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. 1922

   Britain declares a limited Egyptian independence

   Following the 1919 nationalist revolution politically led by Saad Zaghloul’s Wafd, Britain ended the protectorate and recognized Egypt as a sovereign state. It reserved defence, communications, minorities, and Sudan, retaining troops and decisive influence

2. 1926–1931

   Dominions become autonomous and equal communities

   The 1926 Balfour Declaration described Britain and the dominions as autonomous and equal in status; the 1931 Statute of Westminster removed much legislative subordination. Application varied by dominion, and this equality did not extend to colonies or Indigenous peoples within settler states

3. c. 1929–c. 1939

   Great Depression

   The financial crisis that began in 1929 became a worldwide depression through banking collapses, trade contraction, unemployment, and divergent policies. Its pace and effects varied among economies and colonies; it was not caused by one market alone or sufficient by itself to explain the rise of every authoritarian regime of the era.

4. 1935

   The 1935 Act expands provincial autonomy without sovereignty

   The Act proposed a federation never fully realized and created elected provincial governments under a still-restricted franchise. Governors retained reserve powers and the center remained under imperial control; nevertheless, the 1937 elections gave Indian parties experience in office

5. c. 1939–c. 1941

   “Blitzkrieg”: operational practice and historiographical debate

   German campaigns of 1939–1941 later associated with “blitzkrieg” combined concentration, surprise, mobile units, communications, air support, and operational exploitation in particular circumstances. Research cautions that no single coherent German doctrinal concept under that name existed before 1939; it also does not by itself explain outcomes, which depended on planning, logistics, political decisions, resistance, intelligence, and the actions of opposing forces.

6. c. 1939–c. 1945

   Second World War

   Germany’s invasion of Poland opened the war in Europe, which became a global conflict with campaigns in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. The war involved occupation, bombing, hunger, displacement, and genocides; the Holocaust also has specific records in the Jewish layer and is not reducible to a military subepisode.

7. c. 1941–c. 1942

   Japanese carrier strike force and Pacific naval warfare

   In 1941, Japan concentrated six aircraft carriers in a strike force for the operation against Pearl Harbor, combining embarked aircraft, escorts, submarines, replenishment, and operational secrecy. The case made visible the capacity to concentrate naval aviation at distance, but not an inherent technological superiority or decisive formula: intelligence, industry, training, losses, repair, and Allied responses rapidly transformed the Pacific war.

8. 1942

   The fall of Singapore shatters the myth of invulnerability

   British, Indian, Australian, and local forces surrendered to Japan after the Malayan campaign. Japanese occupation was brutal for local communities, but the defeat also shattered claims of British military and racial superiority and transformed Southeast Asian nationalisms

9. 1942–1945

   Manhattan Project, nuclear weapons, and emergent deterrence

   From 1942, the Manhattan Engineer District organized a secret infrastructure bringing together science, industry, labour, and military command to produce the first nuclear weapons. Their use in 1945 opened an unprecedented strategic problem; nuclear deterrence developed as a system and doctrinal language chiefly after the war, so this entry treats it here as an emerging possibility, not an already settled doctrine or a sole explanation for the war’s end.

10. c. 1944–c. 1971

    Bretton Woods monetary order

    Delegates from 44 Allied countries designed postwar reconstruction institutions and monetary rules in 1944, from which the IMF and World Bank emerged. The fixed-exchange-rate system did not encompass all economies equally and ended when the United States suspended dollar convertibility into gold in 1971.

11. 1945

    Manchester demands immediate decolonization

    Trade unionists, intellectuals, and activists from Africa and the diaspora gathered for the Fifth Pan-African Congress. George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, and Amy Ashwood Garvey were among those linking labour rights, anti-racism, and self-government while calling for mass action and colonialism’s end

12. c. 1945–c. 1991

    Nuclear deterrence and the mutual-assured-destruction debate

    During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union organized nuclear forces to retain retaliatory capacity and deter a first strike. The term “mutual assured destruction” (MAD) described a family of ideas about reciprocal vulnerability and force survivability, not an identical doctrine accepted in the same way by both governments or a guarantee of peace. Crises, accidents, command arrangements, incomplete information, and arms control exposed its limits and risks.

13. c. 1945–c. 1976

    Maoist people’s war as a postwar reference

    Mao’s writings on guerrilla and protracted war, written before 1945 and applied in specific Chinese circumstances, remained a reference for postwar insurgent debates. They articulated political organization, social support, mobility, and gradual transformation of forces, not a technical recipe separable from revolutionary aims and local conditions. Later movements selected, reinterpreted, or rejected those ideas; not all were Maoist and no insurgency depended simply on China.

14. c. 1945–c. 1954

    Viet Minh: logistics, territorial organization, and combat forces

    In Indochina’s decolonization war, the Viet Minh combined political and territorial organization with transport and supply networks, guerrillas, and larger-scale units. Its trajectory shows that insurgencies could formulate and sustain their own logistical and command capacities, rather than merely evade state forces. The particular combination varied by region and phase of the war, and does not make its experience a universal model or erase Vietnamese political diversity.

15. c. 1945–c. 1975

    Wave of decolonization and self-determination

    After 1945, dozens of territories achieved independence or changed status, reshaping the composition of states and the UN. Paths included negotiation, political mobilization, and war, and decolonization remained incomplete: formal independence did not automatically remove economic dependency, imposed borders, or remaining colonial domination.

16. 1945

    United Nations

    The United Nations Charter enters into force after World War II.

17. 1947–1974

    The sterling area and its guarantees prolong an imperial financial network

    After the Second World War, the sterling area grouped territories and states that held reserves in pounds and applied exchange controls coordinated around London. The 1947 convertibility crisis, devaluations and the 1968 guarantee agreements show that constitutional independence did not immediately end monetary dependence or the Bank of England’s centrality. The official archive records renewals and short extensions until the guarantees ended in December 1974; this does not imply that every exchange control ended at that point

18. c. 1947–c. 1991

    Bipolar architecture of the Cold War

    Rivalry between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their alliances structured security, aid, propaganda, technology, and proxy wars for decades. Bipolarity does not explain all world politics: non-aligned states, liberation movements, and local actors had their own agendas and often resisted that framing.

19. 1947

    Independence and Partition of India and Pakistan

    The end of British rule in the subcontinent produced the new states of India and Pakistan and triggered mass displacement and violence. Partition was not a purely religious conflict: imperial decisions, political leadership, local tensions, and the experiences of diverse communities shaped the process and its aftermath.

20. 1948

    Burma and Ceylon take different constitutional paths

    Burma became an independent republic outside the Commonwealth, months after Aung San’s assassination; U Nu led the new government. Ceylon became a dominion within the Commonwealth under D. S. Senanayake, retaining Westminster institutions that were later transformed

21. 1948

    Universal Declaration of Human Rights

    The UN General Assembly proclaimed the Universal Declaration as a common standard of rights after the world war. It is not a treaty and did not itself guarantee compliance, but it provided language and a global reference point for later instruments, movements, and rights claims.

22. 1949

    The London Declaration admits republics to the Commonwealth

    To let India become a republic while remaining a member, prime ministers agreed to recognize the monarch as a symbol of free association rather than a required common sovereign. The formula recast the Commonwealth as an organization of formally equal states, despite unequal post-imperial economic and political relations

23. c. 1950–c. 2024

    “Great Acceleration”: a planetary-change concept

    “Great Acceleration” is an analytical label for the acceleration, from the mid-twentieth century, of socioeconomic indicators and Earth-system changes such as energy, production, population, and greenhouse gases. The date and the proposal to call it the “Anthropocene” remain debated; the concept does not assign equal responsibility to all societies.

24. 1952–1963

    British nuclear tests at Monte Bello, Emu Field and Maralinga

    With the agreement and support of the Australian government, the United Kingdom conducted nuclear trials at the Monte Bello Islands, Emu Field and Maralinga between 1952 and 1963. Tests and experiments contaminated lands inhabited by Aboriginal peoples, especially Anangu and Maralinga Tjarutja communities, and also exposed service personnel. The 1985 McClelland Royal Commission criticized protection of Indigenous people and safety management, revealing how a postcolonial military relationship preserved hierarchies and shifted risks onto local communities

25. 1954–1962

    FLN-ALN insurgent organization in Algeria

    During the Algerian war of independence, the National Liberation Front and its National Liberation Army developed guerrilla units and a politico-administrative organization for mobilization, propaganda, information, and resources. This organizational agency was neither homogeneous nor free of competition, coercion, and fractures within the movement and Algerian society. The entry does not present the struggle as a replica of Asian models or reduce independence to a military outcome.

26. c. 1954–c. 1962

    “Guerre révolutionnaire” and French counterinsurgency

    After the Indochina and Algerian wars, some French officers developed *guerre révolutionnaire*, understanding irregular conflict as political, psychological, and military struggle. This doctrine influenced international counterinsurgency exchanges, but was not one single French policy or a manual able to resolve the colonial causes of conflict. Its practices and effects, including the human and political costs of repression, must be distinguished from its own doctrinal claims.

27. 1957

    Ghana and Malaya accelerate decolonization

    Ghana, under Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People’s Party, became the first sub-Saharan British colony to gain independence in the postwar wave. Months later, Tunku Abdul Rahman led the negotiated independence of the Federation of Malaya while the Emergency was still underway

28. c. 1959–c. 1967

    Guevara and guerrilla doctrine in the Americas

    After the Cuban Revolution, Ernesto Che Guevara published a reflection on guerrilla warfare that influenced debates among revolutionary movements, especially in Latin America. The text linked irregular combat to a political project and held that a guerrilla without popular support was bound to fail. Its circulation does not demonstrate uniform adoption or success: local actors, rural and urban conditions, social support, repression, and international decisions produced very different outcomes.

29. 1960

    Nigeria attains independence

    The Nigeria Independence Act provided that the United Kingdom would cease to be responsible for Nigeria’s government on 1 October 1960. Independence brought into a federal state territories British rule had administered and amalgamated, under a government led by Abubakar Tafawa Balewa with Nnamdi Azikiwe as governor-general. The legal formula of “fully responsible status within the Commonwealth” marked constitutional sovereignty while leaving the new country to negotiate deep regional differences and colonial legacies

30. 1960

    Africa changes as the UN declares a right to independence

    In Cape Town Harold Macmillan acknowledged the “wind of change” of African nationalism; he did not create it. That year British Somaliland, Cyprus, and Nigeria became independent, and the General Assembly adopted Resolution 1514 against colonialism, establishing self-determination as an international norm