Knowledge hubs
Years
What a single year or period did, and what it set in motion.
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Years
What a single year or period did, and what it set in motion.
- Years1492 and the Opening of the Atlantic WorldHow Columbus’s 1492 voyage connected Atlantic worlds, initiated Spanish invasion, and accelerated colonization, slavery, disease and ecological exchange.
- Years1519–1521: The Spanish Conquest of the Aztec EmpireHow Cortés, Indigenous allies, epidemic disease and siege destroyed Aztec rule in 1519–1521 and established colonial New Spain.
- Years1652: The Founding of the Dutch Cape ColonyHow the VOC’s 1652 Cape station under Jan van Riebeeck became a settler colony built through dispossession, coerced labor, slavery and frontier war.
- Years1757: Plassey and the East India Company’s ConquestHow Robert Clive, Mir Jafar and the East India Company defeated Siraj-ud-Daulah at Plassey in 1757 and converted Bengal’s wealth into empire.
- Years1791–1804: The Haitian RevolutionHow enslaved people overthrew French rule in Saint-Domingue, abolished slavery and founded independent Haiti between 1791 and 1804.
- Years1833–1838: British abolition and slave-owner compensationHow Britain abolished colonial slavery, paid owners £20 million, imposed apprenticeship on formerly enslaved people, and left a reparations debt.
- Years1857: The Indian Rebellion against Company RuleA documented history of the 1857–59 Indian Rebellion: causes, chronology, contested death tolls, British reprisals and the creation of Crown rule.
- Years1884–1885: Berlin Conference and Africa’s PartitionHow the 1884–1885 Berlin Conference imposed rules for European conquest, accelerated Africa’s partition and enabled colonial violence and extraction.
- Years1904–1908: The Herero and Nama GenocideHow German colonial forces exterminated Herero and Nama communities in Namibia from 1904 to 1908 through warfare, desert expulsion and camps.
- Years1919: Amritsar and the Year the Empire Showed Its FaceHow the 1919 Amritsar massacre exposed British rule in India: Rowlatt repression, disputed death tolls, imperial impunity and nationalist revolt.
- Years1943: The Bengal FamineHow British wartime policy, inflation, crop damage and unequal access to food turned Bengal’s 1943 subsistence crisis into mass death.
- Years1948: The Nakba and Apartheid South AfricaHow 1948 brought Palestinian mass dispossession and formal apartheid in South Africa, with a chronology, documented figures, laws and legacies.
- Years1960: The Year of Africa and the Terms of IndependenceHow 17 African states gained independence in 1960, the colonial terms that survived sovereignty, and the crises, conflicts and alliances that followed.
- Years1994: Apartheid ended, its structures survivedHow South Africa's 1994 election ended apartheid rule while inherited land, wealth, policing and spatial inequality continued under democracy.
- Years2020: Statues, Protest and the Fight Over Colonial MemoryHow George Floyd’s murder drove global protests, toppled colonial statues and forced institutions to confront slavery, empire and public memory.