Composition of the Rigveda

Summary: The Rigveda, the oldest Vedic text and a foundational scripture of Hinduism, is composed in early Sanskrit and preserved through oral tradition.


Rise of the Buddha and Mahavira

Summary: Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) founds Buddhism and Mahavira reforms Jainism, launching two enduring religions amid a wider questioning of Vedic ritual.


Chandragupta Maurya founds the Maurya Empire

Summary: Chandragupta Maurya overthrows the Nanda dynasty and builds the first empire to unify most of the subcontinent, with its capital at Pataliputra.


Ashoka's conquest of Kalinga and conversion

Summary: After the devastating Kalinga war, Emperor Ashoka embraces Buddhism, renounces conquest, and spreads an ethic of dharma through inscribed edicts across his vast empire.


Gupta golden age

Summary: The Gupta Empire presides over a classical flowering of Sanskrit literature, mathematics and astronomy, including the works of Kalidasa and Aryabhata and the maturing of the decimal system.


Founding of the Delhi Sultanate

Summary: Qutb al-Din Aibak establishes independent rule at Delhi, beginning a 320-year succession of Islamic dynasties that reshape the politics and culture of northern India.


Babur founds the Mughal Empire

Summary: Babur defeats Ibrahim Lodi at the First Battle of Panipat, ending the Delhi Sultanate and establishing the Mughal Empire, which would rule much of the subcontinent for over two centuries.


Reign of Akbar

Summary: Akbar the Great consolidates and expands the empire, reforms its administration with the mansabdari system, and pursues a policy of religious tolerance and cultural synthesis.


Death of Aurangzeb and Mughal decline

Summary: Aurangzeb dies after extending the empire to its greatest extent; his costly wars and religious policies leave the Mughal state weakened, and its authority rapidly fragments thereafter.


Battle of Plassey

Summary: Robert Clive's East India Company forces defeat the Nawab of Bengal, marking the beginning of British political and military dominance in India.


British Crown rule begins

Summary: After the suppression of the 1857 rebellion, the Crown abolishes East India Company rule and assumes direct governance of India, beginning the British Raj.


The Salt March

Summary: Gandhi leads a 24-day march to the sea to make salt in defiance of the British salt monopoly, galvanising mass non-violent resistance against colonial rule.


Bengal famine

Summary: An estimated two to three million people die in Bengal in a man-made famine driven by wartime inflation, export priorities and colonial policy rather than any major shortfall in food production.


Independence and Partition

Summary: India becomes independent from Britain under Prime Minister Nehru as the subcontinent is partitioned into India and Pakistan, unleashing mass migration and communal violence.


Partition violence and mass migration

Summary: Up to 12–20 million people are uprooted and an estimated one to two million die in massacres and forced migration along the new India–Pakistan border.


Constitution and the Republic

Summary: The Constitution of India comes into force, making India a sovereign democratic republic with universal suffrage and fundamental rights; the day is celebrated as Republic Day.


Palladius sent to the Irish

Summary: Pope Celestine I commissioned the bishop Palladius as the first bishop 'to the Irish believing in Christ', marking the formal arrival of organised Christianity on the island.


The mission of St Patrick

Summary: The British-born missionary Patrick, traditionally active from the 430s, evangelised much of Ireland, secured toleration for Christians and fostered a native clergy and monasticism; his feast is 17 March.


Columba founds Iona

Summary: The Irish monk Columba established the monastery of Iona off western Scotland, a launching point for the spread of Christianity and Irish learning into Scotland and Northumbria.


The monastic golden age

Summary: Monasteries such as Clonard, Clonmacnoise and Bangor became renowned centres of learning whose scribes copied Western literature and produced illuminated manuscripts, while Irish missionaries evangelised Europe.


First Viking raids on Ireland

Summary: Scandinavian raiders struck Rathlin Island in 795, beginning decades of assaults on the rich coastal monasteries recorded with alarm in the Irish annals.


Founding of Dublin as a longphort

Summary: The Vikings built a fortified ship-camp (longphort) at Dublin in 841 and overwintered there, founding what would become Ireland's most important town and a hub of Norse trade.


Brian Boru becomes High King

Summary: Brian Boru of the Dál Cais of Munster made himself High King of Ireland around 1002, the most powerful ruler the island had known and a claimant to authority over all of Ireland.


Battle of Clontarf

Summary: On Good Friday 1014 Brian Boru's army defeated the Norse of Dublin and the men of Leinster near Dublin, breaking Viking political power in Ireland; Brian was killed in the battle.


Anglo-Norman landing in Ireland

Summary: At the invitation of the exiled Leinster king Diarmait Mac Murchada, Anglo-Norman, Welsh and Flemish forces landed in Wexford in 1169, beginning centuries of English involvement in Ireland.


Henry II and the Lordship of Ireland

Summary: Henry II landed at Waterford in 1171, the first English king in Ireland, and established the Lordship of Ireland; in 1177 he made his son John 'Lord of Ireland'.


Flight of the Earls and the Plantation of Ulster

Summary: After the Gaelic earls fled Ireland in 1607, King James I planted English and Scottish Protestant settlers across confiscated lands in Ulster from 1609, embedding a lasting religious and political division.


Cromwellian conquest

Summary: Oliver Cromwell's parliamentary army stormed Drogheda and Wexford with notorious massacres; the conquest was followed by the 1652 Act for the Settlement of Ireland and the mass confiscation of Catholic land.


Williamite victory and the Penal era

Summary: The Protestant William III defeated the Catholic James II at the Boyne in 1690 and Limerick in 1691, after which the Protestant Ascendancy entrenched its rule through the anti-Catholic Penal Laws.


Act of Union

Summary: The Act of Union merged the Kingdom of Ireland with Great Britain into the United Kingdom on 1 January 1801, abolishing the Irish Parliament and placing Ireland under direct rule from Westminster.


The Great Famine (An Gorta Mór)

Summary: Potato blight destroyed Ireland's staple crop from 1845; about a million people died and a million more emigrated, and the population fell sharply even as food continued to be exported amid an inadequate British relief effort.


The Land League and the Land War

Summary: The Irish National Land League, founded in 1879 with Charles Stewart Parnell as president, mobilised tenant farmers against landlordism, opening the 'Land War' over rents and ownership.


The Home Rule bills

Summary: Under Parnell's pressure the Liberal government introduced Home Rule bills in 1886 and 1893 to give Ireland self-government within the UK; both were defeated, but Home Rule became the central Irish demand.


The Easter Rising

Summary: Republicans seized the General Post Office and other Dublin sites and proclaimed an Irish Republic; the rising was suppressed within a week, but the execution of its leaders turned opinion towards independence.


War of Independence

Summary: After Sinn Féin's 1918 victory and the first Dáil in 1919, the IRA waged a guerrilla war against British forces until a truce on 11 July 1921 opened the way to negotiations.


Anglo-Irish Treaty

Summary: The Treaty signed in London created the Irish Free State as a dominion within the British Empire and confirmed the partition of Ireland, leaving six northern counties in the United Kingdom.


Civil War over the Treaty

Summary: The Treaty split the movement: pro-Treaty forces under Michael Collins fought anti-Treaty republicans under Éamon de Valera in a civil war that the Free State won at heavy cost.


Declaration of the Republic

Summary: The Republic of Ireland Act, signed 21 December 1948 and in force from 18 April 1949, declared the twenty-six-county state a republic, removed the King's last role and left the Commonwealth.


UK annexes Rockall

Summary: British Royal Marines landed on the uninhabited Atlantic islet of Rockall in 1955 and claimed it for the United Kingdom; it was declared part of Scotland by the Island of Rockall Act 1972.


Accession to the European Communities

Summary: After a 1972 referendum carried by over 80 per cent, Ireland joined the European Economic Community on 1 January 1973, beginning a transformation from an agricultural economy to a modern European state.


The Celtic Tiger

Summary: From the mid-1990s, foreign direct investment and the single market fuelled rapid growth, the 'Celtic Tiger', turning one of western Europe's poorer countries into one of its most prosperous.


Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement

Summary: The 1998 Agreement settled the conflict over Northern Ireland on the principle of consent and created power-sharing institutions; Ireland amended Articles 2 and 3 of its Constitution to replace its territorial claim with a peaceful aspiration to unity.


UK–Ireland continental shelf agreement

Summary: Ireland and the United Kingdom agreed a delimitation of the continental shelf between them; Ireland maintained that Rockall, an uninhabitable rock, generates no continental shelf or exclusive economic zone.


The kingdom of Elam and the city of Susa

Summary: Elam, one of the earliest civilisations of the region, flourishes around its capital Susa in south-western Iran, trading and warring with Mesopotamia until Susa is sacked by the Assyrians around 647 BCE.


Cyrus the Great founds the Achaemenid Empire

Summary: Cyrus II overthrows the Median king Astyages and unites the Medes and Persians, founding the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire — the first Persian world empire.


Conquest of Babylon and the Cyrus Cylinder

Summary: Cyrus captures Babylon and issues the Cyrus Cylinder, a Babylonian cuneiform document recording his restoration of temples and return of deported peoples, often hailed as an early charter of tolerance.


Darius I builds Persepolis

Summary: Darius the Great organises the empire into satrapies, builds the Royal Road and standardised coinage, and begins the magnificent ceremonial capital of Persepolis, today a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


Alexander conquers Persia and burns Persepolis

Summary: After defeating Darius III at Gaugamela (331 BCE), Alexander the Great enters and burns Persepolis and the last Achaemenid king is killed, ending the empire in 330 BCE.


The Parthian (Arsacid) Empire

Summary: Arsaces I founds the Parthian Empire in north-eastern Iran, reviving Persian traditions and becoming Rome's chief rival in the East for nearly five centuries.


Ardashir I founds the Sasanian Empire

Summary: Ardashir I overthrows the last Parthian king and establishes the Sasanian Empire, the last great pre-Islamic Persian state, with its capital at Ctesiphon.


Zoroastrianism as state religion

Summary: The Sasanian kings establish Zoroastrianism, the faith attributed to the prophet Zoroaster, as the official religion of Iran, supported by a powerful priesthood and network of fire temples.


Exhausting wars with Byzantium

Summary: The last great Byzantine–Sasanian war drains both empires militarily and economically, leaving Persia dangerously weakened on the eve of the Arab conquest.


Battle of Nahavand — the 'Victory of Victories'

Summary: Arab Muslim forces crush the Sasanian army at Nahavand, breaking organised Persian resistance; the empire finally collapses with the death of Yazdegerd III in 651 CE.


Islamisation of Persia begins

Summary: With the Sasanian state destroyed, Iran is incorporated into the Islamic caliphate; over the following centuries most of its people convert to Islam while retaining the Persian language and much of their culture.


Abbasid Revolution and the rise of Baghdad

Summary: Backed by support from Persian Khorasan, the Abbasids overthrow the Umayyads and found Baghdad, drawing heavily on Persian administrative and intellectual traditions.


Persia at the heart of the Islamic golden age

Summary: In the House of Wisdom and beyond, Persian scholars such as Avicenna, al-Khwarizmi and Omar Khayyam advance medicine, mathematics and astronomy during the Islamic golden age.


Ferdowsi completes the Shahnameh

Summary: The poet Ferdowsi finishes the Shahnameh, the 'Book of Kings', an epic of some 50,000 couplets that preserves Iran's mythic and pre-Islamic history and anchors the Persian language.


Mongol invasion of Iran

Summary: Genghis Khan's armies invade Iran, devastating its cities; his grandson Hulagu completes the conquest, taking Alamut in 1256 and destroying Baghdad in 1258, and founds the Ilkhanate.


Timur and the Timurid era

Summary: Timur (Tamerlane) conquers the lands of the former Ilkhanate, founding the Timurid empire whose courts become celebrated centres of Persianate art and learning.


Ismail I founds the Safavid dynasty and Shia Iran

Summary: Ismail I captures Tabriz, proclaims himself shah, and declares Twelver Shia Islam the state religion, setting Iran apart from its Sunni neighbours and shaping its identity to the present day.


Shah Abbas moves the capital to Isfahan

Summary: At the height of Safavid power, Shah Abbas the Great relocates the capital to Isfahan and builds the grand Naqsh-e Jahan (Imam) Square, a UNESCO World Heritage masterpiece of urban design.


Afghan sack of Isfahan and Safavid decline

Summary: Afghan invaders besiege and sack Isfahan, shattering Safavid power; the dynasty formally ends in 1736, opening a period of instability before the rise of the Qajars.


Persian Constitutional Revolution

Summary: After mass protests, Mozaffar al-Din Shah grants a constitution and the first Majles (parliament), a pioneering experiment in constitutional government in the Middle East.


Discovery of oil

Summary: Oil is struck in south-western Iran, making the country a strategic prize and tying its economy to foreign-controlled concessions for decades to come.


Reza Khan founds the Pahlavi dynasty

Summary: Having seized power in a 1921 coup, Reza Khan deposes the last Qajar shah and is crowned Reza Shah Pahlavi, launching an authoritarian drive to modernise and centralise Iran.


The CIA-backed coup against Mosaddegh

Summary: Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, who had nationalised the oil industry, is overthrown in August 1953 in a coup organised by the CIA and British intelligence, restoring the shah's power.


The Islamic Revolution

Summary: The shah flees in January 1979 and Ayatollah Khomeini returns from exile; the monarchy collapses on 11 February, ending some 2,500 years of Iranian kingship.


Proclamation of the Islamic Republic

Summary: After a referendum on 30–31 March approves the change by an overwhelming majority, Khomeini proclaims the Islamic Republic of Iran on 1 April 1979.


US embassy seized and hostage crisis

Summary: Militant students storm the US embassy in Tehran, holding 52 Americans for 444 days and setting the new republic on a long course of confrontation with the West.


The Iran–Iraq War

Summary: Iraq invades in September 1980, igniting a devastating eight-year war; Iran accepts UN Security Council Resolution 598 and a ceasefire takes effect on 20 August 1988.


The Sumerians invent cuneiform writing

Summary: In the Sumerian city of Uruk, scribes develop cuneiform — wedge-shaped marks pressed into clay — first to keep accounts and then to record law, literature and history, making Mesopotamia the cradle of the written word.


Sargon founds the Akkadian Empire

Summary: Sargon of Akkad unites the Sumerian city-states under one ruler, creating what is often called history's first empire, with its capital at Akkad and a Semitic-speaking dynasty.


Hammurabi issues his law code

Summary: Hammurabi, sixth king of Babylon, unifies much of Mesopotamia and promulgates the Code of Hammurabi, 282 laws inscribed on a diorite stela — one of the most complete legal collections of the ancient world.


Fall of Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire

Summary: A coalition of Babylonians and Medes besieges and destroys Nineveh, capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire whose first capital, Ashur, is now a UNESCO World Heritage site, ending Assyrian power and clearing the way for the Neo-Babylonian Empire.


Babylon at its height under Nebuchadnezzar II

Summary: The Neo-Babylonian Empire reaches its zenith under Nebuchadnezzar II, who rebuilds Babylon with the Ishtar Gate and great walls; the ruined city, associated with the Hanging Gardens, is today a UNESCO World Heritage site.


Cyrus the Great captures Babylon

Summary: The Persian king Cyrus the Great takes Babylon, ending the Neo-Babylonian Empire and bringing Mesopotamia into the Achaemenid Persian realm as one of its richest provinces.


Hatra, capital of an Arab kingdom

Summary: Under Parthian influence the fortified city of Hatra flourishes as the capital of a small Arab kingdom, twice withstanding Roman sieges before falling in the 3rd century; its ruins are now a UNESCO World Heritage site.


Mesopotamia under the Sasanians

Summary: The Sasanian dynasty replaces the Parthians and rules Mesopotamia from Ctesiphon, making the fertile 'Sawad' the agricultural and administrative core of the Sasanian Empire for four centuries.


Battle of al-Qadisiyyah and the Arab conquest

Summary: Arab Muslim armies of the Rashidun Caliphate defeat the Sasanians at al-Qadisiyyah near al-Hira and take Ctesiphon, ending Persian rule in Mesopotamia and beginning the region's Islamisation.


Al-Mansur founds Baghdad

Summary: The Abbasid caliph al-Mansur founds Baghdad on the Tigris as his 'City of Peace', a circular capital that swiftly becomes one of the world's largest and wealthiest cities.


The House of Wisdom and the Golden Age

Summary: Under Harun al-Rashid and al-Ma'mun, Baghdad's scholars — associated with the Bayt al-Hikmah, the 'House of Wisdom' — translate and advance Greek, Persian and Indian learning during the Islamic Golden Age.


Samarra becomes the Abbasid capital

Summary: The caliphs move their capital upriver to Samarra, building immense palaces and the Great Mosque with its spiral Malwiya minaret, today a UNESCO World Heritage site.


The Mongol sack of Baghdad

Summary: The Mongol forces of Hulagu Khan besiege and storm Baghdad, executing the last Abbasid caliph al-Musta'sim and destroying the city; the sack ends the Abbasid Caliphate and devastates the region.


Ottoman conquest of Baghdad

Summary: The Ottoman Empire takes definitive control of Baghdad from Safavid Persia, ruling Mesopotamia for nearly three centuries as the provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra.


British mandate and the Iraqi revolt

Summary: After capturing Baghdad in 1917, Britain is granted a League of Nations mandate over Iraq; a widespread anti-British revolt in 1920 pushes Britain toward installing an Arab monarchy.


Faisal I crowned king of Iraq

Summary: Britain installs the Hashemite prince Faisal I, a leader of the wartime Arab Revolt, as king of the new Iraqi state, creating a monarchy and parliament under British supervision.


Independence and entry into the League of Nations

Summary: The British mandate ends and the Kingdom of Iraq is admitted to the League of Nations as an independent state — the first League mandate anywhere to achieve independence.


Republican coup ends the monarchy

Summary: Army officers led by Abd al-Karim Qasim overthrow the Hashemite monarchy in a predawn coup; King Faisal II is killed and the Republic of Iraq is proclaimed.


Saddam Hussein assumes the presidency

Summary: After years consolidating power within the Ba'ath Party, Saddam Hussein formally becomes president of Iraq in July 1979 and establishes a brutal one-man dictatorship.


The Iran–Iraq War

Summary: Iraq invades Iran in September 1980, beginning an eight-year war of attrition that kills an estimated several hundred thousand to over a million people on both sides before a UN-mediated ceasefire takes effect in 1988.


Invasion of Kuwait and the Persian Gulf War

Summary: Iraq invades and annexes Kuwait in August 1990; a United States-led coalition of many nations expels Iraqi forces in early 1991, after which Iraq is placed under severe international sanctions.


US-led invasion topples Saddam Hussein

Summary: A United States-led coalition invades Iraq and overthrows Saddam Hussein's government within weeks; Saddam is captured in December 2003 and later executed in 2006.


New constitution and sectarian war

Summary: Iraq adopts a federal, power-sharing constitution, but a Sunni-led insurgency and, after the 2006 al-Askari shrine bombing, brutal Shiʿi–Sunni sectarian violence engulf the country.


ISIS seizes Mosul and proclaims a caliphate

Summary: The jihadist group ISIS sweeps across northern Iraq, captures Mosul, and declares a 'caliphate', imposing extreme violence and destroying heritage sites including parts of Hatra, Ashur and Nimrud.


Liberation of Mosul and defeat of ISIS

Summary: Backed by a US-led coalition, Iraqi forces retake Mosul in July 2017 after months of urban warfare, and Iraq declares victory over ISIS in December 2017, ending its territorial control.


Ingólfr Arnarson settles Reykjavík

Summary: By tradition the first permanent settler, Ingólfr Arnarson, came from Norway around 874 and established his homestead at the site he named Reykjavík, opening the age of settlement, the Landnám.


The Landnám (Age of Settlement)

Summary: Within roughly sixty years hundreds of Norse settlers, many by way of the Norse colonies in the British Isles, claimed Iceland's habitable land, as recorded in Íslendingabók and Landnámabók.


Founding of the Althing at Þingvellir

Summary: The settlers established a general assembly, the Althing, on the plain of Þingvellir, where law was recited from the Law Rock; it is one of the oldest parliaments in the world and the centre of the Icelandic Commonwealth.


The Icelandic Commonwealth

Summary: A stateless society of chieftains and farmers governed itself for over three centuries through the Althing and its law council, without a king or central executive.


The Althing adopts Christianity

Summary: Faced with a split between pagans and Christians, the Althing entrusted the decision to the lawspeaker Þorgeir, who ruled that Iceland should become Christian; the conversion was achieved by compromise, without bloodshed.


Snorri Sturluson and the sagas

Summary: Chieftain and twice lawspeaker, Snorri Sturluson wrote the Prose Edda and the Heimskringla, central works of the saga age that preserved the mythology and history of the Norse world.


The Age of the Sturlungs

Summary: Rivalry among a few powerful families, above all the Sturlungs, brought decades of feud, killing and burning, fatally weakening the Commonwealth's institutions of consensus.


The Old Covenant (Gamli sáttmáli)

Summary: Worn down by civil strife and pressed by King Haakon IV, the Icelandic chieftains swore allegiance to the Norwegian crown, ending the independent Commonwealth and beginning centuries of foreign rule.


Execution of Bishop Jón Arason

Summary: Jón Arason, bishop of Hólar and the last Catholic bishop in Iceland, was beheaded with his two sons at Skálholt for resisting the Danish-imposed Reformation, after which Iceland became fully Lutheran.


The Danish trade monopoly

Summary: The Danish crown confined all Icelandic trade to a small group of licensed Danish merchants, depressing prices and returns and impoverishing the island for nearly two centuries.


The Laki eruption

Summary: The Laki fissure erupted for eight months from June 1783, producing about 14.7 cubic kilometres of lava and immense quantities of toxic gas that poisoned the land and spread a haze across Europe.


The Móðuharðindin famine

Summary: Fallout from Laki killed most of Iceland's livestock; the ensuing 'famine of the mist' killed roughly a fifth of the population, the worst disaster in the country's history.


The Althing restored

Summary: A royal decree of 1843 revived the Althing, which first met again on 1 July 1845 as an advisory assembly, reviving in modern form the institution founded in 930.


Constitution on the settlement millennium

Summary: On the thousandth anniversary of the settlement, Denmark granted Iceland a constitution and increased control over domestic affairs, though executive power remained with the crown.


Home Rule

Summary: Iceland gained Home Rule, with an Icelandic minister resident in Reykjavík and answerable to the Althing, a major step toward full self-government.


The Act of Union and the Kingdom of Iceland

Summary: The Danish-Icelandic Act of Union made Iceland a sovereign state in personal union with the Danish crown, with Denmark retaining foreign affairs and the union open to termination after twenty-five years.


British occupation of Iceland

Summary: After Germany occupied Denmark, British forces occupied strategically vital Iceland in May 1940 to forestall a German move, severing Iceland's last constitutional ties to its monarch.


United States assumes Iceland's defence

Summary: By agreement with the Icelandic government, the United States took over the island's defence in 1941, building a substantial military presence in the North Atlantic.


Founding of the Republic at Þingvellir

Summary: After an overwhelming referendum, Icelanders proclaimed a republic at Þingvellir, ending the union with Denmark; Sveinn Björnsson became the first president and 17 June became the national day.


Iceland a founding member of NATO

Summary: Abandoning neutrality, Iceland joined NATO as a founding member in 1949, a state with no army, on the understanding it would not host foreign troops in peacetime; the decision provoked a riot at the Althing.


First Cod War (12 nautical miles)

Summary: Iceland extended its fishery limit from four to twelve nautical miles in 1958; after confrontations at sea Britain acknowledged the twelve-mile limit, the first of Iceland's victories over the Royal Navy.


Second Cod War (50 nautical miles)

Summary: Iceland extended its limit to fifty miles from September 1972; its coast guard cut dozens of British trawl nets before a NATO-mediated interim agreement was reached in November 1973.


Third Cod War (200 nautical miles)

Summary: Iceland claimed a 200-mile zone in 1975; after clashes and a threat to close the Keflavík NATO base, Britain recognised the 200-mile limit in an agreement of 2 June 1976.


The 200-mile limit and the EEZ

Summary: Iceland's successful assertion of a 200-mile fishing zone helped establish the Exclusive Economic Zone in international law, later codified in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.


Collapse of the banks

Summary: The three big Icelandic banks, whose assets dwarfed the economy, failed within days in October 2008 in the largest banking collapse relative to GDP in history; the state passed emergency laws and turned to the IMF before recovering.


Legendary foundation of Rome

Summary: Roman tradition, fixed by the scholar Varro, dates the founding of the city to 753 BCE, with Romulus as first king. The date is legendary, but it long anchored Rome's sense of its own origins.


Greek colonies of Magna Graecia

Summary: From around the 8th century BCE Greek city-states founded colonies across southern Italy and Sicily, from Cumae to Tarentum, creating the prosperous Hellenic world of Magna Graecia.


Etruscan ascendancy in central Italy

Summary: The Etruscans developed a sophisticated urban civilization in central Italy and, by tradition, supplied Rome with several of its kings before being gradually absorbed by the Roman state.


Founding of the Roman Republic

Summary: Tradition holds that the Romans expelled their last king and established a republic governed by elected magistrates and the Senate, conventionally dated to 509 BCE.


The Punic Wars and Mediterranean supremacy

Summary: In three wars against Carthage, Rome destroyed its great rival and became the dominant power of the western Mediterranean, beginning its rise to imperial dominion.


Augustus and the founding of the Principate

Summary: The Senate granted Octavian the title Augustus, marking the start of the Roman Empire. As first emperor he established the Principate and ushered in the Pax Romana.


Completion of the Colosseum

Summary: The Flavian Amphitheatre, the Colosseum, was inaugurated in Rome, a monument to the engineering and civic spectacle of the imperial city.


Edict of Milan and the rise of Christianity

Summary: Constantine and Licinius granted toleration to Christianity, beginning its transformation from a persecuted faith into the dominant religion of the Roman world.


Fall of the Western Roman Empire

Summary: The Germanic leader Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus, traditionally regarded as the last Western Roman emperor, ending Roman imperial rule in Italy.


Lombard invasion of Italy

Summary: The Lombards swept into Italy, fragmenting the peninsula into a patchwork of Lombard duchies and Byzantine territories and shaping its long political division.


Charlemagne crowned emperor in Rome

Summary: Pope Leo III crowned the Frankish king Charlemagne emperor in Rome, binding Italy to the Frankish and later Holy Roman imperial order and to the papacy.


Roger II crowned King of Sicily

Summary: Norman conquests in the south were united when Roger II was crowned King of Sicily, creating a wealthy multicultural kingdom of Latins, Greeks and Arabs.


Lombard League defeats Frederick Barbarossa at Legnano

Summary: The allied northern communes defeated the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa at Legnano, securing recognition of communal liberties in northern Italy.


Competition for the Florence Baptistery doors

Summary: The famous contest for the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery, won by Lorenzo Ghiberti, is often taken as a symbolic opening of the artistic Renaissance.


Medici ascendancy in Florence

Summary: Cosimo de' Medici returned to dominate Florentine politics, beginning the family's long patronage of art and learning that helped define the Renaissance.


French invasion and the Italian Wars

Summary: The French invasion of 1494 opened decades of warfare in which France and Spain fought for control of Italy, exposing the weakness of its divided states.


Michelangelo paints the Sistine Chapel ceiling

Summary: Commissioned by the papacy in Rome, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling became one of the supreme achievements of High Renaissance art.


Napoleonic reorganization of Italy

Summary: Napoleon's campaigns swept aside the old states and spread revolutionary, legal and national ideas across Italy, before the powers restored the former rulers in 1815.


Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand

Summary: Giuseppe Garibaldi's volunteers conquered Sicily and southern Italy, bringing down the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and clearing the way for unification.


Proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy

Summary: The first Italian parliament in Turin proclaimed Victor Emmanuel II King of Italy, the founding act of the unified Italian state and climax of the Risorgimento.


Capture of Rome

Summary: Italian troops breached the Aurelian Walls at Porta Pia and took Rome from the Papal States; after a plebiscite, Rome became Italy's capital, completing unification.


March on Rome and Mussolini's rise to power

Summary: After the Fascist March on Rome, King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini prime minister, beginning the transition to a Fascist dictatorship.


Fascist racial laws

Summary: Mussolini's government enacted antisemitic racial laws that stripped Italian Jews of rights and citizenship, foreshadowing later deportations under German occupation.


Italy enters the Second World War

Summary: Italy declared war on Britain and France, entering the Second World War as Germany's Axis ally, a decision that brought defeat, occupation and devastation.


Mussolini's fall and the armistice

Summary: Mussolini was ousted in July 1943 and Italy signed an armistice with the Allies on 8 September; Germany then occupied the north, and a violent civil war and Resistance followed.


Birth of the Italian Republic

Summary: In a referendum, Italians voted to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic; the new democratic constitution took effect on 1 January 1948.


Taino settlement of Xaymaca

Summary: Arawak-speaking peoples settle the island they call Xaymaca, building villages led by caciques and farming cassava and corn.


Columbus reaches Jamaica

Summary: On his second voyage Christopher Columbus arrives off the north coast, claiming the island for Spain and naming a harbour Santa Gloria.


Sevilla la Nueva founded

Summary: Spain establishes its first permanent settlement on the north coast, beginning a colonial era that all but exterminates the Taino.


English conquest

Summary: An English force under Penn and Venables seizes the island for Cromwell, launching the sugar-and-slavery plantation economy.


Port Royal earthquake

Summary: A powerful earthquake and tsunami sink much of the buccaneer city of Port Royal, killing thousands and ending its golden age.


Maroon treaties

Summary: Treaties with Cudjoe's Leeward Maroons and Nanny's Windward Maroons end the First Maroon War, granting them land and autonomy.


Tacky's Revolt

Summary: A major slave rebellion led by the Akan leader Tacky sweeps the island before being crushed with the aid of the Maroons.


The Baptist War

Summary: Samuel Sharpe leads a Christmas rebellion of tens of thousands; its suppression hastens the end of slavery in the empire.


Emancipation

Summary: After the Abolition Act of 1833 and a period of apprenticeship, the enslaved people of Jamaica gain full freedom.


Morant Bay rebellion

Summary: Paul Bogle's uprising is brutally crushed; Bogle and George William Gordon are executed, and Jamaica becomes a crown colony.


Garvey founds the UNIA

Summary: Marcus Garvey establishes the Universal Negro Improvement Association, building the largest Pan-African movement of its age.


Birth of Rastafari

Summary: The Rastafari movement emerges in Jamaica after the crowning of Haile Selassie I, drawing on Garvey's vision of African redemption.


Labour rebellions

Summary: Island-wide worker uprisings give rise to Bustamante's union and Manley's PNP, founding modern Jamaican party politics.


Universal adult suffrage

Summary: A new constitution grants every adult the vote, the first in the British Caribbean, and Jamaica holds its first elections under it.


West Indies Federation

Summary: Jamaica joins the federation of British Caribbean colonies as its largest member, an experiment in regional union.


Referendum to leave the federation

Summary: Jamaicans vote to withdraw from the West Indies Federation, dooming it and opening the way to separate independence.


Independence

Summary: Jamaica becomes an independent nation within the Commonwealth, with Alexander Bustamante as its first prime minister.


Two-party democracy

Summary: Independent Jamaica settles into a competitive democracy contested by the JLP and the PNP, with peaceful alternations of power.


Reggae goes global

Summary: Bob Marley and the Wailers bring reggae and the Rastafari message to a worldwide audience, making Jamaica a cultural superpower.


Bolt's sprinting dynasty

Summary: Usain Bolt wins the 100m and 200m at three straight Olympics, cementing Jamaica's dominance of world sprinting.


World Heritage inscription

Summary: The Blue and John Crow Mountains, refuge of the Maroons, become Jamaica's first UNESCO World Heritage Site.


Ammon, Moab and Edom emerge

Summary: As the Iron Age began, three settled kingdoms took shape on the plateau east of the Jordan, each with its own capital, language and national god, controlling the caravan trade of the King's Highway.


Ammon regains its independence

Summary: According to the biblical account, the kingdom of Ammon, centred on Rabbath Ammon (modern Amman), reasserted its independence after the death of the Israelite king David.


The Mesha Stele of Moab

Summary: King Mesha of Moab erected a stone inscription recording his wars and building works, one of the earliest royal inscriptions from the lands east of the Jordan.


Alexander the Great and the end of Persian rule

Summary: The conquests of Alexander brought the region into the Hellenistic world, hastening the eclipse of the old Iron Age kingdoms and opening the way to Greek and later Roman cities.


The Nabataeans resist the Greeks at Petra

Summary: The Nabataean Arabs, established around Petra, repelled campaigns by the Hellenistic successors of Alexander, marking their emergence as a distinct desert power controlling the caravan trade.


Petra reaches its golden age

Summary: At the height of the incense trade the Nabataeans carved Petra's monumental tomb-temples and engineered an elaborate system of dams, channels and cisterns to sustain a great city in the desert.


Rome annexes the Nabataean kingdom

Summary: The emperor Trajan absorbed the Nabataean realm as the province of Arabia Petraea, ending Nabataean independence as Roman power extended across the region.


Petra inscribed as a World Heritage Site

Summary: UNESCO inscribed Petra on the World Heritage List as a unique artistic achievement and an outstanding architectural ensemble of the early centuries BCE and CE.


Pompey creates the Decapolis

Summary: Rome's reorganisation of the East grouped Gerasa (Jerash) and neighbouring Greek-style cities into the Decapolis, a league of self-governing towns that prospered under Roman rule.


Jerash flourishes as a Roman city

Summary: Gerasa was rebuilt with colonnaded streets, an oval forum, temples and theatres, becoming one of the wealthiest cities of the Roman Near East and leaving ruins still visible today.


Christian Byzantium and the mosaics of Um er-Rasas

Summary: Under Byzantine rule Christianity spread across the plateau and church floors were laid with elaborate mosaics, preserved most fully at Um er-Rasas, later a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


The Battle of the Yarmuk

Summary: Muslim Arab armies decisively defeated the Byzantines near the Yarmuk River, ending Roman rule over the region and bringing the lands east of the Jordan into the new Islamic world.


Umayyad rule and the desert castles

Summary: Governing from Damascus, the Umayyad caliphs built fortified desert residences across the eastern plateau, including Quseir Amra with its celebrated frescoes of early Islamic secular art.


Quseir Amra is built

Summary: An Umayyad prince raised the bath-house and pleasure palace of Quseir Amra, whose figurative murals make it one of the most important survivals of early Islamic art; UNESCO inscribed it in 1985.


The Ottomans conquer the region

Summary: After defeating the Mamluks, the Ottoman Turks absorbed the lands east of the Jordan into their empire as part of the province of Syria, ruling for four centuries.


The Hejaz Railway crosses the plateau

Summary: The Ottomans completed the Hejaz Railway through the territory, linking Damascus toward the holy cities and binding the region more tightly to the empire on the eve of the Arab Revolt.


The Great Arab Revolt begins

Summary: Sharif Hussein of Mecca, supported by Britain, launched the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire; his sons Faisal and Abdullah led its forces toward Syria, aided by T. E. Lawrence.


Abdullah founds the Emirate of Transjordan

Summary: After the Cairo Conference, Abdullah ibn Hussein formed a government east of the Jordan under British mandate, establishing Hashemite rule and the Emirate of Transjordan.


Independence of the Hashemite Kingdom

Summary: Following the Treaty of London, the British mandate ended and Transjordan became a fully independent kingdom, with Abdullah re-designated as king; 25 May is celebrated as Independence Day.


Annexation of the West Bank

Summary: After his Arab Legion occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1948 war, King Abdullah formally annexed the territory and renamed the enlarged state the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.


Assassination of King Abdullah I

Summary: Abdullah I was shot dead on the steps of the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by a Palestinian gunman, opening a brief succession crisis before his grandson Hussein came to the throne.


King Hussein assumes power

Summary: After his father Talal was declared unfit to rule, the young Hussein bin Talal took full constitutional powers, beginning a reign of nearly half a century that shaped the modern kingdom.


The Six-Day War and loss of the West Bank

Summary: In the war with Israel, Jordan lost the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and a fresh wave of Palestinian refugees fled into the East Bank, deepening the kingdom's demographic transformation.


Black September

Summary: King Hussein's army moved against armed Palestinian factions that had built a state within the state; after intense fighting and a brief Syrian incursion, the guerrillas were expelled by July 1971.


Peace treaty with Israel

Summary: King Hussein signed the Wadi Araba treaty with Israel, ending the state of war and making Jordan the second Arab country, after Egypt, to conclude a formal peace with Israel.


Abdullah II succeeds his father

Summary: On the death of King Hussein, his son Abdullah II ascended the throne, going on to promote economic reform while steering Jordan through war in Iraq, the Arab Spring and a vast refugee influx.


The Arab Spring and Syrian refugees

Summary: Protests during the regional uprisings of 2011 prompted reforms from Abdullah II, while the Syrian civil war soon drove hundreds of thousands of refugees into Jordan, straining its economy.


Rise of the Yamato state

Summary: Clan leaders on the Yamato plain consolidate power, build monumental kofun tombs, and establish the imperial lineage claiming descent from the sun goddess Amaterasu.


Introduction of Buddhism

Summary: Buddhism reaches Japan from the Korean kingdom of Baekje, traditionally dated to 552; it is championed by the Soga clan over conservative opposition.


Prince Shotoku's Seventeen-Article Constitution

Summary: As regent, Prince Shotoku promulgates a set of Confucian and Buddhist moral precepts for government and intensifies the adoption of Chinese institutions.


The Taika Reform

Summary: A court coup destroys Soga dominance and inaugurates reforms reorganizing land and administration along centralized Chinese lines, the basis of the ritsuryo state.


Capital established at Nara

Summary: The court founds Japan's first permanent capital, Heijo-kyo (Nara), modeled on the Tang Chinese capital, beginning the Nara period.


Capital moved to Heian-kyo (Kyoto)

Summary: Emperor Kanmu relocates the capital to Heian-kyo, the site of Kyoto, opening the Heian period and a long era of aristocratic court culture.


The Tale of Genji

Summary: The court lady Murasaki Shikibu completes The Tale of Genji, widely regarded as the world's first full-length novel and the summit of Heian literature.


Genpei War

Summary: Civil war between the Taira and Minamoto warrior clans ends with Minamoto victory at Dan-no-ura in 1185, shattering court supremacy and ushering in warrior rule.


Minamoto Yoritomo becomes shogun

Summary: Yoritomo is appointed shogun, formalizing the Kamakura shogunate and a system of warrior government that would last, in varying forms, until 1868.


Mongol invasions repelled

Summary: Kublai Khan's Yuan forces twice attempt to invade Japan; both fleets are wrecked by typhoons later mythologized as the kamikaze, or divine winds.


Ashikaga Takauji founds the Muromachi shogunate

Summary: Takauji establishes the second shogunate, ruling from Kyoto's Muromachi district and presiding over a brilliant if unstable cultural era.


Onin War

Summary: A succession dispute ignites a decade of warfare that devastates Kyoto, cripples shogunal authority, and tips Japan into the fragmented Sengoku era.


Arrival of Europeans and firearms

Summary: Portuguese traders reach Japan, introducing firearms and, soon after, Christianity, adding new pressures to the Sengoku wars.


Hideyoshi completes unification

Summary: Toyotomi Hideyoshi brings the last domains under central control, finishing the reunification of Japan begun by Oda Nobunaga.


Battle of Sekigahara

Summary: Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats a rival coalition in the decisive battle that makes him master of Japan and clears the path to the shogunate.


Tokugawa shogunate founded

Summary: Ieyasu is appointed shogun and establishes his government at Edo, beginning the Tokugawa (Edo) period of long internal peace.


Sakoku: national seclusion

Summary: A series of edicts seals Japan from most foreign contact, banning Christianity and overseas travel and restricting trade to Nagasaki for over two centuries.


Meiji Restoration

Summary: A coup ends the Tokugawa shogunate and restores direct imperial rule under Emperor Meiji, launching rapid modernization and Westernization.


Meiji Constitution promulgated

Summary: Japan adopts a Western-influenced constitution establishing a constitutional monarchy with an imperial parliament, the Diet.


Russo-Japanese War

Summary: Japan's victory over Russia marks the first modern defeat of a European power by an Asian state and confirms Japan as a major power.


Attack on Pearl Harbor

Summary: Japan attacks the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, bringing the United States into World War II and opening the Pacific War.


Atomic bombings and surrender

Summary: The United States drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9; Japan announces surrender, formalized on September 2, ending World War II.


Pacifist constitution takes effect

Summary: Japan's postwar constitution establishes democracy and popular sovereignty, makes the emperor a symbol of the state, and renounces war under Article 9.


Treaty of San Francisco and end of occupation

Summary: Signed in 1951 and effective in 1952, the peace treaty restores Japanese sovereignty and ends the Allied occupation.


Postwar economic miracle

Summary: Hosting the Tokyo Olympics symbolizes Japan's recovery as it becomes an industrial powerhouse during decades of rapid, sustained growth.


Tohoku earthquake and Fukushima disaster

Summary: A magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami devastate northeastern Japan and trigger meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.


The Saka 'Golden Man' of Issyk

Summary: A high-status Saka warrior is buried in the Issyk kurgan near Almaty in a costume of thousands of gold plaques, a celebrated emblem of the Iron Age nomad cultures that dominated the Kazakh steppe in the first millennium BCE.


Turkic khaganates dominate the steppe

Summary: Turkic-speaking confederations, beginning with the Türk (Göktürk) Khaganate and later the Karakhanids, take control of the region; Zhetysu becomes a heartland of the Western Turkic realm, fixing the Turkic language and spreading Islam.


Silk Road towns of the south flourish

Summary: Caravan cities such as Otrar, Taraz, Sauran, and Yasi prosper on the trade between China and the Mediterranean, becoming centres of commerce, craft, and Islamic learning along the southern Kazakh steppe.


Mongol conquest of the Syr Darya and Khwarezm

Summary: Provoked by the killing of his envoys at Otrar, Genghis Khan storms the Silk Road towns and overruns Khwarezm; Otrar falls after a months-long siege, and the steppe is absorbed into the Mongol empire.


The Golden Horde rules the western steppe

Summary: The lands of present-day Kazakhstan pass to the line of Jochi, forming the western wing of the Mongol empire known as the Golden Horde, where Turks outnumber Mongols and Islam becomes the prevailing faith.


Timur builds the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi

Summary: At Yasi (Turkestan) Timur orders a monumental mausoleum over the tomb of the Sufi master Khoja Ahmed Yasawi; left unfinished at Timur's death in 1405, it became a masterpiece of Timurid architecture and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.


Foundation of the Kazakh Khanate

Summary: The Jochid sultans Janibek and Kerei break with Abu'l-Khayr Khan and lead their followers into Zhetysu, founding the Kazakh Khanate, the realm Kazakhs regard as the root of their nation and statehood.


The three jüz take shape

Summary: Kazakh society organises into three hordes, the Great, Middle, and Little jüz, each a confederation of tribes with its own pastures, united by language, Islam, and descent and headed by Genghisid khans.


The 'Great Disaster' of the Dzungar wars

Summary: Devastating invasions by the Buddhist Dzungar confederation drive Kazakhs from their pastures with great loss of life, an episode remembered as the Aktaban Shubyryndy that gravely weakens the khanate.


The Little Horde accepts Russian protection

Summary: Abu'l-Khayr Khan of the Little Horde swears allegiance to the Russian Empire for protection against the Dzungars; the Middle Horde follows in 1740 and part of the Great Horde in 1742, opening the steppe to Russian power.


Ablai Khan elected ruler of the Kazakhs

Summary: Ablai (Abylai) is elected khan of the Kazakhs and balances between the Russian and Qing empires to preserve a degree of independence; he endures as a national symbol of Kazakh sovereignty.


Russia abolishes the Kazakh khanates

Summary: To end Kazakh autonomy, Russia abolishes the khanate of the Middle Horde in 1822, the Little Horde in 1824, and the Great Horde in 1848, dismantling the political structure of the Kazakh Khanate.


Kenesary Kasymov's revolt

Summary: Kenesary Kasymov, a grandson of Ablai Khan, leads the largest Kazakh uprising against Russian rule, fighting to restore the independent khanate until he is killed in 1847.


The Kazakh famine (Asharshylyk)

Summary: Forced collectivisation and the settling of nomads under Filipp Goloshchekin produce a man-made famine that kills an estimated 1.5 million people, around a third of all Kazakhs, the deadliest catastrophe in Kazakh history; the toll is an estimate.


Kazakh S.S.R. becomes a union republic

Summary: Kazakhstan, an autonomous republic since 1920 and renamed the Kazak A.S.S.R. in 1925, is raised to a full constituent republic of the Soviet Union under the 1936 constitution.


Semipalatinsk nuclear test site

Summary: The Soviet Union conducts some 456 nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk site in northeastern Kazakhstan between 1949 and 1989, exposing local populations to radioactive fallout with severe long-term health effects.


Khrushchev's Virgin Lands campaign

Summary: Nikita Khrushchev's drive to plough up the northern Kazakh steppe for grain brings hundreds of thousands of mostly Slavic settlers, transforming the republic's demography so that Kazakhs become a minority in Kazakhstan.


Kazakhstan declares independence

Summary: Kazakhstan proclaims itself a sovereign, independent state, the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence, with Nursultan Nazarbayev as president; the USSR formally dissolves days later.


Capital moved to Astana

Summary: Nazarbayev relocates the capital from Almaty to Akmola on the northern steppe; renamed Astana ('capital') in 1998, it is rebuilt as a planned showcase city of modern architecture.


Nazarbayev resigns; Tokayev succeeds

Summary: After nearly three decades in power, Nazarbayev steps down as president, handing office to Kassym-Jomart Tokayev while retaining major influence; the capital is briefly renamed Nur-Sultan in his honour.


'Bloody January' unrest

Summary: Protests over fuel prices spread nationwide and turn violent; Tokayev declares a state of emergency, summons CSTO troops, and authorises lethal force, with about 227 deaths reported, then sidelines Nazarbayev's allies to consolidate power.


Turkana Boy lives near Lake Turkana

Summary: A Homo erectus youth, later catalogued KNM-WT 15000, lives near what is now the Nariokotome River; his fossilised skeleton would become the most complete of its species ever recovered.


Hominins at Koobi Fora

Summary: The Koobi Fora deposits east of Lake Turkana preserve fossils of Paranthropus boisei and early Homo, making the area one of the world's leading sites for the study of human evolution.


Cushitic pastoralists enter the north

Summary: Southern Cushitic-speaking herders move into the arid lands of northern Kenya, among the earliest food-producing communities in the region.


Olorgesailie tool traditions and the Stone Age

Summary: Sites such as Olorgesailie in the Rift Valley preserve vast accumulations of hand-axes and other tools, documenting hundreds of thousands of years of Stone Age life in Kenya.


Bantu expansion reaches western Kenya

Summary: Iron-using Bantu-speaking farmers spread into western Kenya, part of the wider Bantu expansion that reshaped much of eastern and southern Africa.


Rise of the Swahili coast

Summary: Coastal Bantu communities trading across the Indian Ocean develop the Swahili language and an Afro-Islamic urban culture, founding settlements that grow into city-states.


Ibn Battuta visits Mombasa

Summary: The traveller Ibn Battuta describes Mombasa and Kilwa as prosperous, pious Muslim trading towns, attesting to the wealth of the medieval Swahili coast.


Zheng He's fleet reaches Malindi

Summary: Vessels of the Chinese admiral Zheng He's treasure fleet are recorded reaching Malindi, marking the eastern extent of the Indian Ocean trade that linked the Swahili coast to China.


Southern Luo migrate into western Kenya

Summary: Nilotic-speaking Luo communities move into the Lake Victoria basin of western Kenya, the last major wave of the migrations that formed the country's peoples.


Vasco da Gama reaches the Kenyan coast

Summary: The Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama calls at Mombasa and Malindi en route to India, beginning a century of Portuguese involvement on the Swahili coast.


Portuguese build Fort Jesus

Summary: The Portuguese construct Fort Jesus at Mombasa to a Renaissance design by Giovanni Battista Cairati, anchoring their control of the coast and the Indian Ocean trade routes.


Omani Arabs capture Fort Jesus

Summary: After a siege of some thirty-three months, Omani forces take Fort Jesus, ending Portuguese dominance and bringing the Kenyan coast, Zanzibar and Pemba under Omani Arab control.


Zanzibar becomes the Omani capital

Summary: Sultan Seyyid Said moves the Omani capital from Muscat to Zanzibar, making the island the centre of a commercial empire to which the Kenyan coast was bound.


Fort Jesus inscribed by UNESCO

Summary: Fort Jesus is added to the UNESCO World Heritage List as an outstanding example of sixteenth-century military architecture and a witness to the contest for the Indian Ocean trade.


East Africa Protectorate established

Summary: Britain proclaims the East Africa Protectorate over the territory that would become Kenya, beginning nearly seven decades of formal British rule.


The Uganda Railway is built

Summary: The 'Lunatic Line' is driven from Mombasa to Lake Victoria, built largely by indentured Indian labourers; it reaches Nairobi in 1899 and opens the interior to settlement.


Kenya Colony created

Summary: The protectorate's interior becomes the Crown colony of Kenya, while a coastal strip leased from the sultan of Zanzibar remains a protectorate.


Harry Thuku founds early protest

Summary: Harry Thuku establishes the Young Kikuyu Association, one of the first organised African political movements against colonial land and labour policies.


Kenyatta leads the Kenya African Union

Summary: Jomo Kenyatta, back from years in Britain, becomes president of the Kenya African Union, the leading vehicle of African nationalist demands.


State of emergency declared

Summary: As the Mau Mau revolt spreads, the colonial government declares a state of emergency that lasts until 1960, ushering in mass detentions and a brutal counter-insurgency.


Jomo Kenyatta convicted

Summary: Kenyatta is tried and imprisoned for allegedly directing the Mau Mau, in proceedings later widely denounced as a sham; he is freed in 1961.


Lancaster House conferences

Summary: Three constitutional conferences in London negotiate Kenya's path to independence amid rivalry between KANU and the federalist KADU.


Internal self-government (Madaraka)

Summary: Kenya attains internal self-government under a KANU government led by Kenyatta, six months before full independence.


Kenya becomes independent

Summary: Kenya gains independence from the United Kingdom with Jomo Kenyatta as prime minister; one year later, on 12 December 1964, it becomes a republic.


Moi succeeds Kenyatta

Summary: On Kenyatta's death, Vice-President Daniel arap Moi becomes president, beginning a 24-year tenure that formalises the one-party state.


Failed coup attempt

Summary: Air-force officers attempt to overthrow Moi; the coup is crushed and followed by tighter political control and a constitutionally entrenched one-party state.


Return to multiparty politics

Summary: Under domestic and international pressure, Kenya amends its constitution to legalise opposition parties, paving the way for the multiparty elections of 1992.


Kibaki ends KANU rule

Summary: Mwai Kibaki wins the presidency, ending nearly four decades of unbroken KANU government since independence.


Post-election violence

Summary: Kibaki's disputed re-election sparks ethnic and political violence that kills more than 1,100 people; a power-sharing deal brokered by Kofi Annan is signed on 28 February 2008.


New constitution adopted

Summary: Kenyans approve a new constitution that limits presidential power, expands rights, and devolves authority to 47 county governments.


The Yenisei Kyrgyz destroy the Uyghur Khaganate

Summary: The Yenisei Kyrgyz overthrew the Uyghur Khaganate and sacked its capital Ordu-Baliq, briefly making the Kyrgyz the dominant power of the eastern steppe and driving the Uyghurs out of Mongolia.


Transmission of the epic of Manas

Summary: The Kyrgyz preserved the vast oral epic of Manas, recited by bards (manaschi), telling of the legendary hero who united the Kyrgyz tribes; it remains the cornerstone of Kyrgyz cultural memory.


Manas trilogy recognized by UNESCO

Summary: UNESCO inscribed the Kyrgyz epic trilogy of Manas, Semetey and Seytek on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, recognizing one of the world's longest oral epics.


Karakhanid Balasagun and the Burana tower

Summary: Under the Karakhanid dynasty, the first Turkic Muslim power in Central Asia, Balasagun in the Chüy valley flourished as a capital; its minaret, the Burana tower, survives as the best-known monument of northern Kyrgyzstan.


Mongol conquest of Central Asia

Summary: The empire of Genghis Khan overran Central Asia, drawing the Kyrgyz lands into the Mongol world and, after the empire's division, into the Chagatai realm and its successor states.


Kyrgyz consolidate in the Tian Shan

Summary: Through the upheavals of the post-Mongol centuries the Kyrgyz tribes settled in the Tian Shan, living as mountain nomads organized in tribes and clans, the homeland they hold to this day.


Sulaiman-Too inscribed by UNESCO

Summary: The sacred mountain of Sulaiman-Too above Osh, with its petroglyphs, places of worship and reconstructed 16th-century mosques, became Kyrgyzstan's first UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognized for its blend of pre-Islamic and Islamic belief.


Kyrgyz under the Khanate of Kokand

Summary: The Khanate of Kokand extended its rule over the Kyrgyz tribes, building the fortress of Pishpek (later Bishkek) to control the Chüy valley and recruiting Kyrgyz fighters, though its rule was widely resisted.


Russia annexes Kokand; Kyrgyzstan under imperial rule

Summary: After suppressing an uprising, the Russian Empire abolished the Khanate of Kokand and annexed its lands as the Fergana Province, bringing the Kyrgyz country under direct Russian colonial rule.


The 1916 revolt (Urkun)

Summary: A decree conscripting Central Asians for wartime labour triggered a revolt across Russian Turkestan; in the Kyrgyz lands it was suppressed with great violence, and tens of thousands fled toward China, with heavy loss of life. Casualty figures remain estimates.


Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast created

Summary: In the Soviet national-territorial delimitation of Central Asia, the Kyrgyz lands were organized as the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Oblast within the Russian SFSR, giving the Kyrgyz their own named territory for the first time.


The Kirghiz SSR becomes a union republic

Summary: Kyrgyzstan was elevated to the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic, a full constituent republic of the Soviet Union, with its capital at Frunze (formerly Pishpek, today Bishkek).


Chingiz Aitmatov wins the Lenin Prize

Summary: The Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov was awarded the Lenin Prize for 'Tales of the Mountains and Steppes', bringing Kyrgyz literature to a worldwide audience and becoming the republic's most celebrated cultural figure.


Akayev chosen to lead the republic

Summary: Amid Gorbachev's reforms and rising ethnic tension in the south, the physicist Askar Akayev was elected head of the Kirghiz SSR, the leader who would guide the republic to independence.


Kyrgyzstan declares independence

Summary: As the Soviet Union collapsed, the Supreme Soviet of the republic declared Kyrgyzstan's independence; Askar Akayev became the first president of the sovereign state, with its capital at Bishkek.


U.S. recognition and diplomatic relations

Summary: The United States established diplomatic relations with independent Kyrgyzstan on 25 December 1991, opening its embassy in Bishkek in February 1992 as the Soviet Union was dissolved.


The Tulip Revolution

Summary: Allegations of fraud in the parliamentary elections and of pervasive corruption sparked mass demonstrations that forced President Akayev to flee the country, in the first of Kyrgyzstan's post-Soviet revolutions.


The 2010 revolution ousts Bakiyev

Summary: A violent uprising in Bishkek over corruption and rising prices forced President Kurmanbek Bakiyev to flee; an interim government under Roza Otunbayeva took power and prepared a new constitution.


Ethnic violence in the south

Summary: Clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in Osh and Jalal-Abad erupted into days of communal violence, killing several hundred people — figures are estimates and remain contested — and displacing hundreds of thousands.


Parliamentary republic and the first peaceful transfer

Summary: A new constitution made Kyrgyzstan a parliamentary republic, a rarity in Central Asia; the 2011 election that followed Otunbayeva's interim presidency was the country's first peaceful handover of power.


Japarov and the return to presidential rule

Summary: After 2020 protests over disputed elections, Sadyr Japarov rose from prison to the presidency, winning election in January 2021; constitutional referendums then restored a strong presidential system.


Rise of Funan

Summary: Funan emerges around the Mekong delta as the first major Hinduized kingdom of Southeast Asia, prospering on maritime trade between India and China.


Chenla supplants Funan

Summary: Chenla, ruled by princes descended from the kings of Funan, absorbs Funan's territory and becomes the dominant power in the region.


Fragmentation of Chenla

Summary: Chenla splits into a Land Chenla and a Water Chenla and loses cohesion, leaving the Khmer lands divided on the eve of the Angkorian unification.


Jayavarman II founds the Khmer Empire

Summary: Jayavarman II is consecrated as devaraja and universal ruler on Mahendraparvata, asserting Khmer independence and inaugurating the empire of Angkor.


Suryavarman II and Angkor Wat

Summary: Suryavarman II reunites the empire and begins Angkor Wat, dedicated to Vishnu and the largest religious structure in the world, completed after his death.


Jayavarman VII rebuilds Angkor Thom and the Bayon

Summary: After repelling a Cham invasion, Jayavarman VII embraces Mahayana Buddhism, expands the empire to its greatest extent, and builds Angkor Thom and the Bayon.


Thai capture of Angkor

Summary: After repeated Tai attacks, Angkor is captured in 1431 and subsequently abandoned as a capital, marking the end of the imperial era.


French protectorate established

Summary: King Norodom signs a treaty placing Cambodia under French protection to fend off Siamese and Vietnamese pressure; Siam acknowledges the protectorate by 1867.


Cambodia joined to French Indochina

Summary: Cambodia is incorporated into the colonial federation of French Indochina, its monarchy preserved as a figurehead while the French administer the country.


Japan ends French rule; Sihanouk proclaims independence

Summary: Japan removes the French administration in the closing months of the war, and King Sihanouk briefly proclaims Cambodian independence before France returns.


Full independence declared

Summary: After Sihanouk's Royal Crusade for Independence, France transfers sovereignty and King Norodom Sihanouk declares Cambodia's full independence in Phnom Penh.


Lon Nol coup and the Khmer Republic

Summary: While Sihanouk is abroad, the National Assembly removes him and Lon Nol takes power, abolishing the monarchy, proclaiming the Khmer Republic, and joining the war on the U.S. side.


Khmer Rouge capture Phnom Penh

Summary: Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge seize the capital, empty the cities, rename the country Democratic Kampuchea, and abolish money, markets, religion, and private life.


The Cambodian genocide

Summary: Under the Khmer Rouge an estimated 1.5 to 3 million people, about a quarter of the population, die from execution, forced labour, starvation, and disease.


Vietnamese intervention ends the regime

Summary: Vietnam invades Cambodia, captures Phnom Penh in January 1979, ousts the Khmer Rouge, and ends the genocide, beginning a decade-long occupation.


Paris Peace Agreements signed

Summary: The Cambodian factions sign the Paris Agreements on a Comprehensive Political Settlement, ending the war and delegating transitional authority to the United Nations.


UNTAC mission

Summary: The UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia repatriates over 300,000 refugees and organizes national elections, one of the largest peacekeeping operations of its era.


Constitutional monarchy restored

Summary: UN-supervised elections produce a new constitution restoring the kingdom, and Norodom Sihanouk returns to the throne as constitutional monarch.


Death of Pol Pot and collapse of the Khmer Rouge

Summary: The Khmer Rouge insurgency disintegrates and Pol Pot dies, ending the movement responsible for the genocide of the 1970s.


Cambodia joins ASEAN

Summary: Cambodia becomes a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, marking its reintegration into regional and international affairs after decades of war and isolation.


Opposition dissolved, CPP entrenched

Summary: With the main opposition party dissolved by the courts, Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party wins every National Assembly seat, consolidating one-party dominance.


Khmer Rouge tribunal concludes

Summary: The UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia convicts senior Khmer Rouge leaders of crimes against humanity and genocide before concluding its work.


Hun Manet succeeds his father

Summary: After 38 years in power, Hun Sen hands the premiership to his son Hun Manet, who is sworn in on 22 August 2023 in a dynastic succession.


Legendary founding of Gojoseon

Summary: According to the Samguk yusa, the mythical Dangun establishes Gojoseon, traditionally regarded as the first Korean kingdom; the date is commemorated as National Foundation Day.


Fall of Gojoseon to Han China

Summary: The Han dynasty conquers Gojoseon and establishes commanderies in the north, fragmenting the peninsula into smaller competing states.


Emergence of the Three Kingdoms

Summary: Silla, Goguryeo, and Baekje take shape as the three dominant kingdoms of the peninsula, each later adopting Buddhism and centralized rule.


Introduction of Buddhism

Summary: Buddhism is officially adopted in Goguryeo and spreads through the kingdoms, becoming a major force in art, statecraft, and religious life.


Silla unifies the peninsula

Summary: Allied with Tang China, Silla conquers Baekje in 660 and Goguryeo in 668, then expels the Tang, achieving the first unification of Korea under native rule.


Bulguksa and Seokguram built

Summary: Unified Silla constructs the Bulguksa temple and the Seokguram grotto near Gyeongju, masterpieces of Buddhist art later inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage.


Wang Geon founds Goryeo

Summary: The general Wang Geon establishes the Goryeo dynasty at Kaesong; by 936 he reunifies the peninsula, giving rise to the Western name Korea.


Mongol invasions begin

Summary: Mongol armies invade Goryeo; after prolonged resistance from Ganghwa Island, Korea submits to Yuan overlordship for roughly a century.


Tripitaka Koreana completed

Summary: Goryeo Buddhists carve the entire Buddhist canon onto more than 80,000 woodblocks as a prayer for deliverance from the Mongols, a printing landmark preserved at Haeinsa.


Fall of Goryeo

Summary: Weakened by factionalism and Mongol decline, Goryeo is overthrown by the general Yi Seong-gye, who founds the Joseon dynasty.


Joseon dynasty founded

Summary: Yi Seong-gye establishes the Joseon dynasty, adopts Neo-Confucianism as state ideology, and soon moves the capital to Hanyang (Seoul).


Creation of hangul

Summary: King Sejong the Great sponsors the Korean alphabet, completed in 1443 and promulgated in 1446 to make literacy accessible to ordinary people.


Japanese (Imjin) invasions repelled

Summary: Toyotomi Hideyoshi's forces invade Korea; resistance led by Admiral Yi Sun-sin and his turtle ships, with Ming Chinese aid, ultimately drives them out.


Korea made a Japanese protectorate

Summary: After defeating Russia, Japan imposes a protectorate treaty stripping Korea of its diplomatic sovereignty, a prelude to full annexation.


Japanese annexation of Korea

Summary: Japan formally annexes Korea, ending the Joseon dynasty and more than five centuries of Korean monarchy and beginning 35 years of colonial rule.


Annexation and colonial government

Summary: Japan installs a Government-General in Seoul, ruling Korea through military and police power and beginning systematic economic exploitation.


March First Movement

Summary: A Declaration of Independence sparks nationwide demonstrations by some two million Koreans; the peaceful protests are violently suppressed with thousands killed.


Korean Provisional Government formed

Summary: Korean nationalists establish a Provisional Government in exile in Shanghai to coordinate the independence struggle against Japanese rule.


Forced labor and wartime mobilization

Summary: As the Pacific War expands, Japan conscripts hundreds of thousands of Koreans for forced labor and military service and coerces women into sexual slavery.


Liberation from Japan

Summary: Japan's surrender ends 35 years of colonial rule; Koreans celebrate Gwangbokjeol, the Restoration of Light, even as foreign occupation and division loom.


Division at the 38th parallel

Summary: The peninsula is split into Soviet and American occupation zones along the 38th parallel, setting the stage for two rival Korean states.


Republic of Korea proclaimed

Summary: South Korea is established under President Syngman Rhee after a constitution is promulgated and UN-observed elections held; the DPRK is founded in the north weeks later.


The Korean War

Summary: North Korea invades the South; a US-led UN force and Chinese intervention turn the war into a grinding stalemate that devastates the peninsula and kills millions.


Korean War armistice

Summary: An armistice halts the fighting near the 38th parallel and creates the Demilitarized Zone; no peace treaty is signed, freezing the division to the present day.


Park Chung-hee's military coup

Summary: General Park Chung-hee seizes power and launches state-led, export-driven industrialization, the Miracle on the Han River, alongside authoritarian repression.


Gwangju Uprising

Summary: A pro-democracy uprising in Gwangju is crushed by the military with heavy loss of life, becoming a catalyst and symbol for South Korea's democracy movement.


June Democratic Struggle

Summary: Millions protest nationwide, forcing the regime to grant direct presidential elections and democratic reform, founding the present Sixth Republic.


Seoul Summer Olympics

Summary: Seoul hosts the Summer Olympics, showcasing South Korea's recovery and helping cement its turn toward democracy and global engagement.


Asian financial crisis and IMF rescue

Summary: A regional financial crisis forces South Korea to seek a major IMF bailout; sweeping reforms follow under President Kim Dae-jung.


First inter-Korean summit

Summary: President Kim Dae-jung meets North Korea's Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang under the Sunshine Policy; Kim Dae-jung receives the Nobel Peace Prize that year.


Rome annexes Dardania

Summary: The kingdom of the Dardani in the central Balkans was absorbed by Rome and incorporated into the province of Moesia, with towns such as Ulpiana, Scupi and Naissus as regional centres.


Province of Dardania

Summary: In the administrative reorganisation of the later Roman Empire, the region was constituted as a province again bearing the ancient name of Dardania, within the diocese of Moesia.


Slavic settlement of the interior

Summary: As the Danube frontier collapsed, Slavic peoples settled widely across the Balkan interior under and after Byzantine authority, transforming the population of the future Kosovo.


Byzantine and Bulgarian borderland

Summary: The region passed between the Byzantine Empire, the First Bulgarian Empire and rising Serbian principalities, a contested frontier of the medieval Balkans before the Nemanjic ascendancy.


Nemanjic rule and the Serbian Church

Summary: The Nemanjic dynasty consolidated its hold over the region, which became a centre of the medieval Serbian state and of the autocephalous Serbian Orthodox Church seated at the Patriarchate of Pec.


Gracanica and Visoki Decani built

Summary: The monastery of Gracanica was founded in 1321 and Visoki Decani built in the mid-14th century for King Stefan Decanski; with other churches they form the UNESCO Medieval Monuments in Kosovo, later placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger.


The Battle of Kosovo

Summary: At Kosovo Polje, the Field of Blackbirds, the Serbian prince Lazar and his allies fought the Ottoman sultan Murad I; both rulers died and the Ottoman victory led to the eventual subjugation of Serbia.


Ottoman conquest completed

Summary: By the mid-15th century the Ottomans had established direct rule over all of Serbia, including Kosovo, ending the medieval Serbian state in the region.


Ottoman administration of Kosovo

Summary: For roughly four and a half centuries Kosovo was ruled as part of the Ottoman Empire, governed through the Balkan provinces and, latterly, the vilayet of Kosovo.


Migrations and a shifting population

Summary: Over the Ottoman centuries many Orthodox Serbs emigrated and parts of the population converted to Islam, while the Albanian-speaking share grew, probably forming a majority by the 18th century.


The League of Prizren

Summary: Albanian leaders founded the League of Prizren in Kosovo, the first Albanian nationalist organisation, seeking to unite Albanian-inhabited lands and promote the Albanian language amid the Congress of Berlin's partition plans.


Suppression of the League

Summary: After resisting territorial transfers to Montenegro and Greece, the League of Prizren was suppressed by the Ottoman authorities, but it had laid the foundation of the Albanian national movement.


Balkan Wars bring Kosovo into Serbia

Summary: The Balkan Wars ended Ottoman rule, and Kosovo was incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbia, later part of the Yugoslav state.


Wide autonomy under the Yugoslav constitution

Summary: The 1974 Yugoslav constitution gave Kosovo broad self-government as an autonomous province within Serbia, with its own assembly, courts and a veto, making it nearly a republic in practice.


Pristina student protests

Summary: Student demonstrations in Pristina demanding republic status for Kosovo grew into wider unrest, which the Yugoslav authorities suppressed, exposing deep tensions over the province's status.


Milosevic revokes Kosovo's autonomy

Summary: Under Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian assembly stripped Kosovo of most of the autonomy granted in 1974, returning police, courts, education and language policy to Belgrade and igniting Albanian resistance.


The Albanian parallel state

Summary: Led by Ibrahim Rugova and the Democratic League of Kosovo, Kosovo's Albanians boycotted Serbian institutions and ran their own parallel schools, clinics and administration in a decade of nonviolent resistance.


KLA insurgency and Serbian crackdown

Summary: The Kosovo Liberation Army's insurgency against Serbian rule met an escalating campaign by Serbian and Yugoslav forces, killing many Albanians and displacing hundreds of thousands during 1998.


NATO air campaign begins

Summary: After the failure of talks at Rambouillet, NATO launched Operation Allied Force against Yugoslav forces on 24 March 1999, a 78-day air campaign intended to halt the humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo.


Mass expulsion of Kosovo Albanians

Summary: Serbian and Yugoslav forces forcibly expelled some 862,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, uprooting more than 80 percent of the population, with thousands killed in a systematic campaign later prosecuted as war crimes.


UN Resolution 1244 and UNMIK

Summary: The Security Council adopted Resolution 1244, ending the war, placing Kosovo under UN interim administration (UNMIK) with a NATO-led KFOR security force, while reaffirming Yugoslav sovereignty and deferring final status.


Constitutional Framework for self-government

Summary: UNMIK established a Constitutional Framework for Provisional Self-Government, creating an assembly, presidency and government for Kosovo while final status and ultimate authority remained with the UN administration.


Declaration of independence

Summary: The Assembly of Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in Pristina, proclaiming the Republic of Kosovo; the United States recognised it the next day, followed by many other states.


ICJ advisory opinion

Summary: Responding to the UN General Assembly, the International Court of Justice advised that the 2008 declaration of independence did not violate general international law or Resolution 1244.


Brussels Agreement

Summary: Under EU facilitation, Belgrade and Pristina reached the First Agreement of Principles Governing the Normalisation of Relations, addressing the integration of Serb-majority areas and a planned association of Serb municipalities in northern Kosovo.


Ohrid agreement on normalisation

Summary: At Ohrid the parties reached an EU-facilitated Agreement on the Path to Normalisation, committing to good-neighbourly relations and mutual recognition of documents and symbols, though Serbia did not recognise Kosovo's statehood.


An unresolved status

Summary: Recognised by around a hundred states but not by Serbia, Russia, China or several EU members, Kosovo remains outside the UN, with the Serb-majority north around Mitrovica its most contested question.


Dilmun settlement on Failaka

Summary: Failaka island became a flourishing outpost of the Bronze Age Dilmun trading culture, with a town, temple, palace, and one of the largest concentrations of Dilmun seals known.


Alexander's fleet names the island Ikaros

Summary: During the exploration of the Gulf by Alexander the Great's navy, the admiral Nearchus is credited with naming Failaka 'Ikaros' after an Aegean island.


A Seleucid Greek fortress rises on Ikaros

Summary: Under the Seleucid successors of Alexander, a fortified Greek settlement with stone walls and two temples was built on Failaka, the only standing Hellenistic stronghold in the Gulf.


A Greek inscription confirms Ikaros

Summary: A Danish archaeological expedition uncovered a forty-four-line Greek inscription on Failaka, settling the identification of the island with the Ikaros of ancient sources.


The Bani Utub settle the bay

Summary: Clans of the Bani Utub, part of the Anizah confederation, migrated from the Arabian interior to the Gulf coast and founded the town of Kuwait around its sheltered bay.


Sabah I becomes the first Al Sabah ruler

Summary: The Bani Utub chose Sabah ibn Jabir, founder of the Al Sabah dynasty, to be their sheikh, beginning a line of rulers that continues to the present day.


A pearling and trade entrepot

Summary: Kuwait grew wealthy as a maritime port, its dhows trading to India and Africa, its shipyards renowned, and its pearling fleets diving the Gulf oyster beds each summer.


Mubarak Al-Sabah seizes power

Summary: Mubarak took control of Kuwait in a palace coup in which the ruling sheikh and his brother were killed, beginning a reign that would shape the modern state.


The Anglo-Kuwaiti agreement

Summary: Mubarak signed a secret treaty placing Kuwait's foreign relations under British control in exchange for protection, making the sheikhdom a British protectorate and shielding it from the Ottomans.


Kuwait's separate status confirmed

Summary: Anglo-Ottoman negotiations recognized Kuwait as an autonomous district under British protection, distinguishing it from the Ottoman territories that would later form Iraq.


The oil concession is granted

Summary: Sheikh Ahmad al-Jabir Al-Sabah granted a concession to the Kuwait Oil Company, a joint Anglo-American venture, opening the era of petroleum.


Discovery of the Burgan field

Summary: Drilling revealed the giant Burgan oil field, one of the world's largest, though development was delayed by the Second World War.


First oil exports

Summary: Kuwait began exporting crude oil in 1946, launching the rapid transformation of the pearling port into a wealthy oil state.


Independence from Britain

Summary: Kuwait and Britain ended the 1899 protectorate agreement and Kuwait declared full sovereignty under Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah, despite an immediate Iraqi claim.


Constitution and National Assembly

Summary: A constitution was promulgated and elections in 1963 created the National Assembly, the Gulf's first and longest-serving elected parliament.


Iraq invades and annexes Kuwait

Summary: About one hundred thousand Iraqi troops overran Kuwait in hours; Saddam Hussein declared the country annexed, and the ruling family fled to Saudi Arabia.


The UN condemns and authorizes force

Summary: The Security Council passed Resolution 660 demanding withdrawal and Resolution 678 authorizing all necessary means to expel Iraq if it did not leave by 15 January 1991.


Operation Desert Storm liberates Kuwait

Summary: A U.S.-led coalition launched an air campaign in mid-January and a ground assault on 24 February, expelling Iraqi forces and liberating Kuwait by late February.


Retreating Iraqis torch the oil fields

Summary: As they withdrew, Iraqi forces set fire to and damaged over 700 Kuwaiti oil wells, causing a vast environmental disaster that took until November to fully extinguish.


Rapid post-war reconstruction

Summary: International teams capped the burning wells and Kuwait restored oil output to pre-war capacity within about a year, while the UN set up a commission for Iraqi reparations.


Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad becomes emir

Summary: The veteran foreign minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah acceded as emir, a reign noted for diplomacy and humanitarian engagement until his death in 2020.


Sheikh Mishal accedes as emir

Summary: After the deaths of Sheikh Sabah in 2020 and Sheikh Nawaf in 2023, Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah became ruler of Kuwait.


Parliament dissolved and constitution suspended

Summary: Emir Mishal dissolved the National Assembly and suspended several constitutional articles for up to four years, pausing the Gulf's oldest elected legislature.


The sacred landscape of Vat Phou

Summary: Around the Champasak plain in the south, a planned Hindu landscape develops around the Vat Phou temple, growing over a millennium largely under Khmer influence; it is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.


Tai-Lao settlement of the Mekong

Summary: Tai-speaking peoples migrating southward settle the middle Mekong valley, organizing into numerous small principalities (muang) such as Muang Swa, the future Luang Prabang.


Fa Ngum founds Lan Xang

Summary: Fa Ngum unifies the Lao principalities of the Mekong by conquest and proclaims the kingdom of Lan Xang, the "million elephants," with its capital at Muang Swa (Luang Prabang).


Theravada Buddhism established

Summary: During Fa Ngum's reign Theravada Buddhism of the Sinhalese school is introduced into the Lao kingdom, likely from Cambodia, becoming the foundational religion of Laos.


Setthathirath moves the capital to Vientiane

Summary: Facing Burmese pressure, King Setthathirath transfers his capital from Luang Prabang to Vientiane, brings the Emerald Buddha, and builds the great stupa of That Luang.


Lan Xang splits apart

Summary: After a disputed succession, the kingdom of Lan Xang divides in 1707 into the separate kingdoms of Luang Prabang and Vientiane, ending its unity.


Champasak secedes

Summary: The far south breaks away to form the kingdom of Champasak, completing the fragmentation of Lan Xang into three rival Lao kingdoms.


The Lao kingdoms become Siamese vassals

Summary: Divided and weakened, the rulers of Luang Prabang, Vientiane, and Champasak each fall under a Siamese commissioner and must pay tribute to Bangkok.


Siam destroys Vientiane

Summary: After King Anouvong's failed revolt against Bangkok, Siamese forces sack and raze Vientiane and deport its people, ending the kingdom of Vientiane.


French protectorate established

Summary: Following the Franco-Siamese crisis, Siam cedes the territory east of the Mekong and France makes the Lao states a protectorate within French Indochina, administered from Vientiane.


Japanese occupation and the Lao Issara

Summary: Japan ousts the French administration in March 1945; after Japan's surrender, the nationalist Lao Issara (Free Lao) forms a provisional government to resist the return of French rule.


Founding of the Pathet Lao

Summary: Prince Souphanouvong breaks with the Lao Issara to ally with the Viet Minh and proclaims the communist-oriented Pathet Lao ("Land of the Lao"), the future ruling movement.


Full independence from France

Summary: The Franco-Lao Treaty of Amity and Association transfers the last French powers to the Royal Lao Government, recognizing Laos as a fully independent and sovereign state.


Geneva agreement on Lao neutrality

Summary: An international agreement declares Laos neutral and provides for a coalition government, but the country remains a contested corridor of the Vietnam War.


The Secret War bombing

Summary: The United States drops more than two million tons of bombs on Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail, making it the most heavily bombed country per capita; vast unexploded ordnance remains a deadly legacy.


Paris accords and U.S. withdrawal

Summary: The Paris Peace Accords end direct American military involvement in Indochina, leaving the Lao factions to settle the civil war among themselves.


Founding of the Lao PDR

Summary: The Pathet Lao take power, abolish the 600-year-old monarchy, and proclaim the Lao People's Democratic Republic, with Souphanouvong as president and Kaysone Phomvihane as prime minister.


New Economic Mechanism reforms

Summary: Facing the failure of central planning, the ruling party launches market-oriented reforms, legalizing private enterprise and inviting foreign investment, echoing Vietnam's Doi Moi.


Luang Prabang inscribed by UNESCO

Summary: The former royal capital of Luang Prabang, a fusion of Lao and French colonial architecture at the meeting of the Mekong and Nam Khan, is added to the UNESCO World Heritage List.


Laos joins ASEAN

Summary: The Lao PDR is admitted to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, cementing its integration into the region after decades of isolation.


Laos-China Railway opens

Summary: The 1,000-km railway linking Vientiane to Kunming begins operating, aiming to turn landlocked Laos into a land-linked hub of regional trade while deepening its debt to China.


Byblos trades cedar with Egypt

Summary: Byblos flourishes as a port exporting Lebanese cedar to Egypt, beginning a record of urban habitation that makes it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.


The Phoenician alphabet at Byblos

Summary: A twenty-two letter alphabetic script comes into use at Byblos; adopted by the Greeks, it becomes the ancestor of the Greek and Latin alphabets and the writing of much of the world.


Tyre founds Carthage

Summary: Tyrian colonists are traditionally credited with founding Carthage, the most powerful of the Phoenician colonies in the western Mediterranean.


Alexander the Great takes Tyre

Summary: After a long siege and the building of a causeway to the island city, Alexander captures Tyre, ending the independence of the Phoenician city-states.


Baalbek becomes Roman Heliopolis

Summary: Refounded as a Roman colony, Baalbek is endowed over more than two centuries with colossal temples to Jupiter, Bacchus and Venus, becoming one of the most famous sanctuaries of the Roman world.


Saint Maron and the Maronite origins

Summary: The Maronite community traces its origin to Saint Maron, a Syrian hermit whose ascetic following grows into a distinct church that later takes refuge in the mountains of Lebanon.


Arab Muslim conquest of the Levant

Summary: Arab armies defeat Byzantium and bring the Levant under Muslim rule, while the Christian communities of Mount Lebanon retain their distinct character in the highlands.


Ottoman conquest of Syria

Summary: The Ottomans defeat the Mamluks and take Syria and Lebanon, but leave Mount Lebanon largely to local emirs, allowing a semi-autonomous emirate to develop.


Fakhr al-Din II unites the mountain

Summary: Fakhr al-Din II of the Druze Maan dynasty unites the Druze and Maronite districts of Mount Lebanon, expands his domains across the Levant and cultivates ties with Tuscany.


Execution of Fakhr al-Din II

Summary: Defeated by Ottoman forces wary of his power, Fakhr al-Din is captured and executed in Constantinople, but the union of Druze and Maronite districts he created endures.


Fall of Bashir Shihab II

Summary: After siding with Egypt's Ibrahim Pasha, the long-ruling emir Bashir Shihab II is deposed and exiled when Egyptian rule in Syria collapses, ending the autonomous emirate.


Sectarian conflict in Mount Lebanon

Summary: Violence between Druze and Maronites spreads to Damascus and kills many thousands of Christians (figures are disputed estimates), prompting a French-led European intervention.


The Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate

Summary: Under European pressure the Ottomans grant Mount Lebanon autonomy as the Mutasarrifate, governed by a Christian official and a council of the religious communities.


Creation of Greater Lebanon

Summary: French High Commissioner Henri Gouraud proclaims the State of Greater Lebanon, enlarging the old province with the coastal cities and the Bekaa under a French mandate.


The Lebanese Republic and constitution

Summary: Greater Lebanon is reorganised as the Lebanese Republic with a written constitution, though France retains ultimate authority under the mandate.


The National Pact

Summary: Bechara El Khoury and Riad al-Solh agree the unwritten National Pact distributing the presidency, premiership and parliamentary speakership among Maronites, Sunnis and Shi'a.


U.S. recognition of Lebanon

Summary: The United States formally recognises Lebanon as an independent state, and establishes diplomatic relations later that year.


French withdrawal completed

Summary: The last French troops leave Lebanon, completing the country's transition to full sovereignty.


Beirut, the Paris of the Middle East

Summary: Lebanon's golden age makes Beirut the banking, commercial and cultural capital of the region, renowned for its cosmopolitan prosperity.


The Lebanese Civil War

Summary: Fighting erupts in Beirut and escalates into a fifteen-year civil war that draws in Syria, Israel and many militias; deaths are estimated, very approximately, in the range of 120,000–150,000.


Israeli invasion and siege of Beirut

Summary: Israel invades Lebanon and besieges Beirut, forcing out the PLO; the assassination of president-elect Bashir Gemayel is followed by the Sabra and Shatila massacre.


The Taif Agreement

Summary: Brokered with Arab support, the Taif Agreement winds down the war and rebalances the confessional system, shifting authority from the Maronite president to the Sunni prime minister and cabinet.


Hariri assassination and the Cedar Revolution

Summary: A car bomb kills former prime minister Rafic Hariri and others; mass protests known as the Cedar Revolution lead Syria to withdraw its forces after nearly thirty years.


Economic collapse and the Beirut port explosion

Summary: From 2019 Lebanon suffers one of the world's worst economic crises; on 4 August 2020 an ammonium-nitrate explosion at the port of Beirut kills more than 200 people and devastates the capital.


Settlement by Mande, Kwa, and Mel peoples

Summary: Over centuries the region was settled by Niger-Congo-speaking peoples — Mande groups such as the Vai and Kpelle, Kwa groups such as the Kru, Grebo, and Bassa, and Mel groups such as the Gola and Kisi, the last regarded as among the oldest inhabitants.


Europeans name the Grain Coast

Summary: Portuguese and other European mariners charted the coast and called it the Grain or Pepper Coast after the melegueta pepper traded there; Kru and Grebo seafarers became known along the West African coast.


Invention of the Vai script

Summary: Momolu Duwalu Bukele and fellow Vai elders are credited with devising the Vai syllabary, one of the few indigenous writing systems created in sub-Saharan Africa, which remains in use; some accounts place its origin earlier.


Founding of the American Colonization Society

Summary: The American Colonization Society was established in the United States to resettle free-born and freed African Americans in West Africa, drawing together abolitionists and slaveholders with sharply differing motives.


Acquisition of Cape Mesurado

Summary: Society agents, backed by a U.S. naval officer, secured Cape Mesurado from local rulers as the site for the colony, after an earlier attempt to settle at Sherbro Island had failed.


First settlers land and found the colony

Summary: Free-born and freed African American settlers went ashore at Cape Mesurado and established the settlement of Christopolis, the nucleus of the colony of Liberia, with the agent Jehudi Ashmun organising its early administration.


Christopolis renamed Monrovia

Summary: The settlement was renamed Monrovia after U.S. President James Monroe, a patron of the Colonization Society, and the colony was named Liberia, 'land of the free'.


The Republic of Liberia is proclaimed

Summary: Delegates issued the Liberian Declaration of Independence and proclaimed the Republic of Liberia under a U.S.-modelled constitution, making it the first modern republic in Africa.


Joseph Jenkins Roberts inaugurated

Summary: Joseph Jenkins Roberts, a free man of colour born in Virginia, was inaugurated as the first president of the Republic of Liberia.


United States recognises Liberia

Summary: Having delayed during the era of slavery, the United States formally recognised the Republic of Liberia in 1862 and concluded a treaty of commerce and navigation with it.


True Whig Party dominance begins

Summary: From 1878 the True Whig Party, the party of the Americo-Liberian elite, held power virtually without interruption for more than a century, marginalising the indigenous majority.


The Firestone rubber concession

Summary: The government granted the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company a 99-year concession to lease up to a million acres, creating one of the world's largest rubber plantations and binding Liberia's economy to a single foreign company.


William Tubman becomes president

Summary: William V. S. Tubman took office as president and would govern until 1971, launching the 'Open Door' policy of foreign investment and the 'National Unification' policy toward the indigenous interior.


Tolbert succeeds Tubman

Summary: On Tubman's death his vice-president William R. Tolbert became president, promising reform but facing mounting discontent over inequality and Americo-Liberian privilege.


The rice riots

Summary: Protests in Monrovia against a proposed increase in the price of rice turned deadly, exposing the fragility of the Tolbert government and the depth of popular grievance.


Samuel Doe's coup ends settler rule

Summary: Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe led soldiers who killed President Tolbert and seized power, ending 133 years of Americo-Liberian and True Whig dominance; thirteen officials were soon publicly executed.


Doe confirmed in a flawed election

Summary: Samuel Doe was declared the winner of a widely criticised election, formalising his presidency; his increasingly repressive and ethnically partisan rule deepened tensions across Liberia.


First Liberian Civil War begins

Summary: Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia invaded from Côte d'Ivoire, beginning a brutal civil war marked by ethnic massacres and the widespread use of child soldiers.


Samuel Doe captured and killed

Summary: President Samuel Doe was captured, tortured, and killed by a rival rebel faction, and a West African ECOMOG force deployed in an attempt to contain the spreading conflict.


Charles Taylor elected president

Summary: After a 1996 peace accord, Charles Taylor won the 1997 presidential election amid intimidation and war-weariness, ending the first civil war but not the underlying conflict.


Second Liberian Civil War begins

Summary: The rebel group LURD launched a new insurgency against Taylor's government from the north, opening a second civil war that would eventually besiege Monrovia.


Taylor resigns; Accra peace agreement

Summary: With rebels besieging Monrovia and an international indictment over Sierra Leone hanging over him, Charles Taylor resigned and went into exile; a comprehensive peace agreement in Accra ended the war and a UN mission, UNMIL, deployed.


Taylor convicted of war crimes

Summary: The Special Court for Sierra Leone convicted Charles Taylor of aiding and abetting war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone and sentenced him to 50 years — the first former head of state convicted by an international tribunal since Nuremberg.


Ellen Johnson Sirleaf elected

Summary: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won the presidential run-off against George Weah and was inaugurated in January 2006 as the first woman elected to lead an African nation.