Portuguese under Afonso de Albuquerque stormed Muscat and other Omani coastal towns, beginning more than a century of Portuguese dominance over the coast.


Rise of the Yarubid imamate

Summary: A member of the Yarub tribe was elected imam, founding the Yarubid dynasty that would unite Oman and lead the campaign to expel the Portuguese.


Expulsion of the Portuguese from Muscat

Summary: The Yarubid imams recaptured Muscat in 1650, ending Portuguese occupation of the Omani coast and launching Oman as an Indian Ocean naval power.


Persian invasion amid Yarubid civil war

Summary: A succession dispute fractured the Yarubid state, and the Persian ruler Nadir Shah's forces invaded and occupied parts of Oman, plunging the country into crisis.


Ahmad bin Said founds the Al Bu Said dynasty

Summary: Ahmad bin Said, governor of Suhar, expelled the Persian invaders and was elected imam, founding the Al Bu Said dynasty that still rules Oman.


Summary: Said bin Sultan's government concluded a Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the United States, the first bilateral treaty between Washington and an Arab Gulf state.


Said bin Sultan moves the capital to Zanzibar

Summary: Said bin Sultan transferred his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar, making the island the commercial heart of his Indian Ocean empire and the chief power in East Africa.


Death of Said and the split of the empire

Summary: On Said bin Sultan's death his realm was divided between his sons, one taking Muscat and Oman and the other Zanzibar, severing the African empire from Arabia.


Zanzibar separated from Oman

Summary: Following an arbitration award, Zanzibar was formally separated from Muscat and Oman as an independent sultanate, severing the African empire and its revenues for good.


Accession of Sultan Said bin Taimur

Summary: Said bin Taimur came to the throne and ruled an increasingly isolated and undeveloped Oman, leaning on British support to hold the country together.


Outbreak of the Dhofar rebellion

Summary: An uprising began in the neglected southern province of Dhofar against Said bin Taimur's rule, growing into a Marxist-led insurgency that would dominate Omani affairs for a decade.


Oil exports begin

Summary: Oman began exporting oil in commercial quantities, the start of the revenue that would later finance the country's modern transformation.


Qaboos accedes in a palace coup

Summary: Qaboos bin Said deposed his father Said bin Taimur and became sultan, ending Oman's isolation and beginning the modernization drive known as the Renaissance.


Defeat of the Dhofar rebellion

Summary: With British and Iranian support and a policy of amnesty and development, Qaboos's forces overcame the Dhofar insurgency, securing the unity of the country.


Promulgation of the Basic Law

Summary: Sultan Qaboos issued the Basic Law, Oman's first written constitution, defining the organs and guiding principles of the state.


Death of Qaboos and accession of Haitham

Summary: Sultan Qaboos died after nearly fifty years on the throne, and his cousin Haitham bin Tariq was sworn in as sultan the following day in a smooth succession.


New Basic Statute and Vision 2040

Summary: Sultan Haitham issued a new Basic Statute establishing a formal crown prince and primogeniture succession, advancing Oman Vision 2040 and economic diversification.


Mature phase of the Indus cities

Summary: Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and hundreds of other settlements reach their peak, with grid-planned streets, advanced drainage and standardised weights across a vast trading network.


Mohenjo-daro flourishes

Summary: On the right bank of the Indus in Sindh, Mohenjo-daro becomes one of the civilisation's largest cities, renowned for its citadel and Great Bath; it is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


Decline of the Harappan cities

Summary: The major cities are gradually abandoned as weakening monsoons and shifting rivers undermine the agricultural base, ending the civilisation's urban phase.


Achaemenid Persia annexes the Indus lands

Summary: The Persian empire incorporates the Indus region as among its wealthiest provinces, bringing centralised administration and Aramaic writing to the area.


Alexander defeats Porus at the Hydaspes

Summary: Alexander the Great crosses the Indus passes and defeats King Porus on the Jhelum, marking the easternmost reach of his empire before his army turns homeward.


Kanishka and the Gandhara golden age

Summary: Under the Kushan emperor Kanishka, ruling from Peshawar, Mahayana Buddhism and the Greco-Buddhist Gandhara school of art flourish, depicting the Buddha in human form.


Muhammad ibn Qasim conquers Sindh

Summary: An Umayyad army under Muhammad ibn Qasim conquers Sindh and southern Punjab, bringing Islam to the Indus lands for the first time.


Rise of the Delhi Sultanate

Summary: Muslim dynasties ruling from Delhi extend their dominion over the Indus plains, deepening the region's Islamic culture over three centuries.


Babur founds the Mughal Empire

Summary: Babur's victory ends the Delhi Sultanate and establishes the Mughal Empire, which makes Lahore one of its great capitals.


Badshahi Mosque built at Lahore

Summary: Emperor Aurangzeb commissions the monumental Badshahi Mosque opposite the Lahore Fort, for centuries the largest mosque in the world and a landmark of Mughal Lahore.


Britain annexes the Punjab

Summary: After defeating the Sikh kingdom, the British annex Punjab, completing colonial control over the lands that would become Pakistan.


Founding of the All-India Muslim League

Summary: The All-India Muslim League is founded to represent the political interests of India's Muslims; it would become the engine of the Pakistan Movement.


The Lahore Resolution

Summary: Meeting in Lahore, the Muslim League under Jinnah adopts the resolution demanding independent states for Muslims, the foundational charter of the Pakistan Movement.


Indian Independence Act passed

Summary: The British Parliament passes the Indian Independence Act, partitioning British India and providing for the creation of the dominions of India and Pakistan.


Independence of Pakistan

Summary: Pakistan becomes independent under the Indian Independence Act, with Jinnah as Governor-General and Liaquat Ali Khan as prime minister, comprising West and East Pakistan.


Partition migration and violence

Summary: The Radcliffe Line divides Punjab and Bengal, and millions are uprooted across the new borders amid massacres and mass migration, with deaths estimated from the hundreds of thousands into the millions.


Assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan

Summary: Pakistan's first prime minister is assassinated at a rally in Rawalpindi, deepening the political instability of the new state's early years.


Ayub Khan's military coup

Summary: General Ayub Khan seizes power in Pakistan's first military takeover, beginning a decade of presidential rule and a recurring pattern of army intervention in politics.


Loss of East Pakistan and birth of Bangladesh

Summary: After a brutal war and Indian intervention, Pakistani forces surrender at Dhaka and East Pakistan becomes the independent state of Bangladesh, dismembering the country.


Execution of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Summary: Deposed in General Zia-ul-Haq's 1977 coup, former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is tried and hanged, ushering in a decade of military rule and Islamisation.


Pakistan conducts nuclear tests

Summary: Following India's tests, Pakistan detonates nuclear devices in Balochistan, openly joining the ranks of nuclear-armed states.


Assassination of Benazir Bhutto

Summary: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated at a rally weeks before national elections, after which civilian democratic rule is restored in 2008.


Spanish reach the isthmus

Summary: Rodrigo de Bastidas and then Christopher Columbus explore the Caribbean coast of the isthmus, opening the region to Spanish colonisation.


Balboa sights the Pacific

Summary: Vasco Nunez de Balboa crosses the isthmus and becomes the first European to see the Pacific Ocean from the Americas, claiming it for Castile.


Balboa executed

Summary: Accused of treason by the governor Pedrarias Davila, Balboa is beheaded, the same year a new Pacific-coast city is founded.


Founding of Panama Viejo

Summary: Pedrarias Davila founds Panama on the Pacific coast, the oldest European city on the Pacific shore of the Americas and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


Trade shifts to Portobelo

Summary: Spain moves its Caribbean treasure port to Portobelo, whose fairs and fortifications anchor the trans-isthmus gold and silver route.


Henry Morgan sacks Panama

Summary: The buccaneer Henry Morgan crosses the isthmus and takes Panama Viejo, which burns to the ground; the city is refounded on a new site in 1673.


Independence from Spain and union

Summary: Panama declares independence from Spain and voluntarily joins Gran Colombia, remaining tied to Colombia after Gran Colombia dissolves.


Panama Railroad completed

Summary: Spurred by the California Gold Rush, a U.S. company completes the trans-isthmus railroad, the shortest route between the oceans.


French canal attempt fails

Summary: Ferdinand de Lesseps's company begins a sea-level canal but is defeated by disease and cost, collapsing in financial scandal.


Separation from Colombia

Summary: With U.S. backing, Panama declares independence from Colombia and is swiftly recognised by the United States.


Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty

Summary: The treaty grants the United States a Canal Zone across the isthmus in perpetuity and guarantees Panama's independence.


Panama Canal opens

Summary: After a decade of U.S. construction, the lock canal opens to traffic, joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.


The Flag Riots

Summary: Clashes over flying the Panamanian flag in the Canal Zone leave roughly two dozen Panamanians and several Americans dead, hardening demands to revise the 1903 treaty.


Torrijos takes power

Summary: A military coup brings General Omar Torrijos to power; his government makes recovery of the canal its central aim.


Torrijos-Carter Treaties

Summary: Torrijos and President Carter sign treaties abolishing the Canal Zone and committing to transfer the canal to Panama by the end of 1999.


U.S. invasion ousts Noriega

Summary: Operation Just Cause removes General Manuel Noriega; casualty estimates vary, and Panamanian deaths are reported from several hundred to around a thousand.


Canal transferred to Panama

Summary: At noon, the United States hands the Panama Canal to Panama, ending nearly a century of foreign control.


Panama administers the canal

Summary: The Panama Canal Authority assumes full management of the waterway, anchoring a service and logistics economy.


Expanded canal opens

Summary: New Agua Clara and Cocoli locks open, roughly doubling capacity and admitting larger Neopanamax vessels.


The Sacred City of Caral-Supe

Summary: On the central coast the monumental city of Caral rises, with pyramids and sunken plazas, among the oldest urban centres of the Americas and the heart of the Norte Chico tradition.


Rise of Chavin de Huantar

Summary: The highland temple of Chavin de Huantar becomes a centre of pilgrimage and oracle, spreading a powerful religious art and ideology across the central Andes.


Moche and Nazca cultures

Summary: The Moche of the north coast create realistic pottery and adobe pyramids, while the Nazca of the southern deserts inscribe their giant lines and geoglyphs.


The Wari state

Summary: From the Ayacucho region the Wari build an expansive state with roads and planned centres, prefiguring the imperial methods later used by the Inca.


Pachacuti transforms the Inca state

Summary: After defending Cusco against the Chanca, Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui takes power and begins the swift expansion that turns the kingdom of Cusco into the empire of Tawantinsuyu.


Building of Machu Picchu

Summary: The Inca raise the mountain sanctuary of Machu Picchu above the Urubamba, a masterpiece of stonework later recognised as a World Heritage site.


Empire at its height

Summary: Under Pachacuti's successors the Inca extend Tawantinsuyu from present-day Colombia to Chile and Argentina, bound by roads, storehouses and the mita labour system.


Inca civil war

Summary: A ruinous war of succession between the half-brothers Atahualpa and Huascar divides the empire just as the Spanish appear on its coasts.


Capture of Atahualpa at Cajamarca

Summary: Francisco Pizarro's small force seizes the Inca emperor Atahualpa at Cajamarca after massacring his escort, a decisive stroke in the conquest of Peru.


Execution of Atahualpa

Summary: After paying a vast ransom in gold and silver, Atahualpa is executed by the Spanish; with the emperor dead, Pizarro advances on Cusco, taken later that year.


Founding of Lima

Summary: Pizarro founds Lima, the City of Kings, on the coast; it becomes the capital of the future Viceroyalty of Peru, chosen over Cusco for its links to Spain.


Viceroyalty of Peru established

Summary: Spain creates the Viceroyalty of Peru, second of its American viceroyalties, governing most of Spanish South America from Lima for nearly three centuries.


The silver of Potosi

Summary: The opening of the great silver mountain of Potosi makes Peru the crown's richest American realm, worked through the forced-labour mita that consumes Indigenous lives.


Revolt of Tupac Amaru II

Summary: Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui, taking the name Tupac Amaru II, leads a vast Indigenous uprising against Spanish rule across the southern Andes.


Execution of Tupac Amaru II

Summary: Captured by the Spanish, Tupac Amaru II is forced to witness the deaths of his family and is then executed at Cusco; the rebellion is suppressed but remembered.


Independence proclaimed by San Martin

Summary: Having entered Lima, Jose de San Martin proclaims the independence of Peru and becomes its Protector, though Spanish armies still hold the highlands.


Battle of Junin

Summary: Bolivar's forces win a cavalry battle at Junin, opening the way to the final campaign against the royalists in the Peruvian sierra.


Battle of Ayacucho

Summary: Antonio Jose de Sucre defeats the main royalist army and captures the viceroy at Ayacucho, sealing the independence of Peru and the new South American republics.


The guano boom

Summary: Exports of coastal guano as fertiliser bring the Peruvian state a vast but poorly managed windfall, funding reforms including the abolition of slavery in 1854.


War of the Pacific

Summary: Allied with Bolivia, Peru fights Chile over the nitrate-rich Atacama; Chilean forces occupy Lima in 1881 and Peru is defeated.


Treaty of Ancon

Summary: Peru cedes Tarapaca to Chile and loses control of Tacna and Arica, a humiliating settlement whose final terms were not fixed until 1929.


The Leguia era

Summary: Augusto Leguia governs Peru for eleven increasingly authoritarian years, promoting public works and a new constitution before falling in the Depression.


Founding of the Aprista movement

Summary: Victor Raul Haya de la Torre founds the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), a mass movement for social reform that shapes Peruvian politics for decades.


Velasco and the military reforms

Summary: General Juan Velasco Alvarado leads a leftist military government that enacts sweeping agrarian reform and nationalisations before being eased from power.


Shining Path launches its insurgency

Summary: As civilian democracy is restored, the Maoist Shining Path under Abimael Guzman begins an armed insurrection in the Ayacucho highlands, opening two decades of internal conflict.


Capture of Abimael Guzman

Summary: Police capture the Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman in Lima; he is sentenced to life imprisonment and the insurgency is broken.


Truth and Reconciliation Commission report

Summary: The Commission estimates that some 69,000 people died or disappeared in the 1980-2000 conflict, attributing most deaths to the Shining Path while also documenting state abuses.


Impeachment of Pedro Castillo

Summary: President Pedro Castillo is impeached and detained after attempting to dissolve Congress; Vice President Dina Boluarte succeeds him amid deadly protests.


The Laguna Copperplate Inscription

Summary: Dated to 900 CE, the earliest known Philippine document records a debt remission and reveals an organised society of datus and nobles already linked to the wider Malay and Javanese world.


Founding of the Sultanate of Sulu

Summary: Islam takes political form as the Sultanate of Sulu rises around Jolo, becoming a powerful maritime state controlling trade across the Sulu Sea and toward Borneo.


Islam consolidates in Maguindanao

Summary: The conversion of ruling families on Mindanao, associated with the missionary Sharif Muhammad Kabungsuwan, founds the Sultanate of Maguindanao, which expands through the 16th and 17th centuries.


Legazpi founds the first Spanish settlement at Cebu

Summary: Miguel Lopez de Legazpi establishes Spain's first permanent settlement in the islands at Cebu, beginning more than three centuries of Spanish colonial rule.


Founding of Manila

Summary: Legazpi establishes Manila as the capital of the Spanish colony; by the century's end most lowland Luzon and the Visayas are under Spanish control.


The Manila-Acapulco galleon trade

Summary: For 250 years Spanish galleons exchange Chinese silks for Mexican silver across the Pacific, making Manila a hub of global commerce and an economic lifeline for the colony.


Founding of the Katipunan

Summary: Andres Bonifacio establishes the secret revolutionary society the Katipunan, dedicated to winning Philippine independence from Spain by armed force.


Outbreak of the Philippine Revolution

Summary: The discovery of the Katipunan sparks open revolt; Katipuneros proclaim the 'Cry' of defiance, beginning the armed revolution against Spanish rule.


Execution of Jose Rizal

Summary: Spain executes the reformist writer Jose Rizal by firing squad in Manila; his martyrdom galvanises Filipinos and makes Spanish retention of the colony untenable.


Declaration of Philippine independence

Summary: Emilio Aguinaldo proclaims independence from Spain at Kawit, Cavite, founding a provisional republic; this date later becomes the national Independence Day.


Treaty of Paris: Spain cedes the Philippines to the U.S.

Summary: By the Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish-American War, Spain cedes the Philippines to the United States without consulting Filipinos, who had already declared independence.


The Philippine-American War

Summary: Filipino nationalists under Aguinaldo fight the United States for independence; the war kills thousands of combatants and as many as 200,000 civilians before ending in 1902.


Establishment of the Commonwealth

Summary: The Philippines becomes a self-governing Commonwealth under U.S. sovereignty, with Manuel L. Quezon as first president and a ten-year transition toward full independence.


Japanese occupation

Summary: Japan occupies the Philippines during the Second World War; guerrilla resistance and the campaign to retake the islands leave over a million Filipinos dead and Manila in ruins.


Independence of the Republic of the Philippines

Summary: The United States relinquishes sovereignty and recognises Philippine independence under the Treaty of Manila; Manuel Roxas becomes first president of the republic.


Marcos declares martial law

Summary: Ferdinand Marcos imposes martial law under Proclamation No. 1081, arresting opponents and seizing one-man rule in a dictatorship that lasts until 1986.


People Power Revolution

Summary: A peaceful uprising on EDSA, backed by defecting troops and the Catholic Church, drives Ferdinand Marcos into exile and installs Corazon Aquino as president, restoring democracy.


New democratic constitution

Summary: Under President Corazon Aquino a new constitution is ratified, re-establishing democratic institutions, presidential term limits and a bill of rights after the Marcos dictatorship.


Return of the Marcos name to power

Summary: Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jr., son of the late dictator, wins the presidency, returning his family to the highest office 36 years after People Power.


First settlement of New Guinea

Summary: People crossed from Southeast Asia to the joined landmass of Sahul, settling New Guinea in some of the earliest sea voyages and beginning one of the longest continuous human occupations on Earth.


Independent invention of agriculture at Kuk

Summary: In the highland swamp of Kuk, communities drained wetlands to cultivate taro and bananas, one of only a few places on Earth where farming arose independently — recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.


Austronesian speakers reach the coasts

Summary: A major migration of Austronesian-speaking peoples settles the coastal regions, layering a seafaring, trading world over the far older interior one.


More than 800 languages emerge

Summary: Rugged terrain and long isolation gave rise to over 800 distinct languages and more than a thousand ethnic groups, making New Guinea the most linguistically diverse region in the world.


The first European visitor

Summary: The Portuguese sailor Jorge de Meneses reaches the islands and calls them the ilhas dos Papuas; twenty years later a Spaniard names the main island New Guinea for its resemblance to the African coast.


The Kula ring and the trading seas

Summary: Substantial exchange networks operate across New Guinea, the most extensive of them the Kula ring — a ceremonial circuit of shell valuables spanning hundreds of kilometres of open water.


Traders, missionaries, and labour recruiters arrive

Summary: Whalers, plume hunters, and beche-de-mer traders worked the coasts, missionaries founded stations, and labour recruiters — including coercive 'blackbirders' — drew Melanesian workers to plantations in Queensland and Fiji.


The island is partitioned

Summary: Germany proclaimed a protectorate over the north-east (German New Guinea) and Britain over the southern coast (British New Guinea) within days of each other, splitting eastern New Guinea between two empires.


Gold on the Mambare

Summary: A strike on the Mambare River brings a gold rush and with it hostilities between miners and the people whose land they worked.


Australia takes over Papua

Summary: Following the Papua Act of 1905, British New Guinea became the Australian Territory of Papua, and formal Australian administration began in 1906.


Australia occupies German New Guinea

Summary: At the outbreak of the First World War, Australian forces seized German New Guinea, ending German colonial rule in the region.


League of Nations mandate over New Guinea

Summary: Australia received a Class C League of Nations mandate to administer the former German territory as the Territory of New Guinea, governed from Rabaul and kept separate from Papua.


The Bulolo gold rush

Summary: A major find along the Bulolo river draws a second rush, pulling outsiders and aircraft into country that had barely been mapped.


First contact in the highlands

Summary: Australian prospectors and patrol officers walked into the central highlands and found densely populated farming valleys — perhaps a million people — entirely unknown to the outside world until then.


The Kokoda Track campaign

Summary: Australian and Papuan troops halted the Japanese advance over the Owen Stanley Range toward Port Moresby and drove them back; over 600 Australians were killed in arguably Australia's most significant campaign of the war.


Papuan carriers and soldiers

Summary: Papuan carriers moved supplies and the wounded across the mountains, and soldiers of the Papuan Infantry Battalion fought alongside Australian forces throughout the New Guinea campaigns.


The Bougainville campaign

Summary: More than 30,000 Australians fought a long campaign of patrols and small actions on Bougainville, with over 500 killed, until the Japanese garrison surrendered in August 1945.


Papua and New Guinea united

Summary: Australia combined its administration of Papua and the former German mandate into a single Territory of Papua and New Guinea, with the north held as a United Nations trust territory.


The first elections with indigenous voters

Summary: Papuans and New Guineans vote for the first time, sixteen years after the two territories were joined under one administration.


West New Guinea transferred to Indonesia

Summary: The United Nations hands control of the island's western half to Indonesia; the two governments agree the position of their shared border ten years later.


An elected indigenous majority

Summary: A 64-member House of Assembly replaces the Legislative Council, and for the first time indigenous representatives hold most of the seats.


The country is named Papua New Guinea

Summary: The two territories that two empires had drawn take a single name, four years before they take a flag.


Internal self-government

Summary: Papua New Guinea achieved internal self-government with Michael Somare as chief minister, a peaceful step toward full independence from Australia.


Independence

Summary: Papua New Guinea became an independent nation under Prime Minister Michael Somare; Australia transferred sovereignty and the United States recognised the new state the same day.


The Bougainville conflict

Summary: A secessionist war over the Panguna mine, land, and environmental damage pitted Bougainvillean rebels against the PNG Defence Force; death-toll estimates range widely, commonly cited at roughly 10,000–20,000 and treated as estimates.


Sandline, the mutiny and the Burnham Truce

Summary: The government hires mercenaries to reinforce its troops on Bougainville, provoking a mutiny in its own army; the Burnham Truce later that year ends the decade of armed struggle.


Bougainville Peace Agreement

Summary: Following a 1998 ceasefire, a peace agreement created the Autonomous Region of Bougainville and promised a future referendum on the island's political status.


Bougainville independence referendum

Summary: Bougainvilleans voted about 98 per cent for independence over greater autonomy; the non-binding result must be negotiated with PNG and ratified by its parliament.


The Baptism of Poland

Summary: Duke Mieszko I accepted Christianity in the Latin rite, conventionally dated to 14 April 966, bringing his realm into Western Christendom and marking the traditional birth of the Polish state.


Congress of Gniezno

Summary: Emperor Otto III made pilgrimage to Gniezno and an independent Polish church province was established, recognising the young state's standing within Christian Europe.


Coronation of Boleslaw I the Brave

Summary: Boleslaw I was crowned king at Gniezno, the first ruler to bear the royal title of Poland and to win recognition of the realm as a kingdom rather than a duchy.


Testament of Boleslaw III and fragmentation

Summary: The dying Boleslaw III Wrymouth divided Poland among his sons, beginning nearly two centuries of fragmentation into rival duchies that weakened the state against its neighbours.


Reign of Casimir III the Great

Summary: The last Piast king reformed the law, founded the University of Krakow in 1364, expanded the kingdom and welcomed Jewish settlers, leaving Poland prosperous and consolidated.


Union of Krewo and the Jagiellonian dynasty

Summary: The agreement at Krewo arranged the marriage of Queen Jadwiga to Jogaila of Lithuania, who was baptised as Wladyslaw II Jagiello, joining Poland and Lithuania under a new dynasty.


Battle of Grunwald

Summary: Polish and Lithuanian forces under Wladyslaw II Jagiello destroyed the army of the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald, halting the Order's eastward expansion in the Baltic.


Copernicus publishes 'On the Revolutions'

Summary: The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus published his heliocentric theory, placing the Sun rather than the Earth at the centre of the cosmos and helping to launch modern astronomy.


Union of Lublin

Summary: Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania united into a single federal state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, ruled by an elected monarch and a common Sejm, one of Europe's largest powers.


Relief of Vienna

Summary: King John III Sobieski led the allied cavalry charge that broke the Ottoman siege of Vienna, marking the high point of the Commonwealth's military reputation in Europe.


The Deluge

Summary: A devastating Swedish invasion during the Second Northern War ravaged the Commonwealth, causing enormous loss of life and population and accelerating the state's long decline.


The Partitions of Poland

Summary: In three stages (1772, 1793, 1795) Russia, Prussia and Austria divided the Commonwealth among themselves, despite the reforming Constitution of 3 May 1791, ending Polish statehood for 123 years.


Congress of Vienna and the 'Congress Kingdom'

Summary: The post-Napoleonic settlement re-divided the Polish lands and created a nominally autonomous Kingdom of Poland under the Russian tsar, entrenching foreign rule.


The November Uprising

Summary: Poles in the Russian partition rose against the tsar; after initial successes the rising was crushed, bringing reprisals, the end of the Kingdom's autonomy and a wave of political exile.


The January Uprising

Summary: A protracted guerrilla insurrection against Russian rule ended in defeat and severe repression, including executions, deportations to Siberia and intensified Russification.


Restoration of independence

Summary: As the partitioning empires collapsed at the end of the First World War, an independent Polish state was proclaimed under Jozef Pilsudski, ending 123 years without statehood.


Battle of Warsaw

Summary: Polish forces under Pilsudski halted the advance of the Soviet Red Army outside Warsaw, securing the independence of the young republic in the Polish-Soviet War.


German and Soviet invasion of Poland

Summary: Nazi Germany invaded on 1 September, starting the Second World War in Europe; the Soviet Union invaded from the east on 17 September, and the two powers again partitioned Poland.


Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Holocaust on Polish soil

Summary: Germany operated its largest concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where some 1.1 million people, overwhelmingly Jews, were murdered as part of the genocide carried out across occupied Poland.


The Warsaw Uprising

Summary: The Polish Home Army rose against the German occupiers in Warsaw; after 63 days the rising was crushed, much of the city was destroyed and tens of thousands of civilians were killed.


Establishment of communist rule

Summary: Backed by the Soviet Union and rigged elections, a communist government consolidated power, founding the Polish People's Republic within the Soviet bloc.


Birth of Solidarity

Summary: Strikes at the Gdansk shipyard led by Lech Walesa produced Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc, which rapidly grew to about ten million members.


Martial law

Summary: The communist authorities imposed martial law, banned Solidarity and interned its leaders, including Walesa, driving the movement underground for the rest of the decade.


Semi-free elections and the fall of communism

Summary: Round Table talks produced partly free elections that Solidarity won overwhelmingly, ending communist rule in Poland and helping trigger the collapse of the Soviet bloc.