World

Topics represented

Roman Empire (81) · World history (71) · British Empire (59) · Politics (57) · Law & constitutions (48) · Culture (42) · Resistance & colonized agency (38) · Colonization & sovereignty (35) · Law & imperial government (33) · War & military technology (29) · Decolonization & independence (26) · Self-government & Commonwealth (17)

Records and sources

Ordered by start date. Long lives and processes may begin before the period you want to study.

1. 1606–1607

   Virginia charter and the Jamestown settlement

   An investor company received a charter to colonize Virginia and founded Jamestown in Paspahegh territory within Tsenacomoco. Its early survival depended on exchange and conflict with the polity led by Powhatan

2. 1610

   Dr Bonham’s Case and common-law language

   In Dr Bonham’s Case (1610), Edward Coke used language later associated with the idea that common law “controls” certain statutes. Historical research places the decision in debates on natural law and corporations, not as the creation of a modern English judicial power to invalidate Acts of Parliament.

3. 1625

   Grotius, De iure belli ac pacis

   De iure belli ac pacis, published in 1625, systematized arguments on war, peace, promises, property, and natural law. It was an influential treatise, not an international code ratified by states or a single origin of international law.

4. 1628

   Petition of Right

   In 1628 the House of Commons presented the Petition of Right against taxation without parliamentary consent, arbitrary imprisonment, billeting, and martial law. Charles I accepted it while disputing that it established new rights; the document was part of an English constitutional crisis, not a universal rights guarantee.

5. c. 1647–c. 1649

   Agreements of the People

   Different versions of the Agreement of the People circulated from 1647 to 1649 during the English Civil War, proposing limits on authority and new rules of representation. They were constitutional programs debated by radical and army constituencies, not an enacted constitution or an automatic extension of suffrage.

6. 1648

   Treaties and settlements of Westphalia

   The 1648 treaties of Münster and Osnabrück ended the Thirty Years’ War and ordered relations among the emperor, imperial estates, France, Sweden, and other actors. They recognized concrete territorial, confessional, and procedural arrangements within and around the Empire; they did not by themselves “found” an international system of sovereign states.

7. 1679

   Habeas Corpus Act of 1679

   The 1679 Act set procedural rules to make the older habeas corpus remedy more effective against certain detentions. It did not create the remedy from nothing or by itself guarantee equal protection for every person in every context of the British empire.

8. 1685

   1685 ordinance later called the Code Noir

   The French ordinance of March 1685 regulated the status, discipline, justice, and trade of enslaved people in French American colonies. It initially applied to Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Saint Christopher; later extensions and versions should not be confused with its initial scope. It institutionalized colonial slave law, not equivalent protection for enslaved people.

9. 1689

   English Bill of Rights of 1689

   The Bill of Rights, enacted in December 1689, declared limits on certain Crown prerogatives and principles concerning Parliament, taxation, petition, and courts, and settled the succession. It regulated the English monarchy in particular circumstances and retained political and religious exclusions; it was not a universal human-rights charter.

10. 1713–1714

    Peace and treaties of Utrecht

    The treaties signed at Utrecht in 1713, completed by agreements in 1714, helped end the War of the Spanish Succession and redistributed titles, territories, and trading privileges. They were negotiated arrangements among particular powers and crowns, not a world constitution or a neutral rule for every international relationship.

11. 1748

    Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws

    The Spirit of the Laws, published in 1748, compared laws and institutions in relation to forms of government, society, and material conditions, and influenced later formulations on the distribution of powers. It is a work of political and legal theory, not a constitution or a model applied identically by later states.

12. 1750–1799

    Tipu Sultan

    Ruler of Mysore from 1782, Tipu Sultan modernized military forces, sought foreign alliances and fought the East India Company in a series of wars whose outcome was not predetermined. He died defending Seringapatam in 1799 when a Company-led coalition captured his capital. His career shows South Asian states deploying their own strategy, diplomacy and technology against British expansion

13. 1756–1763

    Seven Years’ War and British imperial expansion

    A global war against France and its allies transferred Canada and other positions to Britain, although conquests were returned or exchanged in several theaters. Victory produced new debt, contested Indigenous frontiers, and governing problems that fed the crisis of the Thirteen Colonies

14. c. 1760–c. 1913

    Industrialization and networks of energy, production, and labor

    Mechanization that began in Great Britain spread unevenly through coal, steam, factories, railways, steel, electricity, and new communications. It generated wealth and productive capacity, but also precarious work, pollution, and unequal relationships among industrial centers, colonies, and export economies; it was neither uniform nor inevitable.

15. 1763

    Royal Proclamation and Indigenous lands in North America

    The Crown organized territories acquired from France and reserved western lands for Indigenous nations, requiring land cessions to be made to the Crown at public meetings. It was an imperial frontier-management instrument, yet remains a legal foundation invoked for Indigenous rights and treaties in Canada

16. 1765–1783

    From the Stamp Act to United States independence

    Taxation, parliamentary control, and colonial resistance escalated from protest to war; the 1776 Declaration articulated independence and the 1783 Treaty of Paris recognized it. Loyalists, enslaved people, and Indigenous nations made their own choices and experienced divergent outcomes; the revolution did not universalize freedom

17. 1770

    Cook charts and claims eastern Australia

    The Endeavour expedition charted the eastern coast and Cook claimed it for George III without treaty or consent from Aboriginal peoples. Later colonial doctrine treated the continent as available for appropriation despite existing Indigenous societies, laws, and sovereignties

18. c. 1775–c. 1825

    Atlantic revolutions and anticolonial independences

    Wars and uprisings in North America, France, the Caribbean, and Spanish America challenged monarchies, empires, and colonial orders. Ideas, people, and resources circulated across the Atlantic, but their political projects, social bases, and outcomes differed; many colonial hierarchies and forms of exclusion persisted after independence.

19. 1780–1784

    Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan resist the Company in Mysore

    Mysore inflicted a major defeat on the Company at Pollilur and sustained a regional war connected to Anglo-French rivalry. The Treaty of Mangalore largely restored the status quo; Mysore’s conquest was not yet inevitable

20. c. 1791–c. 1804

    Haitian Revolution

    The rebellion of enslaved people, free people of color, and other inhabitants of Saint-Domingue became a revolution that defeated the French colonial regime and culminated in Haiti’s independence in 1804. Its impact crossed the Atlantic world and challenged slavery, though the new republic faced isolation, imposed debt, and internal conflict.

21. 1793–1794

    French levée en masse and revolutionary mobilization

    The revolutionary Convention decreed the levée en masse on 23 August 1793, linking recruitment, weapons and powder manufacture, supplies, clothing, and care for armies. It made state mobilization of people and resources on a large scale visible, but application was uneven and coercive and coexisted with resistance, exemptions, local economies, and internal conflicts; it was not the single origin of modern mobilization.

22. 1795

    British Hydrographic Office is established

    The British Admiralty established a hydrographic department in 1795 and began issuing official charts in 1800. The office turned naval surveys, corrections, and notices into continuous state infrastructure serving both navigation and imperial expansion.

23. 1798–1801

    Irish Rebellion and creation of the United Kingdom

    The United Irishmen organized a republican, cross-confessional rebellion followed by extreme repression and sectarian violence. The Acts of Union abolished the Irish Parliament and created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; Ireland was both subordinated within the union and deeply implicated in empire

24. 1819–1901

    Queen Victoria

    Victoria reigned from 1837 to 1901 during the empire’s major territorial, commercial and military expansion and received the title Empress of India in 1876. Monarchy functioned as a symbol of imperial unity and racial and social hierarchy, although ministers, Parliament, companies and colonial authorities made many decisions. Her profile explains imperial political culture without attributing every war, annexation or policy to her personally

25. 1824–1832

    Black War, Black Line and Aboriginal survival in Tasmania

    British pastoral expansion in Van Diemen’s Land intensified a frontier war among settlers, colonial forces and Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples. In 1830 Governor George Arthur mobilized the “Black Line,” a mass operation intended to drive together and capture survivors; it failed militarily but accompanied a policy of removal and confinement. Tongerlongeter, Mannalargenna and other Aboriginal figures represent resistance, negotiation and survival against violence that cannot be narrated as the mere extension of settlement

26. 1828–1858

    Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi

    Lakshmibai ruled Jhansi and contested the East India Company’s annexation of her state under the doctrine of lapse. During the 1857–1858 rebellion she organized and led forces against the British, left Jhansi after its siege and died fighting near Gwalior. Indian and British memories made her an emblematic figure, but her historical importance also lies in a concrete defense of dynastic and territorial sovereignty

27. 1840

    Treaty of Waitangi is signed

    Crown representatives and more than five hundred Māori rangatira signed non-equivalent Māori and English texts: especially `kawanatanga` and `tino rangatiratanga` conveyed different understandings of government and authority. The treaty remains a constitutional foundation and the basis of claims over breaches

28. c. 1848–c. 1849

    Revolutionary wave of 1848–1849

    Uprisings in numerous European states demanded, in differing combinations, constitutions, representation, social reform, and national self-determination. Most were defeated or limited in the short term, but the wave left political changes and exile networks; it was not a single revolution and did not affect all of Europe alike.

29. 1858

    The Crown replaces the Company in India

    The Government of India Act transferred the Company’s territories and functions to the Crown and created a secretary of state for India. Victoria’s proclamation promised religious toleration and respect for princes and property while consolidating a more centralized and racialized Raj

30. 1867

    Confederation creates the Dominion of Canada

    The British North America Act federated Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick under the Crown. The new dominion gained broad settler self-government and soon extended authority west and north without general consent from First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples