🧭 Colonisation, decolonisation and the Cold War
How European powers built empires across the Americas, Africa and Australia, what it meant for the peoples already there, how colonies won their freedom, and how the Cold War, the UN and arms control shaped the world after 1945.
⛵ The age of colonisation
Voyages, conquests, settler colonies and the slave trade.
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1442
The Portuguese begin slave trading
The Portuguese began slave trading.
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1492
Columbus in the West Indies
Columbus reached the West Indies.
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1521 and 1572
Spain conquers Mexico and Peru
The Spanish conquered Mexico in 1521 and Peru in 1572.
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1607 and 1619
English colonies in North America
England set up its first colonies in North America; the first slaves were brought from West Africa to Virginia in 1619.
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18th century
The peak of the slave trade
All the colonial powers were involved in the international slave trade at its peak; as many as two-thirds of those carried died on board ship.
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1788
Convicts to Australia
The first British convicts were shipped to Botany Bay, Australia.
🪶 Displacing indigenous peoples
What expansion meant for the native peoples of North America.
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1854
Chief Seattle’s letter
The President of the USA received a letter from a native leader, Chief Seattle.
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By 1890
The bison almost exterminated
By 1890 the bison had almost been exterminated, ending the hunting life the natives had followed for centuries; by 1892 the USA’s continental expansion was complete.
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1934
The Indian Reorganisation Act
A landmark US law that gave natives in reservations the right to buy land and take loans.
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1982
Aboriginal rights in Canada
Canada’s Constitution Act accepted the existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the natives.
🕊 Decolonisation
Colonies become nations.
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1821
Bolivar and Venezuela
Simon Bolivar led Venezuela to independence.
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1947
India becomes free
India became independent.
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1955
Bandung and non-alignment
The Bandung Conference strengthened the Non-Aligned Movement.
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1957
Ghana leads Africa
Ghana became the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to become independent; the Organisation of African Unity was founded in 1963.
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1948–1990
Apartheid and its end
The Afrikaner National Party won power in South Africa in 1948 and put the policy of apartheid in place; Nelson Mandela was freed in 1990 and apartheid began to be dismantled.
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1971
Bangladesh is born
Bangladesh emerged as an independent nation.
🧊 The UN and the Cold War
A new world body, rival blocs and the effort to control weapons.
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24 October 1945
The United Nations is founded
The UN was founded with 51 original members — hence 24 October is UN Day; India joined on 30 October 1945. By 2011 it had 193 member states.
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1958
The Cuban Revolution
Fidel Castro came to power after the Cuban Revolution.
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1965–73
The war in Vietnam
The war in Vietnam.
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1968
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
An arms control treaty: countries that had tested and manufactured nuclear weapons before 1967 were allowed to keep them.
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1972 and 1997
Banning biological and chemical weapons
The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention banned the production and possession of these weapons.
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1979
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
The invasion weakened the Soviet system further.
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1985
Gorbachev’s reforms
Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and sought to reform the system.
How we check: every entry is from an NCERT textbook; our build fails unless its key phrases are found in the chapter itself. For the World Wars, Bretton Woods and the end of the Soviet Union, see The World Wars and the world they made.