Buganda expands at Bunyoro's expense

Summary: Under a line of aggressive kabakas, the compact kingdom of Buganda annexes territory from Bunyoro-Kitara, growing into the largest state in the interlacustrine region.


Swahili-Arab traders reach Buganda

Summary: A caravan led by Ahmed bin Ibrahim reaches the court of Kabaka Suna II, opening Buganda to the Zanzibar-based ivory and slave trade and to Islam.


Anglican missionaries arrive

Summary: Agents of the Church Missionary Society reach Buganda after Stanley publicises Mutesa I's apparent interest in Christianity, beginning Protestant evangelism at the kabaka's court.


Catholic White Fathers arrive

Summary: Roman Catholic missionaries of the White Fathers reach Buganda, adding a third faith to the rivalry of Muslim, Protestant and Catholic factions at court.


Martyrdom of Charles Lwanga

Summary: Kabaka Mwanga II has Charles Lwanga and a group of Christian pages burned to death at Namugongo, the most notorious episode in the killing of the Uganda Martyrs of 1885–87.


Killing of the Uganda Martyrs

Summary: Mwanga II executes some forty-five Catholic and Anglican converts who refuse to renounce their faith; twenty-two Catholic victims were later canonised as saints.


Uganda Protectorate declared

Summary: Britain proclaims a protectorate over Buganda, soon extended across the wider territory, beginning sixty-eight years of colonial rule administered through the kingdoms.


The Uganda Railway is built

Summary: The railway is driven from Mombasa to Kisumu on Lake Victoria by some 32,000 indentured Indian labourers, binding Uganda to the coast and bringing a lasting South Asian presence.


The Buganda Agreement

Summary: Sir Harry Johnston and Buganda's regents sign the agreement recognising the kabaka and Lukiiko, creating the 'mailo' land system and entrenching Buganda's privileged status under indirect rule.


Path to independence negotiated

Summary: Constitutional conferences in London settle a federal arrangement preserving Buganda's special status, clearing the way for Ugandan self-government and independence.


Uganda gains independence

Summary: Uganda becomes independent from the United Kingdom with Milton Obote as prime minister; the constitution preserves a federal status for Buganda and the other kingdoms.


Mutesa II becomes first president

Summary: Uganda becomes a republic and the kabaka of Buganda, Sir Edward Mutesa II, is elected its first president, a largely ceremonial post under the 1962 constitution.


Battle of Mengo and the fall of Buganda

Summary: Obote suspends the constitution and orders the army under Idi Amin to storm the kabaka's palace; hundreds die and Mutesa II flees into exile, dying in London in 1969.


Kingdoms abolished

Summary: A new republican constitution abolishes the kingdoms of Buganda, Bunyoro, Ankole and Toro and makes Obote executive president of a centralised, unitary Uganda.


Amin's coup

Summary: While Obote is abroad, army commander Idi Amin overthrows the government in a military coup, beginning eight years of dictatorship.


Expulsion of the Asian community

Summary: Amin orders the roughly 80,000 South Asians in Uganda to leave within about ninety days, seizing their property and businesses and devastating the economy.


Mass killings under Amin

Summary: Amin's regime murders soldiers, professionals, clergy and dissidents through bodies such as the State Research Bureau; estimates of the dead run up to about 300,000.


Murder of Archbishop Luwum

Summary: The Anglican archbishop Janani Luwum, who had protested against state violence, is killed; his death becomes a symbol of the regime's brutality.


Uganda–Tanzania War

Summary: After Amin invades northern Tanzania, Julius Nyerere's forces and Ugandan exiles counter-attack and capture Kampala in April 1979, driving Amin into exile.


Obote returns to power

Summary: After interim governments under Lule and Binaisa, disputed elections return Milton Obote and the UPC to power; opponents allege the vote was rigged.


The Ugandan Bush War

Summary: Museveni's National Resistance Army wages guerrilla war against Obote's government from the Luwero Triangle; the army's counter-insurgency kills and displaces many thousands of civilians.


Museveni captures Kampala

Summary: The National Resistance Army takes Kampala and Yoweri Museveni is sworn in as president, ending the post-Amin upheaval and beginning his long rule.


Rise of the Lord's Resistance Army

Summary: Joseph Kony forms the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda, launching an insurgency notorious for atrocities and the abduction of children.


Cultural kingdoms restored

Summary: Museveni's government restores the kingdoms in a cultural, non-political form; a new kabaka of Buganda, Ronald Mutebi II, is enthroned.


Term limits removed

Summary: Parliament removes presidential term limits from the constitution, and Uganda returns to multiparty politics; Museveni's tenure lengthens into one of Africa's longest.


LRA driven from Uganda

Summary: After nearly two decades that displaced almost two million people and saw tens of thousands of children abducted, the Lord's Resistance Army is pushed out of northern Uganda.


The Baptism of Rus'

Summary: Grand Prince Volodymyr the Great adopted Christianity in the Byzantine rite and had the people of Kyiv baptized, bringing Rus' into Eastern Christendom and shaping the culture of the East Slavs.


Reign of Yaroslav the Wise

Summary: Yaroslav consolidated Kievan Rus', codified the Russkaya Pravda, promoted Christianity and learning, and built the Saint-Sophia Cathedral, marking the height of the realm.


Saint-Sophia Cathedral begun in Kyiv

Summary: Built with Byzantine masters under Yaroslav the Wise as the main church of the Rus' capital, Saint-Sophia symbolised Kyiv as a 'new Constantinople'; it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


Principality of Galicia-Volhynia formed

Summary: Roman Mstyslavych united Galicia and Volhynia into a single powerful principality in the south-west, one of the major successor states to emerge as Kievan Rus' fragmented.


Mongol sack of Kyiv

Summary: The Mongols of the Golden Horde stormed and destroyed Kyiv, ending its dominance and breaking the political unity of the Rus' lands.


Rus' lands pass to Lithuania and Poland

Summary: Following the collapse of Galicia-Volhynia, most of the former Rus' lands were absorbed by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, while Galicia in the west passed to the Kingdom of Poland.


Rise of the Cossacks

Summary: On the southern steppe frontier free men known as Cossacks emerged, evolving by the mid-sixteenth century a democratic military organisation with an assembly, the rada, and elected hetmans.


The Zaporozhian Sich

Summary: The Cossacks established the Zaporozhian Sich, a fortified camp on the lower Dnieper that became the political and military heart of Cossack Ukraine and a bastion of Orthodox resistance.


Union of Lublin brings Ukraine into the Commonwealth

Summary: The union of Poland and Lithuania placed the bulk of the Ukrainian lands within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, intensifying pressures of serfdom and Catholicism on the Orthodox population.


Khmelnytsky's uprising

Summary: Bohdan Khmelnytsky led the Zaporozhian Cossacks, allied with the Crimean Tatars, in a great rebellion against Polish rule, founding a self-governing Cossack Hetmanate in the Ukrainian lands.


Council of Pereiaslav

Summary: Khmelnytsky and the Cossack assembly swore allegiance to the tsar, placing the Hetmanate under Muscovite protection while seeking to retain its autonomy, and drawing Muscovy into war with Poland.


Partition along the Dnieper

Summary: The Truce of Andrusovo and later settlements divided the Ukrainian lands between Russia and Poland, with the left bank and Kyiv under Russian control and the right bank remaining Polish.


Destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich

Summary: Russian troops destroyed the Zaporozhian Sich, the bastion of Cossack self-government, completing the suppression of Cossack autonomy under the Russian Empire.


Galicia to Austria, right bank to Russia

Summary: The partitions of Poland transferred Galicia to the Habsburg Empire in 1772 and most of the right-bank Ukrainian lands to the Russian Empire by 1795, dividing the Ukrainian people between two empires.


Shevchenko publishes 'Kobzar'

Summary: The poet Taras Shevchenko, born a serf, published his collection Kobzar, giving voice to a distinct Ukrainian nation and laying the foundations of the modern Ukrainian literary language.


Ukrainian People's Republic proclaimed

Summary: Amid the Russian Revolution, the Central Rada in Kyiv under Mykhailo Hrushevsky proclaimed the Ukrainian People's Republic, the first modern Ukrainian state.


Declaration of independence

Summary: The Central Rada's Fourth Universal proclaimed the full independence of the Ukrainian People's Republic from Russia, as German, Bolshevik and other forces contested the country.


Defeat and Soviet incorporation

Summary: After years of war between Bolshevik, Polish, White and Ukrainian forces, the People's Republic was defeated; most Ukrainian lands were incorporated into the Soviet state, while Galicia passed to Poland.


The Holodomor

Summary: Soviet collectivisation and grain seizures caused a man-made famine that killed millions of Ukrainians; many states and, in 2022, the European Parliament have recognised it as a genocide.


Babyn Yar massacre

Summary: German SS and police units shot 33,771 Jews at the Babyn Yar ravine outside Kyiv over two days; in all some 100,000 people were murdered there during the occupation.


Crimea transferred to the Ukrainian SSR

Summary: The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet transferred the Crimean Peninsula from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR, citing economic and geographic ties, an administrative change within the USSR.


Chernobyl disaster

Summary: An explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in northern Ukraine caused the worst nuclear accident in history, exposing Soviet failings and fuelling Ukrainian discontent in the final Soviet years.


Declaration of independence

Summary: Amid the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine's parliament declared independence on 24 August 1991, confirmed by referendum on 1 December with over 90 percent voting in favour.


Budapest Memorandum

Summary: Ukraine agreed to surrender its nuclear arsenal and join the Non-Proliferation Treaty; Russia, the US and the UK pledged to respect its sovereignty and existing borders and to refrain from the use of force against it.


The Orange Revolution

Summary: Mass protests against a fraudulent presidential election forced a court-ordered re-run that brought the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency over Viktor Yanukovych.


Revolution of Dignity (Euromaidan)

Summary: Protests sparked by the rejection of an EU association agreement grew into the Revolution of Dignity; after deadly clashes President Yanukovych fled the country in February 2014.


Russia annexes Crimea; UN Resolution 68/262

Summary: Russia seized Crimea and declared its annexation after a referendum deemed illegal; the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 68/262, affirming Ukraine's territorial integrity and declaring the referendum without legal validity.


Full-scale invasion; UN Resolution ES-11/1

Summary: Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine; the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution ES-11/1 deploring the aggression and demanding the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of all Russian forces.


Purported annexation of four oblasts; UN Resolution ES-11/4

Summary: Russia proclaimed the annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson; the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution ES-11/4, condemning the attempted annexation as invalid and calling for non-recognition.


Indigenous peoples of the grasslands

Summary: The Charrua and other hunting and gathering peoples occupy the plains north of the Rio de la Plata over many millennia, well before any European arrival.


Solis reaches the Rio de la Plata

Summary: The Spanish navigator Juan Diaz de Solis explores the estuary and is killed near its eastern shore; finding no gold, Spain largely ignores the Banda Oriental for nearly two centuries.


Cattle turn the plains to wealth

Summary: Cattle and horses introduced by early expeditions multiply across the grasslands into vast feral herds, drawing gauchos, hide-hunters and contrabandists to the frontier.


Portugal founds Colonia del Sacramento

Summary: Portuguese soldiers establish Colonia opposite Buenos Aires; it becomes a strategic outpost and smuggling centre, changing hands between the crowns for over a century.


Spain expels the Portuguese at Montevideo

Summary: A Spanish force under Bruno Mauricio de Zabala drives out a Portuguese garrison that had begun fortifying the bay of Montevideo, opening the way for a Spanish town.


Founding of Montevideo

Summary: Zabala formally establishes Montevideo as a fortified Spanish port to counter Portuguese expansion; it grows into the chief stronghold of the Banda Oriental.


Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata

Summary: Spain creates the new viceroyalty centred on Buenos Aires, drawing the Banda Oriental into its administration and stoking eastern resentment of the centralising capital.


Colonia listed by UNESCO

Summary: The historic quarter of Colonia del Sacramento, blending Portuguese, Spanish and post-colonial architecture, is inscribed as a World Heritage site.


Artigas and the Federal League

Summary: Jose Gervasio Artigas leads the Orientals against Spain and builds a federal league of provinces, championing autonomy against Buenos Aires across the Banda Oriental and beyond.


Portuguese invasion and Artigas in exile

Summary: Portuguese forces from Brazil invade the Banda Oriental; after three years of resistance Artigas is defeated in 1820 and goes into permanent exile in Paraguay.


The Thirty-Three Orientals declare independence

Summary: Juan Antonio Lavalleja and the Thirty-Three Orientals, having landed that April, proclaim separation from Brazil and union with the United Provinces, reigniting the war for the province.


Treaty of Montevideo creates Uruguay

Summary: Under British mediation, the Preliminary Peace Convention ends the Argentine-Brazilian war by establishing the contested territory as the independent buffer state of Uruguay.


First constitution sworn

Summary: The Oriental Republic of Uruguay adopts its first national constitution, formally organising the new state.


Massacre of the Charrua at Salsipuedes

Summary: Government forces ambush and massacre the Charrua at Salsipuedes, a campaign that destroyed them as a distinct people and is remembered as a foundational injustice.


The Guerra Grande

Summary: The rivalry of Colorados and Blancos erupts into the Guerra Grande; the Blanco Oribe besieges Montevideo for nine years while the Colorados, aided by foreign legions, hold the city.


End of the long war

Summary: The Guerra Grande ends without outright victory, leaving Uruguay exhausted but independent and its two-party rivalry entrenched.


Cattle economy and immigration

Summary: Booming exports of hides, beef and wool, British-built railways, and waves of Italian and Spanish immigrants remake Montevideo and the countryside.


Batlle y Ordonez becomes president

Summary: Jose Batlle y Ordonez of the Colorado Party wins the presidency, beginning the reform era that would make Uruguay an early welfare-state democracy.


The great reforms

Summary: In his second term Batlle enacts the eight-hour day, free education, pensions, nationalisations, abolition of the death penalty and church-state separation, founding the model welfare state.


A new welfare constitution

Summary: A reformed constitution entrenches the secular, democratic and social character of the Batllista republic, including a plural executive to check one-man power.


Terra's authoritarian interlude

Summary: Amid the Great Depression President Gabriel Terra suspends the constitution in a self-coup; constitutional democracy is restored later in the decade.


Rise of the Tupamaros

Summary: The leftist urban guerrilla movement of the Tupamaros forms under Raul Sendic, turning to robberies, kidnappings and assassinations amid economic decline.


Military takes power

Summary: With the Tupamaros crushed and the country in crisis, the president dissolves parliament with military backing, beginning a civic-military dictatorship.


Return to democracy

Summary: After elections in 1984, Julio Maria Sanguinetti is inaugurated president, restoring civilian rule and freeing political prisoners under an amnesty.


Frente Amplio breaks the duopoly

Summary: The left-wing Frente Amplio coalition wins the presidency for the first time, ending nearly two centuries of Colorado and Blanco dominance.


Cannabis and progressive reform

Summary: Under President Jose Mujica, Uruguay legalises same-sex marriage and becomes the first country in the world to fully legalise and regulate cannabis.


Peopling of the Americas

Summary: Humans were established across the Americas by at least 13,000–15,000 years ago, having entered via the Beringian land bridge and Pacific coast from Asia during the last Ice Age.


Cahokia at its height

Summary: The Mississippian city of Cahokia, near present-day St. Louis, reached its peak as one of the largest urban centres north of Mexico, anchored by monumental earthen mounds.


Columbus reaches the Caribbean

Summary: Christopher Columbus's landfall opened sustained contact between Europe and the Americas, beginning an era of conquest, colonisation, and devastating disease for Indigenous peoples.


Founding of Jamestown

Summary: English settlers established Jamestown in Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America, financed by the Virginia Company of London.


First Africans landed in Virginia

Summary: An English ship brought roughly twenty enslaved Africans to Point Comfort, Virginia, marking the beginning of African slavery in the English mainland colonies.


Pilgrims found Plymouth

Summary: Separatist Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower established Plymouth Colony, the first enduring European settlement in New England.


French and Indian War

Summary: Britain's victory in the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War expelled France from the continent but left Britain heavily indebted, prompting new colonial taxes.


Declaration of Independence

Summary: The Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, formally announcing the separation of the thirteen colonies from Great Britain.


Treaty of Paris

Summary: Great Britain recognised the independence of the United States, ending the Revolutionary War and ceding territory east of the Mississippi.


Constitution ratified

Summary: With New Hampshire's ratification the Constitution took effect; the federal government began operating on 4 March 1789 and Washington was inaugurated that April.


Louisiana Purchase

Summary: The United States bought France's Louisiana territory for $15 million, roughly doubling the nation's size and opening the trans-Mississippi West.


Trail of Tears

Summary: Under the Indian Removal Act, the United States forcibly marched the Cherokee and other southeastern nations west of the Mississippi; thousands died en route.


American Civil War

Summary: War between the Union and the secessionist Confederacy, ignited at Fort Sumter, became the deadliest conflict in U.S. history and decided the fate of slavery.


Emancipation Proclamation

Summary: President Lincoln declared enslaved people in the rebelling states 'forever free,' redefining the war's purpose and clearing the way for Black enlistment in the Union army.


Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery

Summary: Ratified after the Union victory, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States.


Fourteenth Amendment

Summary: Ratified during Reconstruction, it granted citizenship to all persons born in the United States and guaranteed equal protection of the laws.


Transcontinental railroad completed

Summary: The joining of the rails at Promontory, Utah, linked the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, accelerating settlement, commerce, and industrial growth.


Great Depression

Summary: The stock market crash of 1929 triggered a decade-long economic collapse, answered by Roosevelt's New Deal programmes of relief, recovery, and reform.


Attack on Pearl Harbor

Summary: Japan's surprise attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii brought the United States into the Second World War.


Brown v. Board of Education

Summary: The Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, a landmark in the legal assault on Jim Crow.


Civil Rights Act

Summary: Signed by President Johnson, the Act outlawed discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin in employment and public accommodations.


Voting Rights Act

Summary: The Act banned racial discrimination in voting and authorised federal oversight of elections, dramatically expanding Black political participation.


Apollo 11 Moon landing

Summary: American astronauts became the first humans to walk on the Moon, a defining achievement of the Cold War space race.


End of the Cold War

Summary: The dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the world's sole superpower and reshaped the international order.


Sogdiana settled and under Achaemenid rule

Summary: The Zeravshan valley of Sogdiana, centred on Maracanda (Samarkand), is settled and passes under the Achaemenid Persian Empire; Bukhara grows as a Silk Road trade and crafts centre.


Alexander the Great conquers Sogdiana

Summary: Alexander the Great captures Maracanda (Samarkand) and advances to the Jaxartes, overcoming two years of fierce Sogdian resistance under Spitamenes.


Alexander marries Roxana of Bactria

Summary: To cement his conquest, Alexander marries Roxana, daughter of the Bactrian chieftain Oxyartes, symbolising the union of Macedonian and Central Asian peoples.


Sogdians dominate Silk Road trade

Summary: Sogdian merchants from Samarkand and Bukhara become the leading caravan traders of the Silk Road, their language a lingua franca of Inner Asian commerce and culture.


Arab conquest of Bukhara and Samarkand

Summary: The Umayyad commander Qutaybah ibn Muslim takes Bukhara and Samarkand and annexes Transoxiana, beginning the Islamisation of the region beyond the Oxus.


Battle of Talas

Summary: Abbasid Arab forces defeat the army of Tang China at the Battle of Talas, confirming Islam's hold on Central Asia and, by tradition, spreading papermaking westward.


Samanid Bukhara, a centre of the Islamic Golden Age

Summary: The Persian Samanid dynasty makes Bukhara its capital, a rival to Baghdad whose court fosters Persian literature, science and the refined art and architecture of the Islamic Golden Age.


Imam al-Bukhari and the Sahih

Summary: Muhammad al-Bukhari, born in Bukhara, compiles the Sahih, accepted by Sunni Muslims as the most authoritative collection of the Prophet's sayings after the Qur'an.


Genghis Khan sacks Bukhara and Samarkand

Summary: The Mongol armies of Genghis Khan storm Transoxiana, destroying Bukhara and Samarkand in a devastation from which the oasis cities took generations to recover.


Timur takes power and makes Samarkand his capital

Summary: Timur (Tamerlane) seizes control of Transoxiana and makes Samarkand the capital of an empire reaching from Anatolia to India, adorning it as the cultural heart of Central Asia.


The Bibi-Khanym mosque and Timurid Samarkand

Summary: Timur summons artisans from across his conquests to build the monumental Bibi-Khanym mosque and other masterpieces, making Samarkand one of the great cities of the medieval world.


Ulugh Beg builds his observatory

Summary: Timur's grandson Ulugh Beg, ruler and astronomer, builds a great observatory at Samarkand and compiles star tables so accurate they were used in Europe two centuries later.


Shaybanid Uzbeks conquer Transoxiana

Summary: Muhammad Shaybani Khan leads the Uzbeks south, expelling the last Timurids from Samarkand and Herat and founding the Shaybanid dynasty ruling from Bukhara.


The khanate of Khiva is founded

Summary: A branch of the Shaybanid dynasty establishes the khanate of Khiva in the Khwarezm oasis, one of the three Uzbek states that would endure until the Russian conquest.


The khanate of Kokand emerges

Summary: A third Uzbek state, the khanate of Kokand, rises in the fertile Fergana Valley, completing the trio of khanates of Bukhara, Khiva and Kokand.


Islamic monuments of Bukhara and Khiva

Summary: The khanates raise the madrasas, minarets and palaces that survive in the historic centres of Bukhara and the walled Itchan Kala of Khiva, today UNESCO World Heritage sites.


Russia takes Tashkent

Summary: Russian imperial forces storm Tashkent, beginning the conquest of the Uzbek lands; Samarkand falls in 1868 as the empire pushes into Central Asia.


Khanates absorbed into Russian Turkestan

Summary: Bukhara (1868) and Khiva (1873) become Russian protectorates and Kokand is annexed in 1876, completing the conquest and the creation of Russian Turkestan.


Creation of the Uzbek SSR

Summary: The Soviet national delimitation of 1924 carves Central Asia into ethnic republics; the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic is created and becomes a union republic of the USSR in 1925.


Cotton monoculture and the death of the Aral Sea

Summary: Soviet irrigation for cotton diverts the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, and the Aral Sea shrinks drastically from the 1960s — a notorious man-made environmental catastrophe.


Uzbekistan declares independence

Summary: The Supreme Council of the Uzbek SSR declares independence on 31 August 1991; 1 September becomes Independence Day, and a December referendum confirms it with Islam Karimov as first president.


The Andijan events

Summary: Government forces open fire on protesters in the city of Andijan; rights groups estimate that hundreds of civilians were killed, drawing international condemnation of Karimov's rule.


Mirziyoyev succeeds Karimov and opens reforms

Summary: After Islam Karimov's death, Shavkat Mirziyoyev becomes president and launches a 'New Uzbekistan' programme of economic liberalisation and cautious political opening.


End of systemic forced labour in cotton

Summary: After sustained reforms and international monitoring, civil-society groups conclude that Uzbekistan has dismantled the systemic state-imposed forced labour in its cotton harvest.


Martyrdom of Saint Peter

Summary: According to tradition the apostle Peter was martyred in Rome during the persecution under Nero and buried on the Vatican Hill beside the circus, around 64 CE.


The Trophy of Gaius marks the grave

Summary: About a century after Peter's death a small funerary monument, later known as the Trophy of Gaius, was built over the burial site and became a place of veneration.


Constantine builds Old St Peter's Basilica

Summary: The emperor Constantine raised a great basilica over the traditional tomb of Peter on the Vatican Hill, enclosing the shrine and making the site the chief sanctuary of Western Christendom.


The bishops of Rome and apostolic succession

Summary: The popes were regarded as successors of Peter as bishops of Rome, a claim founded on the doctrine of apostolic succession that linked their authority to the apostle buried at the Vatican.


The Donation of Pepin creates the Papal States

Summary: After Pepin the Short forced the Lombards to surrender their conquests, he restored the lands of central Italy to the pope, creating the Papal States and the basis of papal temporal power.


The Avignon papacy

Summary: The popes moved their residence to Avignon in France, where seven popes ruled for nearly seventy years away from Rome.


Gregory XI returns the papacy to Rome

Summary: Pope Gregory XI brought the papacy back to Rome from Avignon, against French opposition, ending the Avignon period.


The Western Schism

Summary: Rival popes in Rome and Avignon divided the Church for four decades until the Council of Constance restored a single papacy in 1417.


The Sistine Chapel completed

Summary: Built under Pope Sixtus IV, the Sistine Chapel was consecrated in 1483; it became the place where cardinals meet in conclave to elect the pope.


First stone of the new Saint Peter's

Summary: Pope Julius II laid the foundation stone of an entirely new Saint Peter's Basilica to replace the failing fourth-century church; it was completed in 1626.


Michelangelo paints the Sistine ceiling

Summary: Commissioned by Julius II, Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel between 1508 and 1512, one of the supreme achievements of Renaissance art.


Origins of the Vatican Museums

Summary: The Vatican Museums trace their founding to 1506, when Julius II displayed the newly excavated ancient sculpture of the Laocoon, beginning the papal collections.


The Kingdom of Italy claims Rome

Summary: The new Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed in 1861, regarded Rome as its capital, leaving the pope's remaining territory protected only by a French garrison.


The capture of Rome

Summary: Italian troops breached the walls at the Porta Pia and took Rome, ending more than a thousand years of papal temporal rule and completing the unification of Italy.


Pius IX, 'prisoner in the Vatican'

Summary: Refusing to accept the loss of Rome, Pope Pius IX withdrew into the Vatican and declared himself a prisoner, a position his successors held until 1929.


The Roman Question

Summary: For nearly six decades the popes refused to recognise the Italian state's seizure of Rome, leaving the church-state dispute known as the Roman Question unresolved.


Signing of the Lateran Treaty

Summary: The Holy See and Italy signed the Lateran Treaty, signed by Mussolini for Italy and Cardinal Gasparri for the papacy, recognising the Holy See's sovereignty and creating the State of Vatican City.


The State of Vatican City comes into being

Summary: With the exchange of ratifications on 7 June 1929 the State of Vatican City formally came into existence as an independent sovereign state of about 44 hectares.


The Roman Question resolved

Summary: The Lateran Treaty ended the nearly sixty-year dispute over the popes' loss of Rome, reconciling the papacy to the Italian state in return for a sovereign territory.


Wartime neutrality and the liberation of Rome

Summary: Vatican City kept to neutrality under Pius XII during the Second World War; though Rome was occupied and then liberated by the Allies on 4 June 1944, the Vatican itself was not occupied.


The Second Vatican Council

Summary: Opened by John XXIII on 11 October 1962 in Saint Peter's and concluded under Paul VI in 1965, Vatican II reformed the worship, self-understanding and outward relations of the Roman Catholic Church.


The Holy See becomes a UN permanent observer

Summary: The Holy See established a Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations in 1964, choosing observer status to preserve its neutrality, distinct from the territory of Vatican City State.


Vatican City inscribed as a World Heritage Site

Summary: UNESCO inscribed the entire State of Vatican City as a World Heritage Site, recognising Saint Peter's, the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Museums as a cultural patrimony of universal value.


Diplomatic relations with the United States

Summary: The United States and the Holy See established full diplomatic relations on 10 January 1984, more than a century after the loss of the Papal States had ended earlier ties.


Indigenous peoples of coast, plains and Andes

Summary: Carib and Arawak peoples settle the Caribbean coast and the Orinoco basin, while the Timoto-Cuica farm the western Andes, long before European contact.


Columbus reaches the Gulf of Paria

Summary: On his third voyage Christopher Columbus enters the Gulf of Paria near the Orinoco, the only South American mainland he ever set foot on.


The naming of 'little Venice'

Summary: Navigators of the Ojeda expedition, on which Amerigo Vespucci sailed, name the coast around Lake Maracaibo 'Venezuela', or 'little Venice', after its stilt dwellings.


Founding of Coro

Summary: Coro is founded as one of the first lasting Spanish towns on the mainland; its earthen colonial quarter is later inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.


Founding of Caracas

Summary: Diego de Losada founds Santiago de Leon de Caracas, which grows into the colony's principal city and the future national capital.


A cacao-and-slave economy

Summary: Coastal plantations growing cacao, worked by enslaved Africans, enrich a creole planter elite, the mantuanos, and shape colonial society.


Captaincy General of Venezuela created

Summary: A royal decree unites the scattered provinces into the Captaincy General of Venezuela, with Caracas as capital, giving the territory the outline of the future nation.


Junta deposes the captain general

Summary: The cabildo of Caracas removes the Spanish captain general and forms a governing junta, the opening act of the independence movement.


First declaration of independence in Spanish America

Summary: A congress at Caracas declares Venezuela independent of Spain and founds the First Republic, the first such declaration in the region.


Death of Francisco de Miranda

Summary: The 'Precursor' of independence, handed to the Spanish after the fall of the First Republic, dies a prisoner in a fortress at Cadiz.


Battle of Carabobo

Summary: Bolivar's victory over the Spanish army at Carabobo, won with Paez's llaneros and foreign volunteers, virtually secures Venezuelan independence.


Separation from Gran Colombia

Summary: As Gran Colombia dissolves and Bolivar dies, Jose Antonio Paez leads Venezuela to declare itself a separate republic and becomes its first president.


The Federal War

Summary: A devastating civil war between Liberal federalists and Conservative centralists ravages the country and ends with the Treaty of Coche and a federal constitution.


The era of Guzman Blanco

Summary: The Liberal caudillo Antonio Guzman Blanco dominates Venezuela, modernising Caracas and centralising power while ruling through personal authority.


The dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gomez

Summary: Gomez seizes power in 1908 and rules until 1935, presiding over the rise of the oil industry while suppressing opposition.


Oil gusher at Lake Maracaibo

Summary: A massive blowout at La Rosa on Lake Maracaibo reveals vast reserves; foreign companies pour in and by 1929 Venezuela is a leading oil exporter.


Fall of Perez Jimenez and the Punto Fijo pact

Summary: A civil-military uprising ousts the dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez; party leaders sign the Punto Fijo pact, founding four decades of power-sharing democracy.


Nationalisation of the oil industry

Summary: Venezuela nationalises its oil industry and creates the state company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the financial engine of the petro-state.


The Caracazo

Summary: Austerity measures amid economic crisis trigger days of rioting in Caracas that are violently suppressed, with heavy loss of life, shaking the political order.


Chavez's failed coup

Summary: Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez leads a failed military coup against the government; jailed and later pardoned, he becomes a national political figure.


Chavez elected president

Summary: Hugo Chavez wins the presidency promising to sweep aside the old two-party order, launching the Bolivarian project.


The Bolivarian Constitution

Summary: A new constitution, approved by referendum, renames the country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and enlarges presidential and state power.


Death of Chavez; Maduro elected

Summary: Hugo Chavez dies of cancer in March 2013, and his chosen successor Nicolas Maduro narrowly wins the ensuing election.


Economic collapse and exodus

Summary: A deep contraction, hyperinflation and shortages drive a mass emigration that, by UN estimates, exceeds 7.7 million people by late 2024.


Disputed interim presidency

Summary: Opposition leader Juan Guaido declares himself interim president and is recognised by dozens of states, while Maduro retains control of the government.


Disputed presidential election

Summary: The electoral authority declares Maduro re-elected; the opposition rejects the result and the United States and many governments dispute it.


Legendary founding of Van Lang

Summary: Vietnamese tradition dates the kingdom of Van Lang and its line of Hung kings to 2879 BCE; the historical Bronze Age Dong Son culture of the Red River delta flourished in the first millennium BCE.


Kingdom of Au Lac and Co Loa

Summary: An Duong Vuong overthrows the last Hung king and unites the land as Au Lac, building the fortified capital of Co Loa north of modern Hanoi.


Han conquest begins Chinese rule

Summary: The Chinese Han dynasty conquers the region, opening more than a thousand years of direct Chinese administration, taxation, and cultural influence.


Revolt of the Trung sisters

Summary: Trung Trac and Trung Nhi lead a rebellion that briefly drives out the Chinese before being defeated in 43 CE; they become lasting symbols of Vietnamese resistance.


Battle of Bach Dang and independence

Summary: Ngo Quyen destroys a Southern Han fleet at the Bach Dang River using hidden iron-tipped stakes, ending Chinese rule; he proclaims himself king in 939.


Founding of the Ly dynasty

Summary: Ly Cong Uan takes the throne and founds the Ly dynasty, moving the capital to Thang Long (Hanoi) in 1010 and establishing the enduring institutions of independent Dai Viet.


Tran defeat of the Mongol invasions

Summary: Under Tran Hung Dao the Tran dynasty repels three invasions by Kublai Khan's Mongols, climaxing in the 1288 victory at the Bach Dang River where the Mongol fleet is destroyed on hidden stakes.


Ming China occupies Dai Viet

Summary: The Chinese Ming dynasty conquers Dai Viet and imposes two decades of harsh direct rule, provoking widespread resistance.


Le Loi expels the Ming and founds the Le dynasty

Summary: After a ten-year war of liberation, Le Loi drives out the Ming, restores independence, and establishes the Le dynasty, which would rule, nominally, for centuries.


Conquest of Champa's capital

Summary: Emperor Le Thanh Tong's forces capture Vijaya, the capital of Champa, accelerating the southward expansion (Nam tien) of Vietnamese settlement.


Tay Son rebellion

Summary: A peasant-led uprising overthrows the Nguyen and Trinh lords and the Le dynasty, and in 1789 routs an invading Chinese Qing army near Thang Long.


Gia Long founds the Nguyen dynasty

Summary: Nguyen Anh defeats the Tay Son, reunifies the country, and is crowned emperor as Gia Long at Hue, founding Vietnam's last imperial dynasty.


The name Vietnam adopted

Summary: The unified realm is recognized under the name Vietnam, with its capital at Hue and a centralized administration modeled on Qing China.


Reign of Minh Mang

Summary: Emperor Minh Mang consolidates the Confucian state, completes administrative reforms, and intensifies suspicion of European traders and Catholic missionaries.


French attack on Da Nang

Summary: A French and Spanish naval force assaults Da Nang, beginning the military conquest that would bring Vietnam under colonial rule.


France annexes Cochinchina

Summary: Following the capture of Saigon, France secures the southern provinces of Cochinchina as a colony, its first permanent foothold in Vietnam.


French Indochina established

Summary: France unites Cochinchina, Annam, Tonkin, and Cambodia into the Indochinese Union; Laos is added in 1893, binding Vietnam into a colonial federation centered on Hanoi.


Founding of the Indochinese Communist Party

Summary: Ho Chi Minh helps unite rival communist groups into the Indochinese Communist Party, which becomes the organizational core of the independence struggle.


Great Vietnamese Famine

Summary: Under Japanese occupation and wartime mismanagement, famine strikes northern Vietnam, killing an estimated one to two million people and deepening revolutionary discontent.


Declaration of independence

Summary: As Japan surrenders, the Viet Minh seize power in the August Revolution and Ho Chi Minh proclaims the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square.


First Indochina War

Summary: War between France and the Viet Minh ends with the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu on 7 May 1954, terminating French colonial rule in Vietnam.


Geneva Accords divide Vietnam

Summary: The Geneva Conference partitions Vietnam at the 17th parallel into a communist North and an anti-communist South pending reunification elections that are never held.


Gulf of Tonkin and U.S. escalation

Summary: The Gulf of Tonkin incident leads Congress to pass a resolution authorizing the vast escalation of direct U.S. military involvement in the war.


Tet Offensive

Summary: A coordinated communist surprise offensive across South Vietnam, though costly militarily, undermines American public support and shifts the war toward U.S. withdrawal.


Fall of Saigon and reunification

Summary: North Vietnamese forces capture Saigon, ending the war; the country is formally reunified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on 2 July 1976.


Sino-Vietnamese War

Summary: China invades northern Vietnam in response to Vietnam's ousting of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia; the brief but bloody border war deepens Vietnam's isolation.


Doi Moi reforms launched

Summary: The Communist Party's Sixth Congress adopts Doi Moi, replacing central planning with a socialist-oriented market economy and opening Vietnam to private enterprise and foreign investment.


Normalization with the U.S. and ASEAN membership

Summary: Vietnam restores diplomatic relations with the United States and joins the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ending decades of isolation.


Accession to the World Trade Organization

Summary: Vietnam joins the WTO, cementing its integration into the global economy and accelerating an export-driven manufacturing boom.


Lapita seafarers settle the archipelago

Summary: Austronesian voyagers of the Lapita culture reached northern Vanuatu, carrying their distinctive pottery, crops and animals on one of history's great oceanic migrations.


The Teouma cemetery on Efate

Summary: The burial ground at Teouma on Efate, dated to about 3,000 years ago, is the oldest known cemetery in the Pacific and preserves the remains of the first settlers.


Reign of the paramount chief Roi Mata

Summary: Oral tradition records Roi Mata as a great chief of central Vanuatu who ended inter-clan warfare and whose burial on Artok is honoured by lasting prohibitions on his sites.


Quirós reaches Espiritu Santo

Summary: Pedro Fernández de Quirós, leading a Spanish expedition, landed on the largest island, named it La Austrialia del Espíritu Santo and claimed it for Spain before his short-lived colony failed.


Bougainville sails through the group

Summary: The French navigator Louis-Antoine de Bougainville charted parts of the archipelago and showed that Quirós's 'southern continent' was a group of islands.


Cook names the New Hebrides

Summary: On his second voyage James Cook surveyed and charted the islands, naming them the New Hebrides — a name they kept until independence in 1980.


Missionaries arrive; Williams killed at Erromango

Summary: Christian missions began in the islands; the LMS missionary John Williams was killed at Erromango, the first of several martyrdoms as Christianity slowly took hold.


The blackbirding labour trade

Summary: Recruiters carried over forty thousand islanders to Queensland and others to Fiji and New Caledonia for plantation labour, by indenture, deception and force.


Depopulation by introduced disease

Summary: Measles, dysentery, influenza and other introduced diseases, together with the labour trade, devastated island populations across the colonial period.


Anglo-French Condominium established

Summary: Britain and France agreed to govern the New Hebrides jointly, creating a famously duplicated administration with two of nearly everything.


U.S. wartime bases on Efate and Santo

Summary: American forces built major bases in the islands during the Pacific War, flooding them with goods and personnel and transforming local society.


Rise of the John Frum movement

Summary: On Tanna the John Frum cargo cult emerged, awaiting a messianic 'John from America' who would bring cargo and restore custom against missionary and colonial control.


Vanua'aku Pati founded under Walter Lini

Summary: The party that became the Vanua'aku Pati, led by the Anglican priest Walter Lini, was formed to demand independence and the return of alienated land.


The Coconut War on Espiritu Santo

Summary: Jimmy Stevens's Nagriamel movement declared the breakaway 'State of Vemerana' on Espiritu Santo; the lightly armed revolt was suppressed soon after independence.


Republic of Vanuatu proclaimed

Summary: The New Hebrides became the independent Republic of Vanuatu, with Walter Lini as first prime minister; Papua New Guinean troops then crushed the Santo secession.


Chief Roi Mata's Domain joins World Heritage List

Summary: UNESCO inscribed the residence, death site and burial of Chief Roi Mata on Efate, Lelepa and Artok — Vanuatu's first World Heritage property.


Cyclone Pam devastates the islands

Summary: Tropical Cyclone Pam, the most destructive storm in Vanuatu's history, damaged the great majority of buildings and a vast share of national output.


UN asks the ICJ on climate obligations

Summary: A Vanuatu-led campaign, begun by Pacific law students, won a UN General Assembly resolution requesting an ICJ advisory opinion on states' climate-change obligations.


ICJ delivers landmark climate opinion

Summary: The International Court of Justice found that states have binding legal duties to protect the climate and that failure to act may be an internationally wrongful act.


The kingdom of Saba flourishes at Marib

Summary: Saba, the biblical Sheba, emerged as the dominant South Arabian kingdom, with its capital at Marib controlling the lucrative caravan trade in frankincense and myrrh.


Construction of the Great Dam of Marib

Summary: The Sabaeans built the Great Dam of Marib to harness the seasonal floods of the Wadi Adhanah, irrigating a vast oasis and underpinning the kingdom's wealth for over a thousand years.


Rise of the Himyarite kingdom

Summary: The Himyarites rose in the southern highlands and gradually absorbed Saba, Qataban and Hadramawt, uniting much of South Arabia under a single dynasty.


Aksumite conquest and the viceroy Abraha

Summary: An Ethiopian (Aksumite) invasion overthrew the Himyarite kingdom; the Christian viceroy Abraha later ruled from Yemen before the Sasanian Persians seized the region around 570.


Yemen embraces Islam

Summary: Yemen adopted Islam in the 7th century, within the Prophet Muhammad's lifetime, and Sanaa became a major centre for the spread of the new faith in the 7th and 8th centuries.


Founding of the Zaidi imamate

Summary: The scholar Yahya ibn al-Husayn, invited from Medina to arbitrate tribal disputes around Saada, founded the Zaidi imamate, binding the northern highlands to Zaidi Shia Islam for over a thousand years.


Ottomans claim Yemen

Summary: From around the 1520s the Ottoman Empire asserted control over Yemen's ports and lowlands, contesting the highlands with the Zaidi imams in a struggle that recurred for centuries.


Zabid recognised as a centre of Islamic learning

Summary: The historic town of Zabid, capital of Yemen under the Rasulids and a celebrated centre of Islamic scholarship from the 13th to 15th centuries, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


Britain captures Aden

Summary: The British East India Company seized the port of Aden, establishing a coaling station on the route to India that grew into one of the world's busiest ports after the Suez Canal opened in 1869.


Ottoman return to the highlands

Summary: The Ottomans reoccupied northern Yemen in the 19th century, meeting sustained resistance from the Zaidi tribes and imams of the mountainous interior.


Imam Yahya wins highland autonomy

Summary: Imam Yahya Hamid al-Din, leader of Zaidi resistance, secured by treaty a degree of autonomy from the Ottomans over the Zaidi highlands, foreshadowing full independence.


Aden becomes a Crown Colony

Summary: The port of Aden, previously governed as part of British India, was made a separate Crown Colony, with the surrounding territories organised as the Aden Protectorate.


Independent kingdom of North Yemen

Summary: With the Ottoman defeat in the First World War and withdrawal from Yemen, Imam Yahya established the independent Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen across the northern highlands.


Revolution founds the Yemen Arab Republic

Summary: Army officers under Abdullah al-Sallal overthrew the imam and proclaimed the Yemen Arab Republic, igniting a civil war that drew in Egyptian and Saudi forces until 1970.


The Aden Emergency

Summary: Nationalist groups led by the National Liberation Front waged a guerrilla and urban insurgency against British rule in Aden and its protectorate, hastening Britain's decision to withdraw.


Independence of South Yemen

Summary: After the British withdrawal, the People's Republic of Southern Yemen declared independence with Aden as its capital, later becoming the Marxist People's Democratic Republic of Yemen.


Unification of the Republic of Yemen

Summary: North and South Yemen merged into the Republic of Yemen with Sanaa as capital and Ali Abdullah Saleh as president, ending more than two decades of partition.


Civil war and the defeat of southern secession

Summary: Southern leaders declared secession, but northern forces took Aden in July 1994 and crushed the breakaway attempt, consolidating Saleh's control over a unified Yemen.


Old City of Sanaa joins the World Heritage List

Summary: UNESCO inscribed the Old City of Sanaa, inhabited for more than 2,500 years and renowned for its multi-storey rammed-earth tower-houses and early mosques.


Shibam, the 'Manhattan of the desert', is listed

Summary: The Old Walled City of Shibam, famed for its towering mud-brick high-rise houses in the Wadi Hadramawt, was inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.


Arab Spring uprising and Saleh's removal

Summary: Mass protests against corruption and Saleh's three decades in power, part of the regional Arab Spring, led to a Gulf-brokered transition under which Saleh ceded power and Hadi became president in 2012.


Houthi forces seize Sanaa

Summary: The Houthi movement, allied with former president Saleh, captured the capital Sanaa and went on to force President Hadi from the country, collapsing the post-2011 transition.


Saudi-led coalition intervenes

Summary: A coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE began military intervention to restore the recognised government, opening a prolonged war marked by air strikes, ground combat and blockade.


UN estimates 377,000 war-related deaths

Summary: A United Nations Development Programme report projected that the war would have caused roughly 377,000 deaths by the end of 2021, most from indirect causes such as hunger and disease.


UN-mediated nationwide truce

Summary: A two-month UN-brokered truce took effect on 2 April 2022, easing fighting, allowing fuel ships into Hodeidah and flights from Sanaa; it was extended and, though it later lapsed, largely held.


The Cradle of Humankind

Summary: The Sterkfontein and Swartkrans caves preserve hominin fossils spanning millions of years, including Mrs Ples and Little Foot, marking southern Africa as a key site of human origins; the area was inscribed by UNESCO in 1999.


San and Khoekhoe of the subcontinent

Summary: The San, hunter-gatherers present for tens of thousands of years, were joined around two thousand years ago by the herding Khoekhoe, together forming the long-established Khoisan societies of the region.


Bantu-speaking farmers spread south

Summary: Bantu-speaking communities bringing iron-working, cattle and cultivated crops settled the eastern half of southern Africa, ancestors of the region's Nguni, Sotho-Tswana, Venda and Tsonga peoples.


The kingdom of Mapungubwe

Summary: Near the Limpopo, Mapungubwe rose as southern Africa's first state-level society, trading gold and ivory to the Indian Ocean coast and producing famed gold artefacts before its decline around 1300.


Van Riebeeck founds the Cape station

Summary: Jan van Riebeeck landed at Table Bay and established a Dutch East India Company refreshment station, the beginning of permanent European settlement in South Africa.


Slavery at the Cape

Summary: The Company began importing enslaved people from Madagascar, East Africa, India and the Indonesian archipelago, founding a slave society whose labour underpinned the colony for nearly two centuries.


Smallpox devastates the Khoekhoe

Summary: A smallpox epidemic introduced by passing ships killed great numbers of Khoekhoe, accelerating the loss of their land, herds and independence as the colony expanded.


First Cape Frontier War

Summary: As trekboers reached the Great Fish River they clashed with the Xhosa, beginning a century-long series of frontier wars along the colony's eastern edge.


Britain seizes the Cape

Summary: British forces occupied the Cape Colony during the Napoleonic Wars, beginning lasting British rule confirmed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815.


Rise of the Zulu kingdom and the Mfecane

Summary: Shaka built the Zulu into a powerful centralised kingdom with a reorganised army; the wars and migrations of the Mfecane reshaped the political map of southern Africa.


Abolition of slavery at the Cape

Summary: Slavery was abolished across the British Empire, freeing enslaved people at the Cape and deepening Boer discontent that helped spark the Great Trek.


The Great Trek

Summary: Thousands of Voortrekkers left the Cape Colony for the interior, seeking independence from British rule and founding new Boer communities on lands occupied by African peoples.


Battle of Blood River

Summary: A Voortrekker commando under Andries Pretorius defeated a large Zulu army at the Ncome (Blood) River, a battle long mythologised in Afrikaner nationalism and preceding the rise of Boer republics.


Diamonds discovered at Kimberley

Summary: The discovery of diamonds near the Vaal and Orange rivers triggered a rush to Kimberley, beginning the mineral revolution and drawing capital and migrant labour into the region.


Gold found on the Witwatersrand

Summary: The discovery of the world's largest goldfield on the Witwatersrand created Johannesburg, transformed the Transvaal's wealth, and entrenched a segregated migrant-labour system.


The South African War

Summary: War between Britain and the Boer republics featured guerrilla campaigns and British concentration camps in which tens of thousands of Boer and Black civilians died.


Treaty of Vereeniging

Summary: The peace signed at Pretoria ended the South African War, bringing the Transvaal and Orange Free State under British sovereignty with promises of eventual self-government.


Union of South Africa

Summary: The four British colonies were united into the self-governing Union of South Africa under the South Africa Act, a white-controlled state that excluded the Black majority from political power.


National Party institutes apartheid

Summary: The National Party won the 1948 election and began enacting apartheid, including the Population Registration Act and Group Areas Act of 1950, codifying racial classification, segregation and forced removals.


Sharpeville massacre

Summary: Police fired on a peaceful anti-pass-law protest at Sharpeville, killing at least 69 people and wounding scores more; the atrocity drew global condemnation and led to the banning of the ANC and PAC.


Rivonia Trial imprisons Mandela

Summary: Nelson Mandela and fellow leaders of the ANC's armed wing were convicted of sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment, beginning Mandela's 27 years behind bars.


Soweto uprising

Summary: Student protests against compulsory instruction in Afrikaans were met with police gunfire in Soweto, killing many, including children, and igniting nationwide resistance.


Mandela freed and the ANC unbanned

Summary: President F. W. de Klerk unbanned the ANC, PAC and other organisations and released Nelson Mandela from prison, opening the way to negotiations that would dismantle apartheid.


First democratic election

Summary: South Africans of all races voted together for the first time; the ANC won about 62.65 percent of the vote on an 86.9 percent turnout, ending apartheid rule. The main polling day, 27 April, is marked as Freedom Day.


Mandela inaugurated as president

Summary: Nelson Mandela was sworn in as the first president of a democratic South Africa, leading a Government of National Unity and symbolising reconciliation across the country's racial divide.


Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Summary: Chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the TRC began public hearings into apartheid-era human rights abuses, offering conditional amnesty in exchange for full disclosure as a model of transitional justice.


A new Constitution

Summary: South Africa's final Constitution, with its justiciable Bill of Rights, was signed into law in 1996 and took effect in February 1997, widely regarded as among the most progressive in the world.


ANC loses its majority

Summary: In the 2024 general election the ANC lost the outright parliamentary majority it had held since 1994, leading to a multiparty government of national unity and a new phase of coalition politics.


Bantu farmers settle the plateau

Summary: Bantu-speaking migrants bringing iron-working, cattle, and agriculture spread across the region over the first millennium CE, gradually settling land held by Khoisan and Batwa hunter-gatherers.


The Tonga of the Zambezi

Summary: On the southern plateau the Tonga and related Ila peoples established dispersed farming communities along the middle Zambezi, organised by lineage rather than centralised kingship.


Trade at Ingombe Ilede

Summary: The Iron Age settlement of Ingombe Ilede near the Zambezi yielded copper crosses, gold, and imported beads and cloth, showing the region's links to the Indian Ocean trade in gold and ivory.


Rise of the Lozi kingdom

Summary: On the upper Zambezi floodplain the Luyana (Aluyi) people, of Lunda origin, built the Lozi (Barotse) kingdom ruled by a king titled the Litunga, with capitals that shifted with the annual flood.


Founding of the Kazembe kingdom

Summary: An offshoot of the Lunda crossed the Luapula River, subdued the Shila, and established the kingdom of the Mwata Kazembe, which grew wealthy on Lake Mweru fisheries and trade in copper, salt, and ivory.


Lacerda reaches Kazembe

Summary: A Portuguese expedition under Francisco de Lacerda reached the court of the Mwata Kazembe seeking to open trade links across the continent, an early European contact with the Luapula kingdom.


Gamitto's mission to Kazembe

Summary: A second Portuguese expedition, led by António Gamitto, visited the Mwata Kazembe, leaving a detailed account of a Lunda state deeply engaged in the regional trade in ivory, copper, and captives.


Kololo conquest of the Lozi

Summary: The Kololo, a Sotho people fleeing the wars of the Mfecane under Sebitwane, crossed the Zambezi and conquered the Lozi kingdom, imposing their rule and language on the floodplain.


Ngoni incursions from the south

Summary: Ngoni warbands driven north by the upheavals of the Mfecane crossed the Zambezi under leaders such as Zwangendaba, raiding and absorbing peoples and settling in the east of the region.


Livingstone reaches Victoria Falls

Summary: Guided by local people, David Livingstone became the first European recorded to see the falls the inhabitants called Mosi-oa-Tunya, renaming them Victoria Falls and drawing European attention to the region.


Swahili-Arab and Chikunda slave trade

Summary: Swahili-Arab traders from the coast and Chikunda raiders from the Zambezi, with Bisa and Yao intermediaries, exchanged guns and cloth for ivory and captives, bringing violence and depopulation to the plateau.


Lozi restoration under Sipopa

Summary: A Lozi rebellion overthrew Kololo rule and restored the kingdom under Sipopa, reviving the indigenous monarchy of the upper Zambezi floodplain.


The Lochner Concession

Summary: The Lozi king Lewanika granted mineral rights to Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company in exchange for promises of protection, opening the territory to company rule.


Creation of Northern Rhodesia

Summary: The British South Africa Company amalgamated North-Western and North-Eastern Rhodesia into a single territory named Northern Rhodesia, administered under royal charter.


Northern Rhodesia becomes a Crown protectorate

Summary: Administration passed from the British South Africa Company to the Colonial Office, making Northern Rhodesia a British protectorate; the capital later moved to Lusaka in 1935.


Copperbelt copper proven

Summary: Rich copper sulphide ores were proven beneath the Copperbelt, and large-scale mining from the 1930s built the industrial economy that came to dominate the territory.


Copperbelt mineworkers' strike

Summary: African mineworkers struck over taxes and conditions; six men were shot dead during the disturbances, an early sign of the labour grievances that would fuel nationalist politics. Further strikes followed in 1940.


Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland

Summary: Britain joined Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland into a federation dominated by white settlers, provoking widespread African opposition and galvanising nationalist politics.


Kaunda founds ZANC

Summary: Breaking with Harry Nkumbula's ANC, Kenneth Kaunda founded the radical Zambia African National Congress; it was banned in 1959 and Kaunda imprisoned, but the movement continued as UNIP.


The Cha-cha-cha campaign

Summary: Under Kaunda, UNIP launched a campaign of mass civil disobedience known as the Cha-cha-cha against colonial rule and the Federation, intensifying pressure for African self-government.


Federation dissolved

Summary: Sustained African opposition and shifting British policy brought the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland to an end, opening the way to independence for its territories.


Independence of Zambia

Summary: Northern Rhodesia became the independent Republic of Zambia, named after the Zambezi, with Kenneth Kaunda as its first president.


One-party state and Humanism

Summary: Kaunda made Zambia a one-party state under UNIP, formalised in the 1973 constitution, governing under his philosophy of Humanism, a blend of African communal values and socialism.


Copper collapse and economic decline

Summary: Copper, which provided the bulk of export earnings, fell sharply on the world market from the mid-1970s, triggering a long economic decline, rising debt, and austerity.


Frontline state for liberation

Summary: Zambia hosted and supported southern African liberation movements, including the ANC, ZANU, ZAPU, and SWAPO, becoming a frontline state that bore retaliatory raids and economic costs.


Return to multiparty democracy

Summary: After food riots and mounting pressure, Kaunda lifted the ban on opposition parties; Frederick Chiluba and the Movement for Multiparty Democracy won the elections, and Kaunda handed over power peacefully.


Sovereign debt default

Summary: Burdened by debt and falling revenues, Zambia became the first African country of the COVID-19 era to default on its Eurobonds after missing a coupon payment.


Hichilema elected president

Summary: Opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema won the presidency in a decisive, peaceful election, taking office with a mandate to restructure the national debt and revive the copper-dependent economy.


Great Zimbabwe is built

Summary: Ancestors of the Shona began raising the mortarless granite walls of Great Zimbabwe, which would become the largest stone city in sub-Saharan Africa and give the modern nation its name.


Apex of the gold trade

Summary: At its height the city held perhaps 10,000–18,000 people and controlled a gold and ivory trade reaching the Swahili coast at Sofala and Kilwa; Chinese porcelain, Persian glass and a Kilwa coin have been excavated there.


Decline and abandonment

Summary: Great Zimbabwe was abandoned, probably owing to resource exhaustion and shifting trade routes, as the centre of power moved north toward the Zambezi and successor states.


Inscribed as a World Heritage Site

Summary: UNESCO inscribed Great Zimbabwe National Monument as a World Heritage Site, recognising it as a unique testimony to the Bantu civilisation of the Shona between the 11th and 15th centuries.


Rise of the Mutapa empire

Summary: The Mutapa (Mwenemutapa) empire emerged toward the Zambezi, inheriting Great Zimbabwe's gold trade and ruling much of the northern plateau and parts of present-day Mozambique.


Portuguese intervention in the gold trade

Summary: Portuguese traders based at Sofala and on the Zambezi pressed into the interior, establishing fairs and interfering in Mutapa politics, steadily weakening the empire over the next century.


The Torwa state and Khami

Summary: In the south-west the Torwa state built its capital at Khami near present-day Bulawayo, continuing the stone-walling tradition in decorated terraces; Khami is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


The Rozvi state under Changamire Dombo

Summary: Changamire Dombo founded the Rozvi state, absorbing the Torwa and expelling Portuguese fairs from the plateau around the 1690s; Rozvi power dominated the region until the Mfecane in the 1830s.


The Ndebele settle the south-west

Summary: Mzilikazi led the Ndebele north during the Mfecane and established a centralised military kingdom around Bulawayo, dominating the south-western plateau and its Shona inhabitants.


Rudd Concession and the Pioneer Column

Summary: Lobengula signed the 1888 Rudd Concession granting mining rights to Rhodes's agents; Rhodes won a royal charter in 1889 and in 1890 the British South Africa Company's Pioneer Column occupied Mashonaland, raising the flag at Fort Salisbury on 13 September.


First Matabele War

Summary: Company forces invaded and destroyed the Ndebele kingdom; Lobengula fled and soon died, and the British South Africa Company annexed Matabeleland.


First Chimurenga risings

Summary: The Ndebele and Shona rose against Company rule in revolts inspired in part by spirit mediums such as Nehanda and Kaguvi; the risings were crushed and their leaders executed.


Southern Rhodesia becomes a self-governing colony

Summary: After a settler referendum, Company rule ended and Southern Rhodesia became a self-governing British colony, with land and political power reserved for the white minority.


Land Apportionment Act

Summary: Settler legislation formalised racial division of land, reserving the most productive areas for the white minority and restricting African landholding, a grievance that fuelled later nationalism.


Founding of ZANU and ZAPU

Summary: African nationalism crystallised in two movements: ZAPU under Joshua Nkomo and the breakaway ZANU, soon led toward armed struggle by figures including Robert Mugabe.


Unilateral Declaration of Independence

Summary: Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front declared independence from Britain to preserve white-minority rule; Britain and the UN refused recognition and imposed sanctions.


The liberation war (Second Chimurenga)

Summary: Guerrilla forces of ZANU (ZANLA) and ZAPU (ZIPRA), based in Mozambique and Zambia, waged an escalating war against the Rhodesian state through the 1970s.


Lancaster House Agreement

Summary: Talks in London produced an agreement providing for a ceasefire, a new constitution and British-supervised elections, ending the war and opening the path to majority rule.


Independence under Robert Mugabe

Summary: Zimbabwe became an internationally recognised independent state, with Mugabe's ZANU(PF) in power after winning the February 1980 election.


The Gukurahundi massacres

Summary: The army's Fifth Brigade carried out massacres in Matabeleland and the Midlands targeting ZAPU supporters and Ndebele civilians; estimates of the dead range from several thousand to over twenty thousand. The campaign ended with the 1987 Unity Accord.


Fast-track land reform

Summary: The government backed often-violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms; the disruption, with drought and sanctions, helped trigger a severe economic collapse.


Hyperinflation and dollarisation

Summary: Inflation reached among the highest rates ever recorded, peaking in late 2008; in 2009 Zimbabwe abandoned its own currency for foreign ones such as the US dollar.


Mugabe forced from power

Summary: After a military intervention and the threat of impeachment, Robert Mugabe resigned after thirty-seven years in power, and Emmerson Mnangagwa became president.