The Struve Geodetic Arc

Summary: Five of the surviving station points of the Struve Geodetic Arc, the first accurate measurement of a long meridian segment carried out across the empire between 1816 and 1855, lie in Belarus and are inscribed by UNESCO.


Nasha Niva and the national awakening

Summary: The newspaper Nasha Niva, published in Vilnius from 1906, became the platform of the Belarusian national revival, carrying the early work of the poets Yanka Kupala and Yakub Kolas.


Belarusian People's Republic proclaimed

Summary: Under German occupation, the Rada in Minsk proclaimed the independence of the Belarusian People's Republic, the first modern declaration of Belarusian statehood, though it never controlled the territory and was soon driven into exile.


Founding of the Byelorussian SSR

Summary: As the Germans withdrew, the Bolsheviks announced the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic; in 1922 it became one of the four founding republics of the Soviet Union.


Treaty of Riga partitions Belarus

Summary: The treaty ending the Polish-Soviet War divided Belarus between Poland and Soviet Russia along the line of the first partition; western Belarus went to Poland and the east became the Byelorussian SSR.


Stalinist terror and Kurapaty

Summary: Amid forced collectivisation, the NKVD carried out mass executions of Belarusians at Kurapaty near Minsk between 1937 and 1941; the mass graves, revealed in 1988, became the emblem of Soviet repression in Belarus.


Reunification of western Belarus

Summary: Following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the German invasion of Poland, Soviet forces entered eastern Poland and western Belarus was annexed to the Byelorussian SSR, reuniting the Belarusian lands.


Nazi occupation and mass death

Summary: The German occupation killed a quarter to a third of the population; the people of Belarus fell from about 9.2 million before the war to roughly 6.3 million by late 1944, with cities like Minsk left in ruins.


The Khatyn massacre

Summary: German forces and auxiliaries burned the village of Khatyn with its inhabitants, one of hundreds of Belarusian villages annihilated in anti-partisan reprisals and a lasting symbol of the occupation's brutality.


Founding member of the United Nations

Summary: In recognition of the Belarusian people's role in defeating fascism, the Byelorussian SSR signed the UN Charter at San Francisco in 1945, becoming a founding member of the United Nations despite not being an independent state.


The Chernobyl disaster

Summary: The reactor explosion at Chernobyl in Ukraine sent about 70 percent of its radioactive fallout onto Belarus, contaminating nearly a quarter of the country's territory and affecting some 2.2 million people.


Independence of Belarus

Summary: After declaring sovereignty on 27 July 1990, the Supreme Soviet gave the declaration constitutional force on 25 August 1991 in the wake of the Moscow coup, proclaiming the independent Republic of Belarus.


Belavezha Accords dissolve the USSR

Summary: In the Belavezha forest in Belarus, part of the UNESCO-listed Belovezhskaya Pushcha, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, including Stanislau Shushkevich, signed accords declaring that the USSR had ceased to exist and founding the Commonwealth of Independent States.


Lukashenka elected president

Summary: Alyaksandr Lukashenka won Belarus's first presidential election on an anti-corruption platform and went on to consolidate authoritarian rule and forge ever-deeper ties with Russia.


Treaty on the Union State with Russia

Summary: Lukashenka and Yeltsin signed a Treaty on the Creation of a Union State, a blueprint for deep Russian-Belarusian integration that has bound the two countries ever closer.


Disputed election and mass protests

Summary: Lukashenka's claimed landslide re-election sparked the largest protests in Belarusian history; the EU declared the vote neither free nor fair and refused to recognise his mandate, while he held on with Russian support.


Maya settlement of the lowlands

Summary: Maya-speaking peoples settled the lowland forests and river valleys of present-day Belize, founding farming villages that over centuries grew into towns and cities across the heart of the Maya world.


Caracol defeats Tikal

Summary: Caracol, allied with Calakmul, won a decisive "Star War" victory over Tikal in 562 CE; the defeated city carved no monuments for over a century, marking Caracol's rise as a great power of the southern lowlands.


Height of the Classic Maya cities

Summary: Caracol, Xunantunich, Lamanai, Altun Ha and others flourished as ceremonial and political centres, with monumental architecture, hieroglyphic inscriptions and populations in the tens of thousands sustained by intensive agriculture.


The Classic Maya collapse

Summary: From the late eighth century the southern lowland cities ceased raising monuments and were abandoned, in a prolonged collapse attributed to drought, environmental stress and warfare — though Lamanai and scattered Maya communities endured.


British woodcutters settle the coast

Summary: English and Scottish buccaneers and logwood cutters began settling the coast of present-day Belize, beyond effective Spanish control; calling themselves the Baymen, they cut logwood for the European dye trade.


Enslaved Africans imported for the timber trade

Summary: From the early 1700s the Baymen imported enslaved Africans, many via Jamaica and Bermuda, to cut and haul logwood and then mahogany — the labour on which the settlement's forest economy rested.


Spain concedes cutting rights

Summary: By the treaties of Paris (1763) and Versailles (1783) Spain granted British subjects the right to cut logwood — and after 1786 the more valuable mahogany — within defined limits, while reserving sovereignty over the territory.


Battle of St. George's Caye

Summary: In engagements off St. George's Caye, the outnumbered Baymen, a small British force and enslaved Africans repelled a Spanish fleet from the Yucatán; the Spanish withdrew on 10 September, ending the last attempt to expel the settlers.


The Garifuna reach the southern coast

Summary: The Garifuna (Garinagu), deported by the British from St. Vincent, settled the southern coast around Stann Creek and Punta Gorda; their arrival on 19 November is marked as Garifuna Settlement Day, a national holiday from 1941.


Emancipation completed

Summary: Following abolition across the British Empire from 1834, the apprenticeship system ended in British Honduras on 1 August 1838, freeing the enslaved; the freed African population formed the core of the colony's Creole society.


Caste War refugees swell the population

Summary: The Caste War of Yucatán drove thousands of Maya and Spanish-speaking Mestizo refugees into the colony's north and west, adding to the Creole and Garifuna populations and deepening Belize's plural society.


The Anglo-Guatemalan boundary treaty

Summary: Britain and Guatemala signed a treaty fixing the settlement's limits from the Río Hondo to the Sarstoon; the unfulfilled Article 7, promising a means of communication never built, became the root of Guatemala's later claim.


The Colony of British Honduras

Summary: The settlement was formally declared the Colony of British Honduras under a lieutenant-governor subordinate to Jamaica; it became a separate Crown Colony in 1871 and was made independent of Jamaica under its own governor in 1884.


The People's United Party founded

Summary: Amid anger over the 1949 currency devaluation, the People's United Party was founded and soon led by George Cadle Price; it championed democratic rights and self-rule and would dominate Belizean politics for decades.


Universal adult suffrage

Summary: Britain granted universal adult suffrage to British Honduras in 1954; the PUP won the ensuing elections, beginning a long run of electoral dominance that carried Price's party toward self-government and independence.


Internal self-government

Summary: Under a new constitution Britain granted internal self-government, retaining only defence and foreign affairs; George Price became premier, with Belizeans now running their own domestic affairs.


British Honduras renamed Belize

Summary: In June 1973 the colony's name was officially changed from British Honduras to Belize, an assertion of national identity adopted eight years before formal independence.


Independence as Belize

Summary: Belize became an independent state within the Commonwealth on 21 September 1981 with George Price as first prime minister — the last British colony on the Central American mainland to win independence, its frontier still claimed by Guatemala.


Recognition and an embassy

Summary: Five weeks after independence the United States raises its consulate general to embassy status, recognising Belize and establishing diplomatic relations on the same day.


Barrier Reef made a World Heritage site

Summary: UNESCO inscribed the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System — seven protected areas including the Blue Hole and Half Moon Caye — as a World Heritage site, recognising the largest reef in the Atlantic-Caribbean and second-largest on Earth.


Special Agreement on the dispute

Summary: Belize and Guatemala signed a Special Agreement committing to submit Guatemala's territorial, insular and maritime claim to the International Court of Justice, subject to approval by referendum in each country.


Belize votes to go to the ICJ

Summary: After Guatemalans approved referral on 15 April 2018, Belizeans voted on 8 May 2019 to submit the dispute to the International Court of Justice; the Court was seised of the case on 7 June 2019.


Pleadings before the World Court

Summary: Guatemala and Belize filed written pleadings before the International Court of Justice in the case "Guatemala's Territorial, Insular and Maritime Claim (Guatemala/Belize)", moving toward a final, binding judgment on the century-old dispute.


A nation of 419,000

Summary: The Statistical Institute of Belize puts the mid-year population at 418,982 — a country the size of Wales with fewer people than a mid-sized city, holding the Atlantic's largest reef and some of the Maya world's greatest cities.


Tiwanaku reaches its apogee

Summary: The city of Tiwanaku near Lake Titicaca flourishes as the spiritual and political centre of a powerful Andean culture, building the monumental complex later inscribed by UNESCO.


The Aymara lordships

Summary: After Tiwanaku's decline, Aymara-speaking kingdoms dominate the highlands around Lake Titicaca until the rise of the Inca.


Inca conquest of the highlands

Summary: The Inca empire expands south into the region the Spanish would call Charcas, absorbing the Aymara lands while permitting them their language and identity.


Spanish conquest of Charcas

Summary: Spanish forces subdue the highlands of Upper Peru, organising them as the Audiencia of Charcas within the Viceroyalty of Peru.


Silver discovered at Cerro Rico

Summary: The discovery of immense silver deposits in the mountain above Potosi sets off a boom that makes the city one of the largest and richest in the world.


Toledo systematises the mita

Summary: Viceroy Francisco de Toledo organises the mita, a forced labour draft that compels indigenous men across the Andes to work the deadly mines and mercury refineries of Potosi.


Potosi feeds the Spanish empire

Summary: Potosi's silver becomes the principal source of bullion for the Spanish crown, financing its empire while consuming the lives of indigenous mitayos.


Tupac Katari besieges La Paz

Summary: The Aymara leader Tupac Katari, part of the great Andean rebellion begun by Tupac Amaru II, lays siege to La Paz before being captured and executed.


Uprisings at Chuquisaca and La Paz

Summary: Revolts in Upper Peru in 1809, sparked by the Spanish crisis under Napoleon, are remembered among the first independence movements in the Americas.


Battle of Ayacucho

Summary: Antonio Jose de Sucre routs the last great royalist army at Ayacucho, sealing the independence of Spanish South America and opening the way to liberate Charcas.


Republic of Bolivia proclaimed

Summary: A congress at Chuquisaca declares the independence of Upper Peru as a republic named Bolivia in honour of Simon Bolivar, with Sucre soon its first president.


War of the Pacific

Summary: Chile defeats Bolivia and its ally Peru and annexes Bolivia's coast; Bolivia loses its Pacific province of Antofagasta and becomes landlocked.


Treaty confirms the loss of the coast

Summary: A treaty between Bolivia and Chile formally cedes the Pacific coast to Chile, fixing Bolivia's landlocked status and a lasting national grievance.


The age of the tin barons

Summary: Tin replaces silver as Bolivia's great export, making a handful of mine owners enormously rich while the indigenous mine workers labour in poverty.


The Chaco War with Paraguay

Summary: Bolivia is defeated by Paraguay in a brutal war over the Gran Chaco, losing most of the disputed land and discrediting the old governing order.


The National Revolution

Summary: A popular insurrection brings the MNR and Victor Paz Estenssoro to power, launching reforms that reshape Bolivia.


Tin nationalised, suffrage and land reform

Summary: The revolutionary government nationalises the tin mines, grants universal suffrage to the indigenous majority, and decrees a sweeping agrarian reform.


Military coup ends the revolution

Summary: The armed forces overthrow Paz Estenssoro, ending the revolutionary era and beginning eighteen years of military rule.


Death of Che Guevara

Summary: The revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara is captured and killed by the Bolivian army while leading a failed guerrilla campaign in the southeast.


Return to democracy

Summary: After years of military rule and the violent Garcia Meza regime, the armed forces cede power to Congress, which makes Hernan Siles Zuazo president.


Hyperinflation and stabilisation

Summary: Amid catastrophic hyperinflation, a returning Paz Estenssoro imposes a drastic stabilisation programme that ends the crisis but brings severe austerity.


Evo Morales takes office

Summary: Evo Morales, leader of the MAS, becomes Bolivia's first indigenous president, beginning an era of indigenous-majority politics and hydrocarbon nationalisation.


Plurinational constitution

Summary: A new constitution refounds Bolivia as a plurinational state recognising its indigenous nations and expanding their rights.


Disputed election and Morales's resignation

Summary: After a contested October vote that an OAS audit found marred by irregularities, weeks of protest and the loss of military and police support lead Morales to resign and go into exile.


Return of the MAS under Arce

Summary: Luis Arce wins the presidency for the MAS, returning the party to power a year after Morales's fall.


Turn to the centre-right

Summary: Amid economic crisis and a split between Arce and Morales, the centrist Rodrigo Paz wins the presidency, ending nearly twenty years of MAS rule.


Ancient settlement of the land

Summary: Hunter-gatherer peoples occupy what is now Brazil over many millennia, leaving rock art and ancient sites across the interior and the northeast.


Tupi-Guarani expansion

Summary: Tupi-Guarani-speaking peoples spread across the Atlantic coast and into the interior, developing the farming and village societies later encountered by Europeans.


Complex Amazonian societies

Summary: Riverine peoples of Amazonia sustain substantial settled populations, managing forests and soils on a scale long underestimated by outsiders.


Some thousand nations at contact

Summary: On the eve of European arrival, perhaps two to four million people in hundreds of distinct nations inhabit the territory of present-day Brazil.


Cabral claims Brazil for Portugal

Summary: Pedro Alvares Cabral makes landfall on the coast near present-day Porto Seguro and claims the land for the Portuguese crown.


The sugar economy

Summary: Sugar plantations and mills worked by enslaved labour rise in Pernambuco and Bahia, making Brazil a leading producer and the colony's chief source of wealth.


Transatlantic slave trade

Summary: Brazil becomes the largest single destination of the Atlantic slave trade, receiving roughly 4.8-5 million enslaved Africans over more than three centuries.


Gold rush in Minas Gerais

Summary: The discovery of gold in the interior sets off a vast rush, founding towns such as Ouro Preto and shifting the colony's centre southward.


The court moves to Rio

Summary: Fleeing Napoleon, the Portuguese royal court relocates to Rio de Janeiro, which becomes the seat of the empire and is opened to wider trade.


Independence and the Empire

Summary: Dom Pedro proclaims independence at the Cry of Ipiranga and is acclaimed Emperor Pedro I, founding the Empire of Brazil.


Reign of Pedro II begins

Summary: Pedro II assumes personal rule, beginning a long reign that brings political stability and the rise of the coffee economy.


War of the Triple Alliance

Summary: Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay defeat Paraguay in the deadliest war in South American history, at enormous human and financial cost.


Abolition of slavery

Summary: Princess Isabel signs the Lei Aurea, abolishing slavery without compensation; Brazil is the last country in the Americas to do so.


Proclamation of the Republic

Summary: A military coup led by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca deposes Pedro II and proclaims the Republic, ending the monarchy.


First republican constitution

Summary: The Constitution of 1891 establishes a federal republic with strong states, modelled in part on the United States.


War of Canudos

Summary: The army crushes a large millenarian community in the Bahian backlands, exposing the gulf between the republican coast and the impoverished interior.


Mass immigration

Summary: Millions of immigrants, especially Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, and Japanese, arrive to work coffee and settle the south, reshaping Brazilian society.


Revolution of 1930

Summary: A disputed election amid the Depression brings down the Old Republic, and Getulio Vargas takes power, beginning a new era.


The Estado Novo

Summary: Vargas imposes a centralised dictatorship, ruling by decree, banning parties, and censoring the press until his ouster in 1945.


Inauguration of Brasilia

Summary: The purpose-built modernist capital, designed by Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, is inaugurated in the interior, shifting Brazil's centre of gravity inland.


Military coup

Summary: The armed forces overthrow President Joao Goulart and seize power, beginning twenty-one years of military dictatorship.


Institutional Act Number Five

Summary: AI-5 suspends habeas corpus and civil liberties, opening the regime's most repressive phase of censorship, torture, and disappearances.


Return to civilian rule

Summary: After a gradual political opening, the military hands power back to civilians, ending the dictatorship.


The Citizen Constitution

Summary: A new constitution restores full democracy and enshrines an expansive charter of civil, political, and social rights.


Plano Real ends hyperinflation

Summary: A new currency and stabilisation plan tame runaway inflation, reshaping the economy and politics of the 1990s.


Lula and social inclusion

Summary: Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's governments expand social programmes during a commodities boom, lifting millions out of poverty.


Impeachment amid Lava Jato

Summary: President Dilma Rousseff is impeached as the sweeping Car Wash corruption investigation reshapes Brazilian politics.


Brasilia attacked, democracy holds

Summary: Supporters of the defeated president storm the Congress, presidential palace, and Supreme Court; the institutions withstand the assault.


Brunei trades with China as Po-ni

Summary: Chinese sources record a trading kingdom on the north coast of Borneo, called Po-ni, exchanging tribute and goods with the Chinese empire from around the 6th century.


Boni described as a wealthy maritime kingdom

Summary: A Chinese account portrays Boni as a prosperous state with a fleet to protect its trade in camphor, spices, and forest products drawn from the Bornean interior.


Tributary ties to Majapahit

Summary: Brunei comes under the cultural and political influence of the Hindu Javanese empire of Majapahit, to which it pays tribute, while maintaining its long-standing relationship with China.


Conversion to Islam and the first sultan

Summary: Awang Alak Betatar embraces Islam, takes the title Sultan Muhammad Shah, and becomes the first sultan of Brunei, refounding the state as an Islamic sultanate.


Founding of the ruling dynasty

Summary: The line descended from Muhammad Shah, later the House of Bolkiah, establishes itself as Brunei's royal house, beginning a continuous monarchy that endures to the present.


Accession of Sultan Bolkiah

Summary: Bolkiah, the fifth sultan, comes to the throne and presides over Brunei's golden age, expanding the sultanate's dominion across Borneo and the surrounding seas.


Empire at its zenith

Summary: Under Bolkiah, Brunei's power extends over the whole of Borneo, the Sulu Archipelago, and into the Philippines, with Bruneian influence reaching as far as Manila.


Magellan's expedition reaches Brunei

Summary: The ships of Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation anchor off Brunei and record a wealthy capital ruled by the great Bolkiah, who controls Borneo and neighbouring islands.


Spanish attack on the capital

Summary: A Spanish expedition from the Philippines briefly captures Brunei's capital during a war with the sultanate before being forced to withdraw, signalling the new European challenge.


Cession of Sarawak to James Brooke

Summary: After helping put down a revolt, the English adventurer James Brooke is made rajah of Sarawak, founding the White Rajah dynasty and beginning the dismemberment of Brunei's territory.


Labuan ceded to Britain

Summary: Brunei cedes the island of Labuan in Brunei Bay to Great Britain, which establishes it as a crown colony, further reducing the sultanate's holdings.


Brunei becomes a British protectorate

Summary: Sultan Hashim signs a treaty placing Brunei under British protection, transferring control of its foreign affairs to Britain while preserving the sultanate from absorption.


British Residency system imposed

Summary: A supplementary agreement installs a British Resident to advise the sultan on all matters but Malay custom and Islam; in practice the Resident comes to run the administration.


Oil struck at Seria

Summary: The British Malayan Petroleum Company, a Shell enterprise, makes the first commercial oil discovery at Seria, launching the petroleum industry that would make Brunei rich.


Japanese occupation begins

Summary: Japanese forces land at Kuala Belait and quickly occupy Brunei, seizing the strategically vital Seria oil fields; the occupation lasts until 1945.


Allied liberation

Summary: Australian troops land in Brunei Bay during the Borneo Campaign, ending the Japanese occupation; the capital and much of the country lie in ruins from the fighting and must be rebuilt after the war.


Constitution grants self-government

Summary: A written constitution gives Brunei internal self-government and ends the British Residency, with Britain keeping control of defence and foreign affairs.


The Brunei revolt

Summary: The Parti Rakyat Brunei's armed wing launches an uprising against the sultanate and the Malaysia plan; British forces crush it within days, and the party is banned.


Brunei stays out of Malaysia

Summary: Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien III decides not to join the new Federation of Malaysia, keeping Brunei on a separate course toward eventual independence.


Accession of Hassanal Bolkiah

Summary: Omar Ali Saifuddien III abdicates in favour of his son Hassanal Bolkiah, who becomes the 29th sultan and would go on to be the world's longest-reigning living monarch.


Full independence and Malay Islamic Monarchy

Summary: Brunei resumes full sovereignty from Britain; the sultan becomes prime minister and proclaims Melayu Islam Beraja, the Malay Islamic Monarchy, as the national philosophy.


Sharia penal code phased in

Summary: Brunei begins implementing a strict Sharia penal code in stages, with later phases drawing international condemnation, while pursuing the Wawasan 2035 plan to diversify beyond oil.


First Buddhist temples founded

Summary: Tibetan tradition credits King Songtsen Gampo with building the earliest Buddhist temples in the Bhutanese valleys, including Kyichu Lhakhang at Paro, as Buddhism spread south from Tibet.


Guru Rinpoche brings Buddhism to Bhutan

Summary: The tantric master Guru Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche) is said to have travelled into Bhutan, blessing sites such as Bumthang and the Taktsang cliff at Paro and marking the proper advent of Buddhism in the country.


Drukpa Kagyu tradition takes root

Summary: The Drukpa ('Dragon') Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism spreads into the southern valleys and becomes the dominant religious tradition, lending Bhutan its name Druk Yul, the Land of the Thunder Dragon.


Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal arrives in Bhutan

Summary: Fleeing a sectarian dispute in Tibet, the Drukpa Kagyu lama Ngawang Namgyal enters western Bhutan and is recognised as the Zhabdrung, beginning the unification of the country.


Punakha Dzong founded

Summary: The Zhabdrung begins building Punakha Dzong at the confluence of two rivers as his capital, one of a network of fortress-monasteries that became the seats of Bhutan's temporal and religious power.


Dual system of government established

Summary: The Zhabdrung institutes the chhoesi dual system, splitting power between a spiritual Je Khenpo and a secular Druk Desi; his death around this time is concealed to preserve the fledgling state.


A Chinese imperial army enters Bhutan

Summary: Qing forces invade and briefly establish control — the first of three outside powers to reach into the valleys within two centuries.


The first British intervention

Summary: A century before the Duar War, British forces intervene in Bhutan — the beginning of the Raj's long pressure on its southern frontier.


The Duar War with British India

Summary: After a failed British mission and disputes over the southern duars, Britain and Bhutan fight a five-month war that ends in Bhutanese defeat.


Treaty of Sinchula

Summary: Bhutan cedes the Bengal and Assam duars to British India in exchange for an annual subsidy, fixing its modern southern border and binding it to the Raj.


Treaty of Punakha

Summary: Revising the Sinchula terms, Britain increases Bhutan's subsidy and pledges non-interference in internal affairs while guiding its foreign relations, securing Bhutan's continued independence.


Ugyen Wangchuck crowned first king

Summary: An assembly at Punakha Dzong unanimously elects Ugyen Wangchuck, penlop of Tongsa, as the first hereditary Druk Gyalpo, ending the dual system and founding the Wangchuck dynasty.


Accession of the second king

Summary: On Ugyen Wangchuck's death the crown passes peacefully to his son Jigme Wangchuck, confirming the stability of the new hereditary monarchy.


The treaty with independent India

Summary: Delhi guarantees non-interference in Bhutan's internal affairs while retaining influence over its foreign relations — the terms of British Punakha, inherited by a new republic.


National Assembly established

Summary: King Jigme Dorji Wangchuck creates the Tshogdu, Bhutan's National Assembly, beginning the reform of the country's institutions alongside the abolition of serfdom and land redistribution.


Bhutan joins the United Nations

Summary: Bhutan is admitted as the 128th member of the United Nations, a milestone in its emergence from isolation and its assertion of full sovereignty.


Gross National Happiness proclaimed

Summary: On acceding to the throne, the young fourth king Jigme Singye Wangchuck advances Gross National Happiness as Bhutan's guiding measure of development, valuing well-being and culture over GDP alone.


Slavery abolished

Summary: The third king abolishes slavery and serfdom, one of the first acts of a reign that would open a closed kingdom deliberately and slowly.


The first foreign tourists

Summary: Bhutan admits its first tourists — a controlled opening, priced and permitted rather than free, and still the model today.


The census and the citizenship rules

Summary: A census brands many ethnic Nepalis illegal immigrants, and measures stressing Tibetan-derived Bhutanese culture antagonise the Lhotshampa; violent unrest follows in the south in 1990.


Exodus of the Lhotshampa

Summary: Amid 'one nation, one people' measures and stricter citizenship rules, tens of thousands of southern Bhutanese of Nepali origin leave or are expelled, and more than 100,000 end up in UNHCR camps in eastern Nepal.


Resettlement of Bhutanese refugees

Summary: A multinational programme led by UNHCR and IOM resettles over 100,000 Bhutanese refugees from Nepal to countries including the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe.


Television and the internet arrive

Summary: Limited television and internet services are permitted and several dozen political prisoners released, a decade after the kingdom tightened.


The treaty with India revised

Summary: A new agreement gives Bhutan more say over its own foreign and defence policy, loosening a constraint carried from 1910 through 1949.


Constitution and democratic monarchy

Summary: Following the country's first parliamentary elections, Bhutan's written Constitution comes into force, transforming the kingdom into a democratic constitutional monarchy with Gross National Happiness as a goal of the state.


Coronation of the fifth king

Summary: Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck is formally enthroned as the fifth Druk Gyalpo, his coronation timed to the centenary of the Wangchuck monarchy and the inauguration of democratic rule.


A prime minister questions Gross National Happiness

Summary: Tshering Tobgay says the concept is overused and masks real problems — rising debt, chronic unemployment, poverty and corruption.


Rock art at Tsodilo Hills

Summary: San hunter-gatherers paint the Tsodilo Hills; some images are dated to around 24,000 years before present, part of a record of over 4,500 paintings.


Herders and farmers arrive

Summary: Peoples bringing cattle, sheep and pottery move into present-day Botswana, beginning the long shift from hunter-gathering toward herding and farming societies.


Early Bantu settlement

Summary: Bantu-speaking settlers, among them the ancestors of the Kalanga, establish farming and cattle-keeping communities in the eastern part of the region.


Rise of the Tswana merafe

Summary: The Bangwaketse form the first major Tswana state in the region, followed by the Bakwena, Bangwato and Batawana, cattle-keeping chiefdoms ruled by dikgosi.


The difaqane convulses the region

Summary: Wars and forced migrations linked to the wider mfecane/difaqane disrupt Tswana society, bringing raiding, displacement and famine.


Sebego expels the Kololo

Summary: Sebego, regent of the Bangwaketse, raises some 4,000 men and permanently drives the invading Kololo out of the region.


Ndebele raids under Mzilikazi

Summary: Mzilikazi's Ndebele raid Tswana communities through the 1830s, capturing cattle, women and children before migrating north across the Limpopo.


London Missionary Society arrives

Summary: LMS missionaries reach the Tswana lands; Robert Moffat later founds Kuruman and translates the Bible into Setswana.


Livingstone founds Kolobeng

Summary: David Livingstone establishes the Kolobeng mission among the Bakwena near Kgosi Sechele, his only church and the source of his single convert.


Boer attack on the Bakwena

Summary: Transvaal Boers attack Sechele's Bakwena and sack Livingstone's Kolobeng mission, part of mounting pressure from the Transvaal on Tswana land.


Khama III becomes kgosi of the Bangwato

Summary: The Christian reformer Khama III takes the Bangwato chieftainship, banning liquor and aligning his powerful morafe with the missionaries.


Bechuanaland Protectorate declared

Summary: After Sir Charles Warren's expedition, Britain proclaims a protectorate over the territory north of the Molopo to check Boer and German expansion.


The three kings' mission to Britain

Summary: Khama III, Sebele I and Bathoen I travel to Britain and persuade the government to keep the protectorate out of Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company.

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Capital moved to Mafeking

Summary: The protectorate's administration is seated at Mafeking, a town outside the territory's own borders, where it remains until the 1960s.


Seretse Khama marries Ruth Williams

Summary: Bangwato heir Seretse Khama marries Englishwoman Ruth Williams in London, igniting a crisis with apartheid South Africa and Britain.


Exile and return of Seretse Khama

Summary: Britain exiles Seretse and Ruth to appease South Africa; he is allowed home in 1956 after renouncing the Bangwato throne, fuelling nationalism.


BDP wins the first general election

Summary: Seretse Khama's Bechuanaland Democratic Party wins self-government elections; Gaborone is built as the new capital.


Independence of Botswana

Summary: The protectorate becomes the Republic of Botswana with Seretse Khama as first president, entering nationhood as one of the world's poorest states.


Diamonds discovered at Orapa

Summary: De Beers geologists locate a major diamond kimberlite pipe at Orapa, the find that would transform Botswana's economy.


Debswana partnership formed

Summary: Botswana and De Beers form a 50-50 joint venture to mine diamonds, securing for the state a direct share of mineral wealth.


Death of Seretse Khama

Summary: Botswana's founding president dies in office; power passes peacefully to Vice-President Quett Masire, confirming the country's democratic stability.


The megaliths of Bouar are raised

Summary: Farmers near Bouar in the west erected multi-ton standing stones (tazunu), among the most important prehistoric monuments in Central Africa and evidence of organised Neolithic communities.


Ironworking and migration

Summary: Ubangian, Central Sudanic and Bantu-speaking peoples settled the watershed and ironworking spread, laying down the ethnic patchwork of Gbaya, Banda, Zande, Nzakara and others.


Zande and Bandia kingdoms expand

Summary: Under the Avongara nobility the Zande spread across the south-east, while the Bandia clan founded Ubangi River states including the Nzakara kingdom and the sultanate of Bangassou.


Dar al-Kuti founded under Wadai

Summary: The sultanate of Dar al-Kuti was established as a tributary of Dar Runga and ultimately of Wadai, becoming a staging ground for slave raids into the Banda and Nzakara lands to the south.


Al-Zubayr installs al-Sanusi at Dar al-Kuti

Summary: The Sudanese warlord Rabih az-Zubayr (al-Zubayr) deposed Kobur and installed Muhammad al-Sanusi, who from his base at Ndélé intensified the razzias that depopulated much of the Ubangi region.


France founds Bangui

Summary: French forces established a post at Bangui on the Ubangi River, the base from which they extended control over the territory that became the colony of Ubangi-Shari.


Concessionary companies take over

Summary: France leased huge tracts of Ubangi-Shari to private companies such as the Company of the Upper Ubangi Sultanates, whose militias exacted rubber and ivory through brutal forced labour.


Death of al-Sanusi of Dar al-Kuti

Summary: French forces killed Muhammad al-Sanusi at Ndélé, ending the slave-raiding sultanate of Dar al-Kuti; his successor's resistance was suppressed by 1912.


Kongo-Wara rebellion

Summary: The Gbaya prophet Karinou led a mass revolt against forced labour and railway recruitment; the French killed him in December 1928 and crushed the uprising by 1931, with thousands dead.


Boganda founds MESAN

Summary: Barthélemy Boganda, the territory's first deputy to the French National Assembly, founded the Movement for the Social Evolution of Black Africa, the engine of Central African nationalism.


Death of Boganda

Summary: Boganda, who had proclaimed the autonomous republic in December 1958 and championed a 'United States of Latin Africa', died in a plane crash months before independence; David Dacko succeeded him.


Independence from France

Summary: The Central African Republic became fully independent, with David Dacko as its first president and Bangui as its capital.


Ubangi-Shari joins French Equatorial Africa

Summary: The dependency France set up in 1894 is folded into the federation governed from Brazzaville, a structure that lasted until independence.


An assembly, and a seat in Paris

Summary: The territory gains its own assembly and representation in the French parliament; Barthélemy Boganda becomes the first Central African elected to it.


Self-government under Boganda

Summary: Ubangi-Shari achieves self-government within French Equatorial Africa with Boganda as prime minister, months before his death in an air crash.


Bokassa seizes power

Summary: Army commander Jean-Bédel Bokassa overthrew President David Dacko in the Saint-Sylvestre coup, beginning more than a decade of personal rule.


Coronation of Emperor Bokassa I

Summary: Having declared the Central African Empire in 1976, Bokassa crowned himself emperor in a lavish ceremony costing about US$20 million while the country remained among the world's poorest.


Killing of schoolchildren

Summary: Protests against compulsory school uniforms ended in the massacre of scores of detained children and students in Bangui, an atrocity widely linked to Bokassa that hastened the end of his rule.


France overthrows Bokassa

Summary: A French military operation (Barracuda) deposed Bokassa and restored David Dacko; Bokassa fled into exile and was later tried and convicted.


Bozizé seizes power

Summary: After coups by André Kolingba (1981) and an elected interlude under Ange-Félix Patassé, army chief François Bozizé overthrew Patassé, continuing the cycle of armed takeovers.


Patassé ends twelve years of military rule

Summary: Ange-Félix Patassé wins the presidency in elections that close the era opened by Bokassa and continued by his successors.


Séléka captures Bangui

Summary: The Séléka rebel coalition seized the capital and ousted President Bozizé; its leader Michel Djotodia declared himself president, the country's first Muslim head of state.


Sectarian civil war erupts

Summary: Reprisals between Séléka and the anti-balaka militias spiralled into sectarian massacres; attacks in Bangui in early December 2013 killed more than a thousand civilians.


UN establishes MINUSCA

Summary: After French and African Union deployments, the UN Security Council authorised the MINUSCA peacekeeping mission in April 2014; it assumed responsibility in September, alongside interim president Catherine Samba-Panza.


Khartoum peace agreement

Summary: President Touadéra's government and fourteen armed groups signed a peace accord in Khartoum, but implementation was partial and fighting soon resumed.


CPC offensive and Wagner

Summary: A rebel coalition (the CPC) attacked around the December 2020 elections; the government, increasingly backed by Russian Wagner Group mercenaries deployed from 2018, pushed it back with MINUSCA's help.


Peopling of the continent

Summary: The ancestors of First Nations were established across the Americas by the end of the last Ice Age, developing diverse societies, languages, and economies over thousands of years before European contact.


Norse arrival at L'Anse aux Meadows

Summary: Norse explorers established a short-lived base at L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland around the year 1000 — the first known European presence in the Americas, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


John Cabot reaches the Atlantic coast

Summary: Sailing for England, John Cabot reached the coast of present-day Atlantic Canada in 1497, beginning the sustained European interest in the region's fisheries and lands that would follow.


Jacques Cartier explores the St. Lawrence

Summary: Jacques Cartier explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence and claimed the region for France, opening the way for later French interest in the fur trade and settlement.


Champlain founds Quebec

Summary: Samuel de Champlain established Quebec as a fortified trading post on the St. Lawrence, founding the colony of New France and anchoring the French fur trade in alliance with Indigenous nations.


Founding of Montreal

Summary: French missionaries and settlers founded Ville-Marie, the future Montreal, as a mission and trading settlement that became a hub of the fur trade and a gateway to the interior.


Battle of the Plains of Abraham

Summary: British forces defeated the French outside Quebec City in the decisive Battle of the Plains of Abraham, the turning point of the Seven Years' War in North America that led to the fall of New France.


Treaty of Paris cedes New France to Britain

Summary: The Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years' War, with France ceding its North American mainland territories to Britain and bringing the French Catholic population of Canada under British rule.


Quebec Act

Summary: The Quebec Act restored French civil law, guaranteed freedom of Catholic worship, and enlarged Quebec's boundaries, securing the loyalty of French Canadians while inflaming the Thirteen Colonies.


Constitutional Act divides the Canadas

Summary: The Constitutional Act split Quebec into Upper Canada and Lower Canada, creating separate English- and French-majority colonies each with an elected assembly.


Rebellions in Upper and Lower Canada

Summary: Armed uprisings against oligarchic colonial rule in both Canadas were suppressed but led to Lord Durham's report and, ultimately, to responsible government.


Confederation — the Dominion of Canada

Summary: The British North America Act united Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick into the self-governing Dominion of Canada, with Sir John A. Macdonald as first prime minister.


Red River Resistance and Manitoba

Summary: Métis led by Louis Riel resisted the transfer of Rupert's Land to Canada, securing rights that shaped the creation of the province of Manitoba in 1870.


The Indian Act

Summary: The Indian Act consolidated federal control over the lives, lands, and governance of First Nations peoples, becoming a central instrument of assimilation and dispossession that remains in force in amended form.


Canadian Pacific Railway completed

Summary: The driving of the last spike at Craigellachie completed the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway, binding the new nation together and fulfilling a promise made to British Columbia at Confederation.


North-West Resistance and the execution of Riel

Summary: Métis and First Nations grievances on the prairies erupted in the North-West Resistance; its defeat and the hanging of Louis Riel deepened the divide between French and English Canada.


Canada in the First World War

Summary: Canada fought in the First World War as part of the British Empire but as a distinct national force; the costly victory at Vimy Ridge in 1917 became a symbol of emerging nationhood.


Conscription Crisis

Summary: The imposition of compulsory military service deeply divided English and French Canada, becoming one of the most divisive episodes in Canadian political history.


Statute of Westminster

Summary: The Statute of Westminster granted Canada legislative independence from the British Parliament, a landmark in its evolution toward full sovereignty.


Canada in the Second World War

Summary: Canada entered the Second World War by its own parliamentary decision and mobilised on a vast scale, contributing major forces to the Allied victory and emerging more industrialised and autonomous.


A new national flag and a maturing identity

Summary: Canada adopted the red-and-white maple leaf flag in 1965, a symbol of a distinct national identity as the post-war country built a welfare state and universal health care.


Official multiculturalism policy

Summary: Canada became the first country to adopt multiculturalism as official government policy, within a bilingual framework, recognising the contributions of diverse cultural communities.


Patriation of the Constitution

Summary: The Constitution Act, 1982, patriated Canada's constitution, entrenched the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, recognised Aboriginal rights, and ended the need for British legislation — completing Canada's path to full sovereignty.


Quebec sovereignty referendum

Summary: Quebec voters narrowly rejected sovereignty in the 1995 referendum, the closest of two votes on independence, underlining the enduring tension over the place of Quebec within Canada.


Truth and Reconciliation Commission reports

Summary: After years of survivor testimony, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission documented the harms of the residential school system, described it as cultural genocide, and issued 94 Calls to Action for reconciliation.


The Federal Charter of the forest cantons

Summary: Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden sealed a charter of mutual aid against outside lords, refusing foreign judges and pledging to keep the peace; later regarded as the founding act of the Swiss Confederation and its oldest constitutional document.


Battle of Morgarten

Summary: Men of Schwyz and Uri ambushed and destroyed a Habsburg army of knights under Duke Leopold I at Morgarten, the first great victory of the Confederation and a celebrated triumph of foot soldiers over mounted nobility.


Battle of Sempach

Summary: The Confederates routed a Habsburg army at Sempach and killed Duke Leopold III of Austria, breaking Habsburg power in the region and confirming the Confederacy as a serious military force.


The Burgundian Wars

Summary: Swiss and allied armies defeated Charles the Bold of Burgundy at Grandson and Murten in 1476 and at Nancy in 1477, where Charles fell; victory destroyed Burgundy as a power and made Swiss pikemen the most feared infantry in Europe.


The Confederacy of thirteen cantons

Summary: With the accession of Appenzell the league reached its early-modern form of thirteen cantons, a loose alliance of self-governing communities bound by oath rather than ruled by a single sovereign.


Battle of Marignano

Summary: A French army under Francis I decisively defeated the Swiss near Milan, the first great Swiss defeat in two hundred years; the Confederates withdrew from Italy, a retreat traditionally seen as the dawn of Swiss neutrality.


Zwingli's Reformation in Zürich

Summary: Huldrych Zwingli began preaching reform from the Grossmünster in Zürich, launching the Swiss Reformation; the movement won over several cities while the inner cantons remained Catholic, dividing the Confederation by confession.


Calvin and the Reformation in Geneva

Summary: John Calvin began the work that made Geneva the international centre of Reformed Protestantism, deepening the confessional division between the Protestant west and Catholic centre of Switzerland.


Peace of Westphalia: independence from the Empire

Summary: The settlement ending the Thirty Years' War formally recognised the Swiss Confederation's exemption from the Holy Roman Empire, confirming in law the independence the cantons had long held in fact.


French invasion and the Helvetic Republic

Summary: Revolutionary France conquered Switzerland and replaced the old Confederation with the Helvetic Republic, a centralised unitary state that abolished cantonal sovereignty and the privileges of the patrician towns.


Napoleon's Act of Mediation

Summary: After years of factional strife Napoleon imposed the Act of Mediation, restoring a confederal system and creating six new full cantons, including Vaud and Ticino, while keeping Switzerland tied to France.


Congress of Vienna recognises permanent neutrality

Summary: The European powers declared the perpetual neutrality of Switzerland to be in Europe's interest and guaranteed its territory; confirmed by the Treaty of Paris later that year, this made armed neutrality the foundation of Swiss policy.


The borders of modern Switzerland fixed

Summary: The Vienna settlement restored the cantons and set the Confederation's external borders, which have remained almost unchanged since, leaving curiosities such as the foreign enclaves of Büsingen and Campione d'Italia.


The Sonderbund War

Summary: After seven Catholic cantons formed the separatist Sonderbund, the federal army under General Dufour defeated it in under a month with fewer than a hundred deaths, ending Switzerland's last civil war.


The Federal Constitution

Summary: Switzerland adopted a federal constitution that turned the loose confederation into a modern federal state with a Federal Assembly, a collegial executive and a single market, while preserving the cantons; the assembly first met in Bern in November 1848.


Dunant at the Battle of Solferino

Summary: The Geneva businessman Henri Dunant witnessed the carnage of Solferino and organised relief for the wounded, an experience that inspired his 1862 book A Memory of Solferino and his call for protection of war victims.


Founding of the Red Cross (ICRC)

Summary: A committee of five Genevans took up Dunant's proposals and formed the body that became the International Committee of the Red Cross, adopting the red cross on white — the inverse of the Swiss flag — as the emblem of neutral medical aid.


The first Geneva Convention

Summary: A diplomatic conference convened by the Swiss government adopted the first Geneva Convention for the protection of the wounded in war, the foundation of modern international humanitarian law, of which Switzerland remains depositary.


Joining the League of Nations

Summary: Switzerland joined the new League of Nations, headquartered in Geneva, on terms that its permanent neutrality would be respected, confirming Geneva's role as a centre of international diplomacy.


Armed neutrality in the Second World War

Summary: Encircled by the Axis, Switzerland mobilised under General Henri Guisan, who rallied the army on the Rütli and adopted the Alpine Réduit defence; the country stayed unoccupied but later faced reckoning over refugees and looted assets.


Women win the federal vote

Summary: A referendum in 1971 finally granted Swiss women the right to vote and stand in federal elections, one of the last democracies in Europe to do so; the final canton was compelled to follow only in 1990.


Switzerland joins the United Nations

Summary: After rejecting membership in 1986, Swiss voters narrowly approved joining the UN in a referendum on 3 March 2002, and Switzerland became the 190th member state that September, while still standing outside the European Union.


A neutral federal republic in the heart of Europe

Summary: Switzerland remains a federal republic of twenty-six cantons and four languages, neutral and outside the EU yet enclosing the foreign enclaves of Büsingen and Campione d'Italia, with Geneva a global hub of diplomacy and humanitarian law.


Ancient peopling of the land

Summary: Hunting and gathering peoples settle the long territory between the Andes and the Pacific over many millennia, the deep ancestors of the Mapuche and the Andean peoples of the north.


The moai of Rapa Nui

Summary: On Easter Island, the Polynesian society of Rapa Nui carves and raises some 900 colossal stone moai on hundreds of ceremonial platforms, an unrivalled monumental tradition later recognised by UNESCO.


Inca expansion reaches the Maule

Summary: The Inca empire extends its influence into northern and central Chile but is unable to subdue the Mapuche, whose resistance checks imperial control near the Maule River.


Almagro's expedition turns back

Summary: Diego de Almagro leads the first Spanish entry into Chile as far as the Maule River; finding no gold or empire, the expedition returns to Peru, but the Spanish first clash with the Araucanians.


Founding of Santiago

Summary: Pedro de Valdivia founds Santiago de Nueva Extremadura in the central valley, the nucleus of Spanish Chile and its future capital.


Conquest reaches the Biobio

Summary: Valdivia extends Spanish rule south of the Biobio and founds Concepcion, pushing into the Mapuche heartland and igniting lasting resistance.


Mapuche defeat and kill Valdivia

Summary: At Tucapel, Mapuche forces led by Lautaro destroy a Spanish column and capture Valdivia, who is executed; the disaster opens the long Arauco War.


The frontier Captaincy General

Summary: Chile is governed as a poor, militarised captaincy general of the Spanish empire, its southern frontier held against an independent Mapuche nation that the conquest never subdued.


First national junta

Summary: Creole leaders in Santiago form a governing junta after the fall of the Spanish king, the founding act of Chilean self-government and the national day.


Crossing the Andes and Chacabuco

Summary: San Martin's Army of the Andes crosses the cordillera and defeats the royalists at Chacabuco, opening the road to Santiago and the liberation of Chile.


The Battle of Maipu

Summary: Patriot forces under San Martin, with O'Higgins, crush the Spanish royalists near Santiago, sealing Chilean independence on the mainland weeks after its formal declaration.


The Constitution of 1833

Summary: A conservative constitution shaped by Diego Portales establishes a strong centralised presidency, anchoring decades of unusual political stability.


The War of the Pacific

Summary: A dispute over nitrate taxes leads Chile to war with Peru and Bolivia; Chilean victories win the nitrate-rich Atacama and leave Bolivia landlocked.


Pacification of Araucania

Summary: After three centuries of independence, the Chilean state subdues the Mapuche south of the Biobio by military campaign and opens their territory to settlement.


Neruda wins the Nobel Prize

Summary: Pablo Neruda, poet, diplomat and senator, is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, crowning Chile's golden age of letters.


Election of Salvador Allende

Summary: The Marxist Salvador Allende of the Popular Unity coalition wins a narrow plurality and is confirmed by Congress, the first freely elected Marxist head of state in the Americas.


The military coup

Summary: The armed forces under General Augusto Pinochet overthrow President Salvador Allende, who dies as troops storm La Moneda, ending Chile's democratic experiment.


The Pinochet dictatorship

Summary: Pinochet's regime represses opponents through detention, torture, killing and forced disappearance while imposing free-market reforms; the abuses are later documented by the Rettig and Valech commissions.


The 1980 Constitution

Summary: A constitution drafted under the dictatorship is approved in a controlled plebiscite, entrenching military prerogatives and remaining, much amended, in force for decades.


The 'No' plebiscite

Summary: Asked to extend Pinochet's rule, Chileans vote No by 55 to 43 percent, compelling the open presidential election that opens the path back to democracy.


Return to democracy

Summary: Patricio Aylwin is inaugurated president, restoring civilian democratic rule and soon creating the Rettig Commission to investigate the dictatorship's crimes.


Pinochet arrested in London

Summary: Augusto Pinochet is detained in London on a foreign warrant for human-rights crimes, a landmark in the pursuit of accountability before his death in 2006.


The 'estallido social' protests

Summary: A metro fare rise in Santiago ignites the largest protests since the dictatorship, broadening into demands for reform of pensions, health, education and the constitution.


New constitution rejected

Summary: After a 2020 vote to rewrite the charter, Chileans reject a sweeping progressive draft 62 to 38 percent, a major blow to President Gabriel Boric; a later attempt also fails.


Shang dynasty rules the Yellow River valley

Summary: The Shang, the first Chinese dynasty with historical records, governs from cities such as Anyang and produces ritual bronzes and the oracle-bone script, the earliest known Chinese writing.


Oracle-bone divination records

Summary: Shang diviners inscribe questions to ancestors and deities on ox bones and turtle shells; these inscriptions are the oldest unambiguous Chinese writing and a primary source for early history.


Zhou conquest and the Mandate of Heaven

Summary: King Wu of Zhou defeats the Shang at the Battle of Muye and founds the Zhou dynasty, justifying the overthrow with the Mandate of Heaven, a doctrine of morally conditional rule that endures for millennia.


Western Zhou collapses; Eastern Zhou begins

Summary: Nomadic invasions force the Zhou court to flee east to Luoyang in 771 BCE, beginning the Eastern Zhou and a long decline of royal authority into the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods.


Lifetime of Confucius

Summary: Confucius (551-479 BCE) teaches that social order rests on moral cultivation, ritual, and proper human relationships; his thought becomes the dominant ethical tradition of imperial China.


Qin unifies China; the First Emperor is proclaimed

Summary: Qin completes its conquest of the Warring States and its king takes the title Shi Huangdi, founding the first unified Chinese empire and the centralized bureaucratic system that defines imperial China.


Frontier walls joined into the Great Wall

Summary: Under the First Emperor, earlier northern fortifications are connected into a unified defense against steppe invasions, the origin of the Great Wall that later dynasties would expand.


Death of the First Emperor and the terracotta army

Summary: Qin Shi Huang dies and is entombed near Xi'an in a colossal mausoleum guarded by roughly 8,000 terracotta warriors, rediscovered in 1974 and now a UNESCO World Heritage site.


Han dynasty consolidates the empire

Summary: After the Qin collapse, the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) institutionalizes Confucian-trained bureaucracy and the civil service, giving China its enduring model of imperial government and the name of its majority people.


Silk Road trade routes open under Emperor Wu

Summary: Emperor Wu's campaigns against the Xiongnu and missions into Central Asia open the overland Silk Road, linking China to India, Persia, and the Mediterranean in exchange of goods and ideas.


Collapse of the Han and centuries of division

Summary: The Han empire fragments into the Three Kingdoms and successive Northern and Southern Dynasties, a long era of disunion during which Buddhism takes deep root in China.


Sui dynasty reunifies China

Summary: The Sui (581-618) reunite north and south and build the Grand Canal, restoring a centralized empire after centuries of division and setting the stage for the Tang golden age.


Tang dynasty and a cosmopolitan golden age

Summary: The Tang dynasty (618-907) builds a vast, outward-looking empire centered on Chang'an, refining the examination system and producing a flowering of poetry; woodblock printing and gunpowder first appear.


Song dynasty and a commercial revolution

Summary: The Song dynasty (960-1279) presides over an economic and technological boom, introducing movable-type printing, government paper money, the navigational compass, and gunpowder weapons.


Kublai Khan founds the Mongol Yuan dynasty

Summary: Kublai Khan declares the Yuan dynasty in 1271 and completes the conquest of the Song by 1279, ruling China from Dadu (Beijing) as the first foreign-led dynasty to govern all of China.


Ming dynasty restores Han rule

Summary: Zhu Yuanzhang overthrows the Yuan and founds the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), which rebuilds the Great Wall in stone, constructs the Forbidden City, and revives Han Chinese imperial governance.


Zheng He's maritime voyages

Summary: The Ming admiral Zheng He leads seven vast treasure-fleet expeditions across Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the coast of Africa, projecting Chinese power before the dynasty turns inward.


Manchus establish the Qing dynasty

Summary: The Manchus capture Beijing and found the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), China's last imperial dynasty, which expands the empire to its greatest extent under the Kangxi and Qianlong emperors.


First Opium War and the 'unequal treaties'

Summary: War with Britain over the opium trade ends in Qing defeat and the Treaty of Nanjing (1842), ceding Hong Kong and opening treaty ports, the start of a century of foreign encroachment China calls its century of humiliation.


Xinhai Revolution erupts

Summary: The Wuchang Uprising of 10 October 1911 sparks the Xinhai Revolution against the Qing, rapidly spreading across the provinces and bringing down China's last imperial dynasty.


Republic of China founded; last emperor abdicates

Summary: Sun Yat-sen becomes provisional president of the Republic of China on 1 January 1912, and on 12 February the child emperor Puyi abdicates, ending more than two millennia of imperial rule.


Warlord Era of political fragmentation

Summary: The death of Yuan Shikai in 1916 plunges China into the Warlord Era, with regional militarists ruling much of the country until the Nationalists reassert partial unity by 1928.


Second Sino-Japanese War and the Nanjing Massacre

Summary: Japan's full-scale invasion from July 1937 brings catastrophic violence, including the December 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which Japanese forces murdered many tens of thousands of civilians and prisoners and committed mass rape.


Chinese Civil War resumes; Communist victory

Summary: After Japan's surrender, full-scale civil war between Nationalists and Communists resumes, ending in 1949 with Communist victory and the retreat of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government to Taiwan.


People's Republic of China proclaimed

Summary: Mao Zedong proclaims the People's Republic of China from the Tiananmen gate in Beijing on 1 October 1949, with Zhou Enlai as premier, after Communist victory in the civil war.


Great Leap Forward and the great famine

Summary: Mao's Great Leap Forward forces rapid collectivization and crude industrialization, causing a famine from 1959 to 1961 that killed an estimated 15 million to tens of millions of people.


Cultural Revolution

Summary: Mao launches the Cultural Revolution, a decade of political persecution, purges, and social upheaval that convulses Chinese society until his death in 1976.


Deng Xiaoping launches reform and opening

Summary: Under Deng Xiaoping, China begins 'reform and opening' in 1978, decollectivizing agriculture and embracing markets and foreign investment, igniting decades of rapid economic growth.


Tiananmen Square crackdown

Summary: The army violently suppresses pro-democracy demonstrations centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989, killing many protesters and reasserting tight Communist Party political control.


The savannas join the trans-Saharan trade

Summary: As the Ghana and Mali empires expanded southward, the northern peoples of the region — Senufo and Mandé — were drawn into trans-Saharan commerce, exchanging forest kola nuts for salt, cloth, and gold.


Dyula merchants found northern trading towns

Summary: Mandé-speaking Muslim merchants, the Dyula, established trading and Islamic centres such as Kong, Bondoukou, Bouna, and Begho, linking the rainforest to the markets of the Sahel.


Seku Watara founds the Empire of Kong

Summary: Seku Watara united the Dyula of Kong into a state, often called the Wattara Empire, that grew rich controlling the gold and kola trade and reached into present-day Burkina Faso, Mali, and Ghana.


Kong expands northward

Summary: Under Seku Watara and his kin the empire of Kong extended its reach, conquering toward Bobo-Dioulasso and cementing its dominance over the regional trade routes before central authority weakened after his death about 1745.


Akan states form on the eastern frontier

Summary: As the Asante Empire rose in present-day Ghana, Akan groups such as the Abron founded states near the eastern edge of modern Côte d'Ivoire, beginning a long era of Akan migration into the region.


The Baoulé migrate under Queen Abla Pokou

Summary: By tradition, Queen Abla Pokou broke from the Asante after a succession struggle and led her people west across the Comoé River, founding the Baoulé kingdom around Sakasso — the largest people of modern Côte d'Ivoire.


The Agni kingdoms of Indénié and Sanwi

Summary: Other Akan groups fleeing the Asante established the Agni (Anyi) kingdoms of Indénié and Sanwi in the south-east, near the lagoons and the Gold Coast, extending Akan institutions across the forest zone.


Earliest recorded French voyage to the coast

Summary: French mariners reached the West African coast; over the following centuries European traders worked the shore for ivory, gold, and other goods, giving the Ivory Coast its lasting name, though its surf-bound coast limited permanent contact.


France signs treaties on the lagoon coast

Summary: The naval officer Bouët-Willaumez concluded treaties with rulers around Grand-Bassam and Assinie, securing the first durable French trading footholds on the coast of present-day Côte d'Ivoire.


France constitutes the colony of Côte d'Ivoire

Summary: After protectorate treaties negotiated by Binger and Treich-Laplène, France formally established the colony of Côte d'Ivoire on 10 March 1893, naming Louis-Gustave Binger its first governor.


Capture of Samori Touré ends northern resistance

Summary: The Mandé empire-builder Samori Touré, who had resisted the French for years and sacked Kong, was captured at Guélémou on 29 September 1898 and exiled to Gabon, breaking organised resistance in the savanna.


Côte d'Ivoire joins French West Africa

Summary: The colony became a constituent territory of the Federation of French West Africa, governed from Dakar, and was developed as a source of cocoa, coffee, and timber for the metropole.


Head tax and forced labour

Summary: France imposed a head tax in 1900 and a forced-labour regime that compelled African men to work without pay on infrastructure and plantations, drawing recruits from the lands later organised as Upper Volta and provoking repeated revolts.


Houphouët-Boigny founds the African Agricultural Union

Summary: Félix Houphouët-Boigny organised African cocoa and coffee planters into the Syndicat Agricole Africain to win them the rights enjoyed by European growers — the start of his rise to political leadership.


Forced labour abolished

Summary: On a bill closely associated with Houphouët-Boigny, the French parliament abolished forced labour throughout the empire in 1946; the same year he helped found the inter-territorial RDA and its Ivorian party, the PDCI.


Independence under Houphouët-Boigny

Summary: After choosing autonomy within the French Community in a 1958 referendum, Côte d'Ivoire became a fully independent republic on 7 August 1960, with Félix Houphouët-Boigny as its first president.


The 'Ivorian miracle'

Summary: Liberal, export-led growth built on cocoa and coffee and close ties to France made Côte d'Ivoire one of the most prosperous states in sub-Saharan Africa, with Abidjan a thriving commercial hub.


Commodity slump ends the boom

Summary: A collapse in world cocoa and coffee prices ended the era of rapid growth, leaving heavy debt and rising discontent that would strain the one-party system.


Capital moved to Yamoussoukro

Summary: Houphouët-Boigny designated his birthplace, Yamoussoukro, the official political capital, though Abidjan remained the economic and administrative centre.


Basilica of Our Lady of Peace consecrated

Summary: The vast basilica at Yamoussoukro, modelled on St Peter's in Rome and recognised as the largest church in the world, was consecrated by Pope John Paul II amid controversy over its enormous cost.


First multiparty election

Summary: Under domestic and international pressure Houphouët-Boigny legalised opposition parties and won the country's first multiparty presidential election against the historian Laurent Gbagbo.


Death of Houphouët-Boigny

Summary: The country's founding president died in office after more than three decades in power, leaving a celebrated record of stability and growth but no clearly prepared successor.


The politics of 'Ivoirité'

Summary: President Bédié promoted 'Ivoirité', a doctrine of authentic Ivorian belonging used to exclude rivals such as Alassane Ouattara and to question the citizenship of northerners and immigrants, deepening a north–south rift.


The first coup d'état

Summary: General Robert Guéï overthrew President Henri Konan Bédié in the country's first military coup, ending the PDCI's unbroken hold on power since independence.


Civil war divides the country

Summary: An army mutiny grew into a rebellion that split Côte d'Ivoire between a government-held south and a rebel-held north under the Forces Nouvelles, drawing in French and UN peacekeepers.


Ouagadougou Political Agreement

Summary: A peace accord brokered through regional mediation brought rebel leader Guillaume Soro into a unity government and set a path toward reunification and elections, easing the first civil war.


Post-election crisis

Summary: After the disputed November 2010 runoff, Gbagbo refused to cede to Ouattara; the standoff became open conflict that killed about 3,000 people before pro-Ouattara forces, backed by France and the UN, captured Gbagbo on 11 April 2011.


Recovery under Ouattara

Summary: Alassane Ouattara took office and presided over a return to rapid growth; he was re-elected in 2015 and won a contested third term in 2020 that opponents argued was unconstitutional.


Rise of the Sao culture

Summary: South of Lake Chad the Sao began building walled towns and producing distinctive terracotta and bronze artwork, forming one of the earliest known complex societies in the region.


The Bantu expansion begins

Summary: The Grassfields of the Cameroon-Nigeria borderlands are widely held to lie near the homeland of the Bantu languages, whose speakers spread from this region across central and southern Africa.


Height of the Sao city-states

Summary: The Sao settlements of the Lake Chad basin reached their apex between roughly the ninth and fifteenth centuries before being absorbed by neighbouring states and peoples such as the Kotoko.


Portuguese name the river of prawns

Summary: Portuguese sailors reaching the Wouri estuary named it Rio dos Camaroes, the river of prawns, after its abundant crustaceans; the name later evolved into Kamerun, Cameroun, and Cameroon.


Founding of the Bamum kingdom

Summary: The Bamum dynasty was founded by Nshare Yen, who established Foumban as the capital of a Grassfields kingdom that grew through conquest and diplomacy.


Modibo Adama founds the Adamawa Emirate

Summary: Acting under Usman dan Fodio, the Fulani leader Modibo Adama launched a jihad into Fombina and established the Adamawa Emirate, spreading Islam and Fulani rule across the north as part of the Sokoto Caliphate.


King Njoya devises the Bamum script

Summary: King Ibrahim Njoya of Bamum and his palace circle created an original writing system, the Bamum script, and the Shumom language, used to record the kingdom's history, laws, and knowledge.


Douala treaty and German protectorate

Summary: The Douala kings Bell and Akwa signed a treaty of protection with German agents; Gustav Nachtigal then proclaimed a German protectorate over Kamerun, beginning colonial rule.


France cedes Neukamerun

Summary: Under the Treaty of Fez ending the Agadir crisis, France ceded the large territory of Neukamerun to Germany, expanding the colony eastward.


The Kamerun campaign

Summary: British, French, and Belgian forces invaded German Kamerun from August 1914; after a prolonged campaign the last German garrison surrendered in early 1916.


Partition into French and British mandates

Summary: The League of Nations divided the former German colony between France, which took the larger French Cameroun, and Britain, which administered the Northern and Southern Cameroons alongside Nigeria.


Founding of the UPC

Summary: Ruben Um Nyobe and others founded the Union des Populations du Cameroun, a nationalist party demanding immediate independence and the reunification of French and British Cameroon.


The UPC is banned

Summary: After waves of unrest, the French administration outlawed the UPC, pushing the movement underground and into an armed insurgency.


Killing of Ruben Um Nyobe

Summary: The UPC leader Ruben Um Nyobe was tracked down and shot by a French-led military unit; repression of the insurgency continued in the Bassa and Bamileke regions with heavy loss of life.


Independence of French Cameroun

Summary: The UN trusteeship administered by France ended and French Cameroun became an independent republic, with Ahmadou Ahidjo as its first president.


The British Cameroons plebiscite

Summary: In a UN-supervised vote the Northern Cameroons chose to join Nigeria while the Southern Cameroons chose to reunite with the Republic of Cameroon.


Reunification and federation

Summary: The Southern Cameroons joined the republic to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon, uniting francophone East Cameroon and anglophone West Cameroon following the Foumban Conference.


From federation to unitary state

Summary: A referendum abolished the two-state federation in favour of a centralised United Republic of Cameroon, ending West Cameroon's separate autonomy.


Ahidjo resigns; Biya succeeds

Summary: Ahmadou Ahidjo unexpectedly resigned the presidency and was succeeded by his prime minister, Paul Biya.


Failed coup against Biya

Summary: An attempted coup by elements loyal to former president Ahidjo was suppressed within days, after which Biya tightened his hold on power.


Return to multiparty politics

Summary: Biya legalised opposition parties in 1990 and held the first multiparty presidential election in 1992, which he won amid allegations of irregularities.


Anglophone protests begin

Summary: Lawyers and teachers in the North-West and South-West regions launched protests against the marginalisation of English-speaking Cameroonians; a security crackdown followed.


Escalation into armed conflict

Summary: The protests gave way to an armed insurgency as separatists proclaimed the independent state of Ambazonia; the conflict has since killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands.


Biya re-elected at 92

Summary: Paul Biya won a further presidential term, extending a tenure begun in 1982; opposition figures disputed the official results.


Kingdom of Kongo founded

Summary: Lukeni lua Nimi establishes the kingdom of Kongo on the lower Congo River, ruling from Mbanza Kongo.


Kongo's king baptised as João I

Summary: After Diogo Cão's 1483 landfall, King Nzinga a Nkuwu accepts Catholic baptism, taking the name João I and opening close ties with Portugal.


Afonso I protests the slave trade

Summary: King Afonso I (Nzinga Mbemba) writes to João III of Portugal complaining that traders are illegally enslaving his subjects, even as the Atlantic trade expands.


Kuba kingdom unified by Shyaam

Summary: Shyaam a-Mbul a Ngoong founds the Bushong dynasty, uniting chiefdoms between the Sankuru and Kasai into the Kuba kingdom famed for its art.


Battle of Mbwila breaks Kongo

Summary: Portuguese forces defeat Kongo and kill King António I at Mbwila (Ambuila); the kingdom splinters into rival factions and a long civil war.


Atlantic slave trade at its height

Summary: Central African captives are funnelled in vast numbers into the transatlantic trade, hollowing out communities across the lower Congo.


Tippu Tip's eastern slaving state

Summary: Swahili-Arab trader Tippu Tip builds a domain around Kasongo in Maniema, raiding the eastern Congo for ivory and slaves.


Stanley descends the Congo River

Summary: Henry Morton Stanley completes the first European traverse of the Congo from interior to the Atlantic, mapping the basin for would-be colonisers.


Leopold hires Stanley for the Congo

Summary: King Leopold II commissions Stanley to build stations and obtain treaties from local chiefs, laying the basis for a private colonial claim.


Congo Free State proclaimed

Summary: Following the Berlin Conference, Leopold II establishes the Congo Free State as his personal possession, recognised by the European powers.


The rubber regime and the Force Publique

Summary: Monopoly decrees and rubber quotas, enforced by the Force Publique through hostage-taking and mutilation, drive a system of forced labour and mass death.


The Casement Report

Summary: British consul Roger Casement publishes a report documenting atrocities; E. D. Morel's Congo Reform Association amplifies the outcry.


Belgium annexes the Belgian Congo

Summary: Under international pressure, Belgium takes the territory from Leopold II, ending the Free State and creating the Belgian Congo colony.


Belgian Congo established

Summary: The colony is administered by Belgium for half a century, its economy built on Katangan copper and other minerals.


Independence from Belgium

Summary: The Congo becomes independent with Lumumba as prime minister and Kasa-Vubu as president.


Katanga secedes; the Congo Crisis

Summary: An army mutiny and Moïse Tshombe's Belgian-backed secession of Katanga plunge the new state into crisis and UN intervention.


Assassination of Lumumba

Summary: Captured and transferred to Katanga, Patrice Lumumba is killed; Belgian officers were present and foreign involvement is widely documented.


Mobutu seizes power

Summary: Colonel Joseph-Désiré Mobutu takes full control in a military coup, beginning a three-decade dictatorship.


Congo renamed Zaire

Summary: Under his 'authenticité' campaign, Mobutu renames the country Zaire and adopts the name Mobutu Sese Seko.


Rwandan refugee crisis in the Kivus

Summary: The Rwandan genocide drives over a million refugees into eastern Zaire, destabilising the Kivu provinces.


First Congo War

Summary: A Rwanda- and Uganda-backed rebellion under Laurent-Désiré Kabila advances across the country against the collapsing Mobutu regime.


Mobutu falls; Kabila takes power

Summary: Mobutu flees into exile and dies months later; Kabila seizes Kinshasa and restores the name Democratic Republic of the Congo.


Second Congo War begins

Summary: Kabila breaks with Rwanda and Uganda; nine nations and many militias are drawn into 'Africa's World War,' the deadliest conflict since 1945.


Laurent Kabila assassinated

Summary: President Laurent-Désiré Kabila is shot dead in Kinshasa; his son Joseph Kabila succeeds him and seeks peace.


Peace agreements end the war

Summary: The 2002 Sun City and Pretoria accords and a transitional government formally end the Second Congo War in 2003.


M23 rebellion seizes Goma

Summary: The M23 rebel movement briefly captures Goma in North Kivu before being pushed back; conflict festers across the east.


M23 retakes Goma

Summary: After re-emerging in 2021, M23 — with Rwandan backing — captures Goma again in early 2025, deepening the humanitarian crisis.


Bantu peoples settle the region

Summary: Bantu-speaking farmers and ironworkers settled the forests and savannas of the modern Congo over the first millennium CE, founding the Kongo, Teke, Vili, Mboshi and other communities that make up the country's peoples.


Rise of the Kingdom of Loango

Summary: The Vili built the Kingdom of Loango on the Atlantic coast, with its capital at Buali; ruled by the maloango, it became a producer of cloth and a centre of trade in copper, ivory and enslaved people.


The Teke (Anziku) kingdom inland

Summary: North of the Congo River the Teke (Bateke), organised as the Anziku or Tio kingdom under a sacred king titled the makoko, controlled the interior plateaus and trade routes; the northern reaches of Kongo also touched the region.


Loango becomes a hub of the Atlantic trade

Summary: The Loango coast, with markets at Loango Bay, Malemba and Cabinda, grew into a major export point for ivory, copper and enslaved people; Vili middlemen linked interior caravan networks to European ships offshore.


Peak of the slave trade through Loango

Summary: By the eighteenth century the Loango ports were embarking large numbers of enslaved Africans each year, bound mainly for the Caribbean and the Americas, drawing the coastal kingdoms ever deeper into the Atlantic economy.


Succession crisis weakens Loango

Summary: A succession crisis after the death of the king recorded as Buatu, together with the growing power of provincial governors and traders, undermined the maloango's central authority and began Loango's long decline.


Decline as the slave trade is suppressed

Summary: The European suppression of the Atlantic slave trade undercut the Loango coast's economy; the kingdom fragmented into small chieftaincies and had effectively ceased to exist as a unified state by the early 1880s.


Brazza's treaty with Makoko

Summary: In September 1880 Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza signed a treaty with the Teke ruler Makoko Iloo I, placing his lands under French protection and securing France's claim to the north bank of the Congo River.


Founding of Brazzaville at Nkuna

Summary: Brazza founded a French post at the village of Nkuna (Mfoa) on the north bank of Stanley Pool on 10 September 1880; held by Sergeant Malamine Camara, it was named Brazzaville and became the centre of French rule.


Berlin Conference divides the two Congos

Summary: The Berlin Conference recognised French claims north of the Congo River and assigned the south bank to Leopold II's Congo Free State, fixing the lasting division between the Republic of the Congo and the future Democratic Republic.


Middle Congo joins French Equatorial Africa

Summary: France reorganised its Central African colonies in 1910 into French Equatorial Africa — Gabon, Middle Congo, Ubangi-Shari and Chad — governed from Brazzaville, which became the federation's federal capital.


Building the Congo-Ocean Railway

Summary: The Congo-Ocean Railway was built from 1921 to 1934 by the Société de Construction des Batignolles to link Brazzaville to Pointe-Noire; forced labourers conscripted across French Equatorial Africa died in the thousands, an estimate commonly placed above 17,000.


Railway completed; Pointe-Noire opens as port

Summary: The roughly 512-kilometre railway was completed in 1934, establishing Pointe-Noire as the colony's Atlantic ocean terminal and the backbone of the export economy that bypassed the lower Congo rapids.


Brazzaville, capital of Free France

Summary: After French Equatorial Africa rallied to General de Gaulle in 1940, Brazzaville became the effective capital of Free France, a base for organising resistance against Vichy and the Axis powers.


The Brazzaville Conference

Summary: De Gaulle convened the Brazzaville Conference in early 1944, which promised post-war colonial reforms — ending the harshest forced labour, granting African representation and citizenship — while explicitly rejecting independence.


Autonomy within the French Community

Summary: Following the September 1958 referendum, Middle Congo became the autonomous Republic of the Congo within the French Community, a self-governing step short of full sovereignty.


Independence under Fulbert Youlou

Summary: The Republic of the Congo became independent on 15 August 1960 with the Abbé Fulbert Youlou as its first president, a pro-Western leader who kept close ties to France.


The Trois Glorieuses topple Youlou

Summary: A three-day popular uprising in August 1963, led by trade unions and youth, forced Youlou's resignation; Alphonse Massamba-Débat took power and steered the country toward one-party "scientific socialism."


People's Republic of the Congo proclaimed

Summary: Marien Ngouabi, who had seized power in 1968, proclaimed the People's Republic of the Congo in 1969 — Africa's first Marxist-Leninist state — with the Congolese Labour Party (PCT) as the sole legal party.


Assassination of Marien Ngouabi

Summary: President Marien Ngouabi was assassinated in Brazzaville on 18 March 1977; a military committee took power, and after a brief interim under General Yhombi-Opango leadership passed to Denis Sassou Nguesso in 1979.


Sassou Nguesso takes power

Summary: Colonel Denis Sassou Nguesso became president in 1979, leading the PCT one-party state through the 1980s while petroleum became the mainstay of the economy and ties to France and Western oil firms deepened.


National conference opens democracy

Summary: After the PCT dropped Marxism-Leninism in 1990, a sovereign national conference in 1991 stripped Sassou Nguesso of executive power, made him a ceremonial head of state and set the Congo on a path to multiparty elections.


Lissouba wins multiparty election

Summary: Pascal Lissouba of UPADS won the Congo's first multiparty presidential election in August 1992, ending the PCT's monopoly and inaugurating a brief democratic period.


Militia clashes over disputed elections

Summary: Disputes over the 1993 legislative elections sparked armed clashes between political militias in Brazzaville, fracturing the new democracy along factional and regional lines.


Civil war returns Sassou Nguesso to power

Summary: Civil war erupted in June 1997 between forces of President Lissouba and former president Sassou Nguesso; backed by Angolan troops, Sassou Nguesso's forces prevailed by October, Lissouba fled into exile, and Sassou Nguesso declared himself president.


New constitution; Sassou Nguesso elected

Summary: A new constitution adopted in 2002 entrenched Sassou Nguesso's presidency; he won the presidential election that year and was re-elected in 2009 amid opposition complaints.


Referendum removes term limits

Summary: A constitutional referendum in October 2015, reported as overwhelmingly approved on a disputed turnout, scrapped presidential term limits and the age ceiling, clearing the way for Sassou Nguesso to seek further terms; he was re-elected in 2016 and 2021.


San Agustin megaliths

Summary: In the upper Magdalena valley, the San Agustin culture carves the largest assemblage of monumental religious statuary in South America, later a UNESCO World Heritage site.


Tierradentro tombs

Summary: The people of Tierradentro hew vast painted underground burial chambers into the mountains, a unique record of a developed pre-Hispanic Andean society.


Rise of the Muisca

Summary: The Muisca chiefdoms flourish on the high plateau around Bogota and Tunja, celebrated for goldwork, salt, and trade across the Andes.


The El Dorado tradition

Summary: At Lake Guatavita, Muisca ritual offerings of gold to the waters give rise to the legend of El Dorado that would lure Spanish expeditions inland.


Founding of Bogota

Summary: Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada founds Santa Fe de Bogota after subduing the Muisca, establishing the capital of the New Kingdom of Granada.


Audiencia of Bogota

Summary: The crown establishes a royal court and administrative tribunal at Bogota, opening the formal colonial era in New Granada.


Cartagena fortified

Summary: Cartagena de Indias is built into the most complete fortified port in South America, guarding the empire's wealth against repeated pirate and naval assaults.


Viceroyalty of New Granada

Summary: Spain governs the territory through the Viceroyalty of New Granada, capital Bogota, encompassing modern Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, and Venezuela.


The Comunero revolt

Summary: A popular rising against new Bourbon taxes sweeps the interior, an early sign of the unrest that would lead to the independence movement.


Cry of independence

Summary: A junta seizes power in Bogota, beginning the New Granadan independence movement amid the crisis of Spanish royal authority.


Battle of Boyaca

Summary: Bolivar and Santander rout the royalist army at the Boyaca bridge, securing the liberation of New Granada and opening the road to Bogota.


Congress of Cucuta

Summary: The republic of Gran Colombia is formally organised, uniting New Granada, Venezuela, and Ecuador under Bolivar's presidency.


Breakup of Gran Colombia

Summary: Venezuela and Ecuador secede and Bolivar dies near Santa Marta; the union dissolves, leaving New Granada as a separate state.


United States of Colombia

Summary: A Liberal-led federal constitution reorganises the country as the loosely united States of Colombia, intensifying partisan and regional rivalry.


The Constitution of 1886

Summary: A Conservative-led charter creates a centralised Republic of Colombia with a strong presidency and a renewed alliance with the Catholic Church.


War of a Thousand Days

Summary: Liberals and the Conservative government fight Colombia's deadliest civil war, with an estimated 100,000 dead, leaving the country ruined.


Separation of Panama

Summary: Backed by U.S. warships, Panama secedes after Colombia rejects the canal treaty; the United States recognises it and secures the canal zone.


Assassination of Gaitan and the Bogotazo

Summary: The killing of Liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan triggers the Bogotazo riots that devastate Bogota and ignite a decade of bloodshed.


La Violencia

Summary: Partisan warfare between Liberals and Conservatives ravages the countryside, killing an estimated two hundred thousand or more Colombians.


The National Front

Summary: Liberals and Conservatives agree to alternate the presidency and share offices, ending partisan war but closing politics to other movements.


Garcia Marquez and Macondo

Summary: The journalist and novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez gives literary form to Colombia's history of violence and wonder, later winning the 1982 Nobel Prize.


FARC formally established

Summary: The Southern Bloc guerrillas adopt the name Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) at their second conference, formalising the organization that becomes the country's largest leftist insurgency.


Cartels and paramilitaries

Summary: Cocaine cartels and right-wing paramilitary forces intensify the conflict with assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, and massacres of civilians.


Peace accord with the FARC

Summary: After four years of talks in Havana, the Santos government and the FARC sign a peace agreement; Santos receives the Nobel Peace Prize.


Truth Commission report

Summary: The official Truth Commission estimates about 450,000 killed in 1985-2018 and millions displaced, the great majority of the dead civilians.


Election of Gustavo Petro

Summary: Colombia elects Gustavo Petro, a former guerrilla, as its first leftist president, pledging a policy of total peace with remaining armed groups.


Earliest settlement of the islands

Summary: Austronesian seafarers and Bantu-speaking peoples from the African mainland settle the archipelago, occupying the islands no later than the eighth century CE and embedding them in Swahili-coast networks.


Dembeni phase and Indian Ocean trade

Summary: The Dembeni-phase settlement flourishes as one of the richest sites of its age in the region, trading rock crystal and other goods with the Abbasid and Fatimid worlds and importing Persian and Chinese ceramics.


Islam takes root

Summary: Islam, carried by Indian Ocean merchants and migrants, becomes established across the islands, tying the Comoros to the religious culture of the Swahili coast.


Rise of the island sultanates

Summary: Muslim sultanates of Swahili culture emerge on the islands, with ruling houses claiming Arab, Persian (Shirazi) and Hadhrami descent to legitimise their authority.


Portuguese and European contact

Summary: Portuguese navigators reach the islands in the early sixteenth century; the Comoros become a provisioning station for ships crossing the western Indian Ocean.


Malagasy slaving raids

Summary: Sakalava and Betsimisaraka war-fleets from Madagascar raid the Comoros for captives over several decades, devastating communities across the archipelago.


Slave society on the islands

Summary: The slave trade and plantation labour expand greatly, and by the mid-nineteenth century enslaved people are estimated to make up a very large proportion of the islands' population.


Mayotte ceded to France

Summary: The ruler of Mayotte cedes the island to France, giving France its first foothold in the Comoro archipelago.


Protectorates over the three islands

Summary: France establishes protectorates over Grande Comore, Anjouan and Mohéli, dealing with sultans including Said Ali bin Said Omar of Grande Comore.


Annexation and administration via Madagascar

Summary: The islands are formally brought under French possession and attached to the colony of Madagascar; the last sultan relinquishes power by 1912.


Plantation economy

Summary: Colonial rule reorganises the economy around export crops—vanilla, cloves, copra and especially ylang-ylang—making the Comoros a leading supplier of perfume essence.


Separate overseas territory

Summary: The Comoros are detached from Madagascar and constituted as a distinct French overseas territory, beginning to acquire their own institutions.


Overseas territory with representation

Summary: The Comoros are confirmed as a French overseas territory and given representation in the French Parliament and a local assembly.


Internal autonomy granted

Summary: A year after Madagascar's independence, the Comoros are granted internal autonomy, with their own governing council and capital at Moroni.


Independence referendum

Summary: Voters back independence by about 95 per cent across the archipelago, but on Mayotte a majority of roughly 63 per cent votes to remain French, splitting the islands.


Unilateral declaration of independence

Summary: The Chamber of Deputies in Moroni, led by Ahmed Abdallah, declares the Comoros independent, claiming all four islands; Abdallah becomes first president.


Admitted to the United Nations

Summary: The Comoros joins the UN under General Assembly resolution 3385 (XXX), which reaffirms the territorial integrity of the archipelago including Mayotte.


Abdallah overthrown

Summary: A coalition aided by mercenaries led by Bob Denard ousts President Ahmed Abdallah weeks after independence, beginning a long era of coups.


Ali Soilih's revolution

Summary: Radical leftist Ali Soilih takes power and launches a confrontational revolution against the sultans, religious notables and old order, alienating France and the elite.


Denard restores Abdallah

Summary: Bob Denard returns with mercenaries, overthrows Soilih—who is soon killed—and restores Ahmed Abdallah; the state becomes the Federal Islamic Republic of the Comoros.


Assassination of Ahmed Abdallah

Summary: President Abdallah is shot dead in his office in Moroni in disputed circumstances; Denard is widely suspected but later acquitted, and is pressured to leave.


Operation Kaskari and French intervention

Summary: Bob Denard seizes Moroni with mercenaries in his final coup attempt; France intervenes in 'Operation Azalée' and removes him within days.


Anjouan and Mohéli secede

Summary: Anjouan and Mohéli declare separation from the Comoros; a federal attempt to retake Anjouan by force is defeated, pushing the archipelago towards fragmentation.


Azali Assoumani seizes power

Summary: Army chief Azali Assoumani takes power in a coup amid the secession crisis, casting himself as the guarantor of national unity.


Union constitution and rotating presidency

Summary: Following the Fomboni accords, a new constitution approved by referendum creates the Union of the Comoros, giving each island autonomy and rotating the Union presidency among the three islands.


Mayotte votes to become a French department

Summary: In a referendum, Mayotte votes overwhelmingly to become a fully integrated French department, a status it assumes in 2011 as France's 101st department.


UN affirms Comorian sovereignty over Mayotte

Summary: The UN General Assembly has repeatedly affirmed Comorian sovereignty over Mayotte and the archipelago's territorial integrity; the Comoros claims the island while France administers it.


The medinas of the sultanates inscribed

Summary: The Medinas of the Historic Sultanates of the Comoros become the archipelago's first World Heritage site — the stone towns of the pre-colonial sultanates recognised on criteria (iii) and (iv).


Portuguese reach the uninhabited islands

Summary: Sailing for Prince Henry the Navigator, the Venetian captain Alvise Cadamosto and others made landfall on the empty Cape Verde archipelago; further islands were charted over the next decade by Diogo Gomes and António de Noli.


Ribeira Grande founded on Santiago

Summary: Portuguese settlers established Ribeira Grande (today Cidade Velha) on Santiago — the first permanent European city in the tropics — drawing Portuguese, Genoese and Flemish settlers, convicts and Sephardic Jews.


Trading privileges over the Guinea coast

Summary: The Portuguese crown granted Santiago's settlers the right to trade in the "Rivers of Guinea" on the West African mainland, anchoring the colony's economy to commerce with the coast.


The Nossa Senhora do Rosário church

Summary: Construction of the church of Nossa Senhora do Rosário at Ribeira Grande, among the oldest surviving colonial churches anywhere, reflected the town's new role as a bishopric and religious centre of the islands.


A sorting-house of the slave trade

Summary: Ribeira Grande became a major entrepôt where enslaved Africans from the Upper Guinea coast were held, baptised, taxed and re-exported to the Americas, with thousands passing through annually by mid-century.

CPV:britannica-cv CPV:worldhistory-cv CPV:history-cv-wiki CPV:npr-cv-slavery


Drake sacks Ribeira Grande

Summary: The English privateer Sir Francis Drake attacked and sacked the wealthy port of Ribeira Grande, one of several corsair raids that beset the islands during the era of the Iberian Union.


Cassard's French raid destroys the city

Summary: The French corsair Jacques Cassard stormed and looted Ribeira Grande, stripping its churches and houses; the coastal town, already declining, never recovered from the assault.


Capital moves to Praia

Summary: As the slave trade waned and Ribeira Grande lay in ruins, administration shifted to the more defensible plateau of Praia, which became the capital in 1770 and remains so today.


Mindelo becomes an Atlantic coaling station

Summary: The deep harbour of Porto Grande at Mindelo on São Vicente was developed as a coaling station for transatlantic steamships and later a submarine-cable relay, briefly making the port cosmopolitan and prosperous.


Slavery abolished

Summary: Portugal abolished slavery in its territories in 1869, ending the legal trade that had built the islands' early wealth, though forced and contract labour systems persisted afterward.


Famines kill at least 100,000

Summary: Recurrent droughts produced a series of catastrophic famines; during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries at least 100,000 people died of starvation and disease, amid an inadequate colonial response.


The twentieth-century famines

Summary: Two further droughts brought famines that together killed tens of thousands; starving refugees were interned in camps outside Praia, and survivors emigrated in growing numbers, deepening the diaspora.