-
Period: to
1900C.E. - Present
-
Establlishment of People's Republic of China
In August 1912 the Kuomintang (KMT) was founded by Song Jiaoren. It was an amalgamation of small political groups, including Sun's Tongmeng Hui. In the national elections held in February 1913 for the new parliament, Song campaigned against the Yuan administration, whose representation at the time was largely by the Republican Party, led by Liang Qichao. Song was an able campaigner and the KMT won a majority of votes. -
Assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand
assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, on 28 June 1914, set in train a series of diplomatic events that led inexorably to the outbreak of war in Europe at the end of July 1914. -
Japan makes 21 Demands on China
The Twenty-One Demands were a set of demands made by the Empire of Japan under Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu. It was sent to the nominal government of the Republic of China on January 18, 1915, resulting in two treaties with Japan on May 25, 1915 -
Gallipoli campaign
The term 'Gallipoli' refers to the attempts by the French, British and Commonwealth forces during 1915 and 1916. It was one of the first ever major amphibious operations in modern warfare and used aircraft, aerial reconnaissance, landing craft, radio communications, artificial harbours and submarines. -
German resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare
In 1917, the lethal threat of the German U-boat submarine raises its head again, as Germany returns to the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. It had previously suspended in response to pressure from the United States and other neutral countries. -
Bolshevik Revolution
On October 24 the Bolshevik party led Russian workers and peasants to revolution, under the slogan of: "All power to the Soviets". On October 25 , the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets met and created the Soviet Government through the elections of a new Council of People's Commissars and Central Executive Committee. -
Civil War in Russia
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war in the former Russian Empire fought between the Bolshevik Red Army and the White Army the loosely-allied anti-Bolshevik forces. The Red Army defeated the White Armed Forces of South Russia in Ukraine and the army led by Aleksandr Kolchak in Siberia in 1919. -
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918 at Brest-Litovsk between Russia and the Central Powers marking Russia's exit from World War I.
While the treaty was practically obsolete before the end of the year, it did provide some relief to the Bolsheviks, who were tied up in fighting the Russian Civil War, and it affirmed the independence of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania. -
Paris Peace Conference
The Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers. It took place in Paris in 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities. They met, discussed various options and developed a series of treaties ("Paris Peace Treaties") for the post-war world. -
Ataturk proclaims Republic of Turkey
On April 20, 1920, the Turkish Grand National Assembly was founded to conduct the War of Independence despite the Ottoman parliament in occupied Istanbul. -
First meeting of the League of Nations
The League of Nations (LON) was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. Its first meeting was in November, 1920; it also was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. -
Lenin's Economic Policy
The Economic Policy (EP) was an economic policy proposed by Vladimir Lenin, who called it state capitalism. Allowing some private ventures, the EP allowed small businesses or smoke shops, for instance, to reopen for private profit while the state continued to control banks, foreign trade, and large industries. It was officially decided in the course of the 10th Congress of the All-Russian Communist Party. -
Mussolini launches fascist movement
Italian Fascism refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian Social Republic from 1943 to 1945, the post-war Italian Social Movement, and subsequent Italian neo-fascist movements. -
Civil disobedience movement in India
Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is commonly, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance. -
First Soviet Five-Year Plan
The First Five-Year Plan of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a list of economic goals, created by Joseph Stalin and based off his policy of Socialism in One Country, that was designed to strengthen the country's economy between 1928 and 1932. The main concerns of the First Five-Year Plan focused on making the nation militarily, industrially, and financially self-sufficient. -
US stock market crash
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, and the Stock Market Crash, was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout. The crash signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries and did not end in the United States until 1947. -
Japanese invasion of Manchuria
The Japanese invasion of Manchuria began on September 19, 1931, when Manchuria was invaded by the Kwantung Army from Japan immediately following the Mukden Incident. The Japanese established a puppet state, called Manchukuo, and their occupation lasted until the end of World War II. -
Hitler is ruler in Germany
After the elections of March 5, 1933, the Nazis began a systematic takeover of the state governments throughout Germany. Armed SA and SS thugs barged into local government offices using the state of emergency decree as a pretext to throw out legitimate office holders and replace them with Nazi Reich commissioners. -
Sandino is murdered in Nicaragua
Augusto Nicolás Calderón Sandino (May 18, 1895 – February 21, 1934) was a Nicaraguan revolutionary and leader of a rebellion against the U.S. military occupation of Nicaragua between 1927 and 1933. He was labeled a bandit by the United States government, and his exploits made him a hero throughout much of Latin America, but was later murdered by Anastasio Somoza García in 1934. -
Long March by Chinese Communists
The Long March was a military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Communist Party of China, the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the Kuomintang (KMT or Chinese Nationalist Party) army. There was not one Long March, but a series of marches, as various Communist armies in the south escaped to the north and west. -
Invasion of China by Japan
The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States. -
Stalin's "Great Purge" in USSR
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and murder in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1937 to 1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and arbitrary executions. -
German Auschluss with Austria
Austria was annexed into the German Third Reich on 12 March 1938. There had been several years of pressure by supporters from both Austria and Germany for the "Heim ins Reich" movement. Earlier, Nazi Germany had provided support for the Austrian National Socialist Party in its bid to seize power from Austria's Austrofascist leadership. -
Cardenas nationalizes oil industry in Mexico
The Mexican oil expropriation was the expropriation of all oil reserves, facilities, and foreign oil companies in Mexico in 1938. It took place when President and General Lázaro Cárdenas declared that all mineral and oil reserves found within Mexico belong to the nation. -
Invasion of Poland by Germany
The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War in Poland and the Poland Campaign in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Germany, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the beginning of World War II in Europe. The invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and ended on 6 October 1939 with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing all of Poland. -
German invasion of USSR
Under the codename Operation "Barbarossa," Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, in the largest German military operation of World War II.
The destruction of the Soviet Union by military force, the permanent elimination of the perceived Communist threat to Germany, and the seizure of prime land within Soviet borders for long-term German settlement had been a core policy of the Nazi movement since the 1920s. -
Soviet victory at Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between August 23 1942 and February 2 1943. It was the largest battle on the Eastern Front and was marked by brutality and disregard for military and civilian casualties. -
D-Day, Allied invasion at Normandy
Operation OVERLORD, the invasion of Normandy, is considered the decisive battle of the war in Western Europe. Before this battle the German Army still firmly occupied France and the Low Countries, the Nazi government still had access to the raw materials and industrial capacity of Western Europe, and local resistance to Nazi rule. -
Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
On August 6, 1945, the United States used a massive, atomic weapon against Hiroshima, Japan. This atomic bomb, the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT, flattened the city, killing tens of thousands of civilians. -
Establishment of the United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace. The UN was founded in 1945 after World War II to replace the League of Nations. -
Partition of India
The Partition of India was the partition of British India on the basis of religious demographics. This led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India which took place in 1947, on August 14 and 15. -
Apartheid in South Africa
Apartheid was a system of racial segregation enforced through legislation by the National Party governments of South Africa between 1948 and 1994, under which the rights of the majority non-white inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and white supremacy and Afrikaner minority rule was maintained. -
Capture of Berlin by Soviet forces
When the offensive resumed, two Soviet fronts attacked Berlin from the east and south, while a third overran German forces positioned north of Berlin. The Battle in Berlin lasted from the 20 of april until the morning of May 2. -
Creation of Israel
The State of Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, after almost two millennia of Jewish dispersal and persecution around the Mediterranean. From the late 19th century the Zionist movement worked towards the goal of creating a homeland for the Jewish people. -
Arab-Israeli War
During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Transjordan’s Arab Legion attempted to capture the entire city of Jerusalem, shelling it and cutting off its Jewish residents from the coastal plain. Western portions of Jerusalem came under Israel’s control only after Israeli forces broke the Arab siege of the city. -
Division of Berlin and Germany
As a consequence of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II Germany was split between the two global blocs in the East and West. While seven million prisoners and forced laborers left Germany, over 10 million German speaking refugees arrived there from Eastern Europe as living conditions were harsh. -
Establishment of NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO, also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. -
Korean War
The Korean War ( 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was a war between the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The Korean War was primarily the result of the political division of Korea by an -
French defeat at Dien Bien Phu
After WWII France reclaimed their colonial influence over the Southeast Asian region known as Indo-China. The French fought an eight-year war against communist Vietman rebels that culminated in the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. -
Algerian War of Liberation
In March 1954 Ahmed Ben Bella, an ex-sergeant in the French army, joined eight other Algerian
exiles in Egypt to form a revolutionary committee that later became known as the National Liberation
Front (Front de Libération Nationale, FLN). A few months later (November 1), the FLN launched its
bid for Algerian independence by coordinated attacks on public buildings, military and police posts,
and communications installations. -
Establishment of Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance (1955–1991), or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty between eight communist states of Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. The founding treaty was established under the initiative of the Soviet Union and signed on 14 May 1955, in Warsaw. -
US troops in Vietman
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the United States and other anti-communist countries. -
Suez crisis
The Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression or Suez War, was a diplomatic and military confrontation in late 1956 between Egypt on one side, and Britain, France and Israel on the other, with the United States, the Soviet Union. The United Nations playing major roles in forcing Britain, France and Israel to withdraw. -
Uprising in Hungary
The Hungarian Revolution or Uprising of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. The revolt began as a student demonstration which attracted thousands as it marched through central Budapest to the Parliament building. A student delegation entering the radio building in an attempt to broadcast its demands was detained. -
Great leap forward in China
The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign of the Communist Party of China, reflected in planning decisions from 1958 to 1961, which aimed to use China's vast population to rapidly transform the country from an agrarian economy into a modern communist society through the process of rapid industrialization and collectivization. Mao Zedong led the campaign based on -
Sino-Soviet rift
Sino-Soviet split was the worsening of political and ideological relations between the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) during the Cold War. In the 1960s, China and the Soviet Union were the two largest Communist states in the world. The doctrinal divergence derived from Chinese and Russian national interests, and from the régimes' respective interpretations of Marxism: Maoism and Marxism–Leninism. -
Construction of the Berlin wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses. -
Creation of the PLO
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); is a political and paramilitary organization which was created in 1964. It is recognized as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" by the United Nations and over 100 states with which it holds diplomatic relations, and has enjoyed observer status at the United Nations since 1974. -
Catro comes to power in Cuba
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born August 13, 1926) is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011. -
Revolution in Iran
The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution.Demonstrations against the Shah commenced in October 1977, developing into a campaign of civil resistance that was -
Iran-Iraq War
The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between the armed forces of Iraq and Iran, lasting from September 1980 to August 1988, making it the longest conventional war of the 20th century. It was initially referred to in English as the "Persian Gulf War" prior to the "Gulf War" of 1990. -
Persian Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War, codenamed Operation Desert Storm, was a war waged by a UN-authorized coalition force from 34 nations. Led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait. -
Reunification of Germany
A strong drive for reunification developed in East and West Germany in 1990. In East Germany, conservative parties supporting reunification won the elections, and the new government and the force of events proceeded to dismantle the state. -
Collapse of USSR
In December of 1991, as the world watched in amazement, the Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate countries. Its collapse was hailed by the west as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism. Thereby ending the Cold War. -
Transfer of Hong Kong to China
The transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China, referred to as "the Handover" internationally and "the Return" or "The Reunification" by Mainland Chinese. It took place on 1 July 1997, and marked the end of British rule in Hong Kong. -
Uprisings in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan
Colour revolutions is a term that was widely used by the media to describe related movements that developed in several societies in the CIS (former USSR) and Balkan states during the early 2000s. The term has also been applied to a number of revolutions elsewhere, including in the Middle East. Some observers have called the events a revolutionary wave, the origins of which can be traced back to the 1986 People Power Revolution in the Philippines.
Par