Events, Verisoph

1906 Union Minière du Haut-Katanga is founded 0 cit. The mining company Union Minière du Haut-Katanga was created to exploit the vast copper deposits of the Katanga region, with Belgian and British capital. It became one of the most powerful companies in Africa and a pillar of the colonial economy. Its control of Katanga's mineral wealth would later shape the politics of independence and secession. economy / politics ●●●

c. 1906 Bambatha rebellion 0 cit. Chief Bambatha led a Zulu revolt against a new poll tax imposed by the British colony of Natal. The rising was put down with heavy loss of life, and thousands of Zulu were killed. It was one of the last armed challenges to colonial rule in southern Africa before the era of mass political movements. economy / politics / war ●

1906 Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga is founded 0 cit. The mining giant Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga was created to work the copper of southern Congo, owned jointly by Belgium's Societe Generale and the British-backed Tanganyika Concessions of Robert Williams. It became one of the most powerful companies in Africa, running an enclave with its own mines, railways, and towns. Its profits flowed to shareholders in Brussels and London while Congolese workers labored under a strict color bar for low pay. economy / politics ●●●

c. 1906 The White Highlands Reserved for Europeans 1 cit. From around 1906 the fertile central highlands were set aside for exclusive white settlement, a policy sealed by the Elgin pledge that reserved the best farmland for Europeans. Africans were barred from owning or leasing land in what became known as the White Highlands, even where their families had lived. This carve-up of the most productive land is the central land injustice that the independence settlement would later have to answer, and that it largely did not. economy / politics / society ●●●

c. 1906 The Elgin Pledge Reserves the Highlands for Whites 2 cit. Around 1906 the Colonial Secretary Lord Elgin gave settlers what became known as the Elgin Pledge, an assurance that in the highlands land grants would in practice go to Europeans and not to Indians. It was never a formal law, but it hardened into policy and gave the settlers the racial land monopoly they wanted. From this the fertile central highlands took shape as the exclusive White Highlands. economy / politics ●●●

1906 The Nandi Removed and Their Land Taken 8 cit. Koitalel arap Samoei was killed on 19 October 1905 after British officer Richard Meinertzhagen lured him to a supposed peace meeting under truce and shot him at close range. With Koitalel dead, a punitive field force drove the Nandi from much of their land, seized cattle, and confined them to a reserve. Their high, fertile country was handed to white settlers and to the railway, and the Uasin Gishu plateau nearby became prime settler farmland. economy / war ●●

c. 1906 Lord Delamere anchors the settler economy 0 cit. Hugh Cholmondeley, the third Baron Delamere, poured his fortune into large highland estates and pushed wheat, dairy and livestock farming into shape for export. He became the leading voice of the settler community and its drive for political control. His example drew other aristocrats and ex-officers to take up land in Kenya. economy / politics ●●

22 October 1907 Collapse of the Knickerbocker Trust Company 0 cit. A run forces New York's third largest trust company to suspend payments, igniting the Panic of 1907. J.P. Morgan personally organizes a private rescue of the banking system, and the crisis leads directly to the creation of the Federal Reserve. economy ●●●●

20 June 1907 Founding of the Swiss National Bank 0 cit. Switzerland's central bank opens for business, taking over note issue from dozens of cantonal and private banks. It becomes guardian of the Swiss franc, one of the world's key reserve currencies. economy ●●●

1907 Formation of Royal Dutch Shell 0 cit. Royal Dutch Petroleum and Britain's Shell Transport and Trading merge to challenge Standard Oil. The combined group becomes one of the world's largest oil companies. economy ●●●●

October 1907 Morgan halts the Panic of 1907 0 cit. During the Panic of 1907 J.P. Morgan organised bankers to pool funds and stop a wave of bank failures. His personal leadership steadied the system and spurred later creation of the Federal Reserve. economy / politics ●●●●

1907 The Abolition of Slavery on the Coast 0 cit. Britain abolished the legal status of slavery in the coastal protectorate in 1907, ending the labour system on which the Arab and Swahili plantations of cloves, grain, and coconuts had run. Freed slaves and Mijikenda migrants stayed on as squatters and low-paid workers, and former owners were compensated while the freed were not. The change reshaped coastal society and left a tangle of land and labour disputes that outlived colonial rule. economy / society ●●

1907 Abolition of the legal status of slavery on the coast 0 cit. Britain abolished the legal status of slavery in the coastal strip, freeing the enslaved labour force that had worked the Arab-Swahili grain and clove plantations. Emancipation came with compensation for slaveholders but little land or support for the freed, many of whom drifted into squatting and casual labour. The end of coerced labour broke the plantation economy without building anything to replace it. economy / society ●●

1907 The Kenya coast abolishes the legal status of slavery 5 cit. In 1907 the British East Africa Protectorate abolished the legal status of slavery in the coastal strip that the sultan of Zanzibar still nominally ruled. As in Zanzibar, the end was gradual and compensated, and courts and officials moved cautiously to avoid upsetting the coastal landowners. Slavery lost its legal backing, but many people remained tied to their former owners by debt, land, and lack of options. economy / politics ●●●●

1907 Nairobi becomes Kenya's colonial capital 6 cit. The colonial administration moved its capital from the coast to Nairobi, turning a railway depot into the command centre of the Kenya Protectorate. The move pulled power inland toward settler agriculture, railway logistics and highland administration. economy / politics ●●●●

16 September 1908 Founding of General Motors 0 cit. William Durant founds General Motors as a holding company for Buick, soon adding Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and Chevrolet. Under Alfred Sloan it becomes the world's largest automaker and a model of the modern corporation. economy / technology ●●●●

1 October 1908 Ford introduces the Model T 0 cit. Henry Ford launched the Model T, a sturdy, affordable car meant for ordinary buyers. Strong demand pushed Ford to find faster ways to build it. economy / technology ●●●●

1908 Diamonds discovered in German South West Africa 0 cit. A railway worker found diamonds in the sand near Lüderitz, setting off a rush that revealed extremely rich alluvial diamond deposits along the Namibian coast. German colonial authorities restricted the area, and control of these deposits later passed to companies connected to Ernest Oppenheimer. economy ●●

c. April 1908 Diamonds discovered near Lüderitz 0 cit. A railway worker finds diamonds in the desert near Lüderitz, triggering a diamond rush that transforms the colonial economy. The mines expand demand for forced and indentured African labor under a colonial pass and contract labor system built directly on the dispossession of Herero and Nama land and livestock. economy ●

15 November 1908 Belgium Annexes the Congo Free State 0 cit. Under international pressure over the atrocities documented by Casement, Morel, and missionaries, the Belgian parliament took control of the Congo from Leopold II, ending his personal rule and renaming the territory the Belgian Congo. Forced labor practices continued under state administration in modified form, particularly during the rubber and later mineral booms. Leopold himself was never tried for the abuses committed under his authority. economy / politics ●●

1908 Belgium annexes the Congo after the Leopold scandal 0 cit. After an international outcry over the atrocities of King Leopold II's personal rule, Belgium took the Congo Free State from him and made it the Belgian Congo. The reformers who had condemned Leopold's forced-labor rubber regime did not return the land to Congolese control. Instead the same ground, now under Belgian and allied European capital, was opened to industrial mining, a shift documented economic historians describe as reform in name followed by extraction in fact. economy / politics ●●

26 May 1908 Oil strikes at Masjed Soleyman, and Anglo-Persian is born 0 cit. After years of failure, D'Arcy's drillers hit oil in southwest Persia, the first major find in the Middle East. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed the next year to exploit it, later renamed Anglo-Iranian and then BP. economy / technology ●●●

1908 The Land Titles Ordinance and coastal landlessness 5 cit. The Land Titles Ordinance set up a process to register private ownership of coastal land, but it favoured those with documents and connections, chiefly Arab and European claimants and absentee owners. Mijikenda and other communities who held land by custom and use often could not prove title and were reduced to squatters on ground their families had long occupied. The measure locked in a pattern of coastal landlessness that historians see as the root of the region's unresolved land question. economy / politics ●●●

c. 1908 Nyanza and the west become the colony's labour reservoir 8 cit. The densely populated Luo, Luhya, and Gusii districts of Nyanza and western Kenya became the main source of workers for settler farms, the Mombasa port, the railway, and the growing towns. Men left home for months to work far away and returned to reserves that stayed poor. The region supplied hands rather than keeping the value of their work. economy / society ●●●●

c. 1908 Kitale emerges as a settler service town 2 cit. Kitale began as a small settler service settlement in the fertile Trans-Nzoia plains. Its position between Mount Elgon and the Cherangany Hills made it useful as an administrative and trading centre for European farms. economy / politics ●●●

14 April 1909 Founding of Anglo-Persian Oil (BP) 0 cit. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company is founded after the first major oil strike in the Middle East, in Persia in 1908. The British government buys a controlling stake in 1914, and the company becomes British Petroleum. economy / politics ●●●●

1909 A.M. Jeevanjee becomes the first Indian on the Legislative Council 0 cit. Alibhai Mulla Jeevanjee, a Bohra businessman who had supplied railway labour, built much of early Mombasa and Nairobi and founded the paper that became the East African Standard, was nominated as the first Indian member of the colony's Legislative Council. His appointment gave the community a formal, if junior, political voice. He remained a leading spokesman in the fight for Indian rights. economy / politics ●●

1910 Founding of Hitachi 0 cit. Namihei Odaira founds Hitachi as an electrical repair shop at a copper mine, building Japan's first 5-horsepower electric motors. It grows into one of Japan's largest industrial and electronics groups. economy / technology ●●●

1910 Founding of Degania, the First Kibbutz 0 cit. Pioneers established Degania in 1910, the first kibbutz, a collective farming community. The model became central to Zionist settlement. economy / society ●●

c. 1910 The Octopus and the enclave economy 0 cit. Across Central America, United Fruit builds a self-contained enclave economy: company land, company railroads, company ports, company telegraph lines, and company towns with their own stores and scrip. Locals called it El Pulpo, "the Octopus," for the reach of its tentacles. Profits flowed north while host nations gained little tax revenue and little control. economy / society ●●●

c. 1910 The Loss of the Kikuyu Lands at Kiambu 6 cit. Along the southern edge of Kikuyu country, near Kiambu and Limuru, settlers took some of the most fertile ridges, land the Kikuyu insisted they had bought or cleared, not abandoned. Officials often argued the ground had been emptied by the famine and smallpox of the 1890s, but the Kikuyu held that it had owners who were still alive. These contested ridges, remembered as stolen land, became the seedbed of Kikuyu grievance and later of Mau Mau. economy / society ●●

c. 1910 Collapse of the Arab-Swahili plantation economy 0 cit. Without enslaved labour, the great coastal plantations that had grown grain, coconuts, and cloves went into steep decline, and the Arab-Swahili landowning class lost its economic base. Estates fell idle or passed to absentee owners while former slaves and Mijikenda cultivators worked them as squatters. The coast's old commercial engine seized up just as the interior was being opened for settler agriculture. economy / society ●●

c. 1910 The lakeside worked as a labour reserve 0 cit. The densely settled lands around Lake Victoria were treated mainly as a reservoir of workers for settler farms and towns, and as fertile ground for mission schools. Men migrated out for wage labour while the region itself saw limited local investment beyond what fed the labour supply. Missionised and drawn on for its people, the lakeside developed in a lopsided way, neither settler core nor neglected margin. economy / society ●●

c. 1910 Dukawalla shopkeepers spread retail trade across the country 0 cit. Indian-run dukas reached nearly every town and rural centre, handling much of the colony's retail trade and the buying of African produce. The dukawalla became the everyday face of Indian settlement across Kenya. This visible role also placed the community between white rulers above and the African majority below, a middleman position that later drew resentment. economy / society ●●

c. 1910 Goan clerks and Sikh artisans staff the colonial economy 0 cit. Goan Catholic clerks filled government and railway offices while Sikh and Gujarati fundis worked as masons, carpenters, mechanics, tailors and fitters. Different communities, including Ismaili, Hindu, Sikh, Goan and Bohra, tended to cluster in distinct trades and keep their own institutions. Together they ran much of the day-to-day machinery of the colony below the European ranks. economy / society ●●

1910 Rotary clubs federate into a national association 0 cit. Sixteen clubs formed the National Association of Rotary Clubs of America and elected Paul Harris its first president. The federation gave the movement a shared structure as new clubs formed across the country. It was renamed the International Association of Rotary Clubs as the movement crossed borders. economy / society ●●

1910 Rotary spreads beyond the United States 0 cit. A club chartered in Winnipeg became the first Rotary Club outside the United States. Clubs in Great Britain and Ireland followed within two years. The rapid international growth pushed the movement to reorganize as an association of clubs in many countries. economy / society ●●

c. 1910 Kikuyu, Embu and Meru locked into the reserve system 2 cit. With the mountain communities conquered, the administration fixed their boundaries and folded them into native reserves under appointed headmen and chiefs. The Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru were grouped as a bloc of reserves that later shared a single political framework. Confined land, taxes, and labour demands replaced the older order of ridges and elders. economy / politics ●●

c. 1910 Taita-Taveta becomes a colonial labour reserve 3 cit. Colonial rule alienated much of the plains land around the Taita Hills for settler estates, railways and sisal plantations, penning the Taita into their hills. With little room to farm, men were drawn into wage labour on the sisal and the Voi railway works. The community was pulled into the bottom of a cash economy that it did not control. economy / politics ●●

c. 1910 Eastern White Highlands become the Kikuyu land crisis 2 cit. The eastern or Central highland edge of the White Highlands, around Kiambu, Limuru, the Aberdares and Mount Kenya, cut into Kikuyu land claims and also tightened pressure on Embu and Meru communities around Mount Kenya. That geography produced the sharpest direct link between lost family land, loyalist advantage, squatter eviction and Mau Mau. It also fed the later smallholder title, coffee and cooperative order in Central Kenya. economy / politics / society ●●●●

15 May 1911 Breakup of Standard Oil 0 cit. The U.S. Supreme Court finds Standard Oil an illegal monopoly and orders it split into 34 companies, among them the ancestors of Exxon, Mobil, and Chevron. It remains the landmark antitrust action in business history. economy / politics ●●●●●

16 June 1911 Founding of IBM 0 cit. The Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company forms from a merger of punched card and scale makers, renamed IBM in 1924. Under the Watsons it comes to dominate business machines and then the computer industry. economy / technology ●●●●

c. 1911 Hollywood emerges as a film center 0 cit. The Nestor Company opened Hollywood's first film studio in 1911, and filmmakers drawn by sunshine, varied scenery, and distance from eastern patent enforcers clustered nearby. Within a decade Hollywood was the capital of American cinema. culture / economy ●●●●

1911 Taylor publishes The Principles of Scientific Management 0 cit. Frederick Taylor set out a system for studying and timing work to raise output. His scientific management reshaped factory labor and drew criticism for treating workers as machines. economy / society ●●●●

15 May 1911 Supreme Court breaks up Standard Oil 0 cit. On 15 May 1911 the United States Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil was an illegal monopoly and ordered it split into 34 separate companies. The decision reshaped American antitrust law and the oil industry. economy / politics ●●●●●

c. 1911 Mobil's flying red horse is Pegasus of Greek myth 0 cit. The Socony oil company adopted a flying red horse as its trademark around 1911, the winged horse Pegasus of Greek mythology. The emblem was later carried by Mobil. economy / religion / technology ●●

25 March 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire spurs labor reform 0 cit. A fire at a garment factory killed 146 workers, most of them young immigrant women trapped behind locked doors. The disaster fueled the women-led labor movement and led to new workplace safety laws. economy / society ●●

1911 Sam Zemurray buys a coup in Honduras 0 cit. The banana trader Sam Zemurray, head of the rival Cuyamel Fruit Company, bankrolls an armed overthrow of the Honduran government to protect his concessions and tax breaks. He hired the mercenary Lee Christmas and helped install the exiled Manuel Bonilla as president. It became a textbook case of a company toppling a government for private gain. economy / politics ●●●

1911 Copper smelting begins in Katanga 0 cit. Union Miniere poured its first Katangan copper at the Star of the Congo mine near the new town of Elisabethville, today Lubumbashi. The colony was reshaped around the mines, drawing in migrant labor and building a railway to ship metal out to the coast. Katanga became one of the world's great copper producers, its output feeding European and American industry rather than local development. economy / technology ●●

1911 Carnegie's fortune becomes a philanthropic engine 0 cit. Andrew Carnegie creates the Carnegie Corporation of New York, adding to earlier bodies like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His giving built libraries, funded research and pushed an agenda for international order. Like Rockefeller, he showed how a single industrial fortune could steer public life for generations. culture / economy / society ●●

1911 Ford takes mass production across borders 0 cit. Ford opened an assembly plant at Trafford Park near Manchester, extending American mass-production methods into Europe, and soon built plants in Germany and beyond. Fordism became a globally exported system, not just a set of factories but a model of industrial organization. The car majors became early examples of firms whose operations, workforce, and influence spanned continents. economy / technology ●●

15 May 1911 Standard Oil is broken up by antitrust 0 cit. The US Supreme Court found Standard Oil an illegal monopoly and ordered it split into 34 separate companies, several of which grew into today's oil majors. It was a landmark moment of the state pushing back against a firm that had grown too dominant. The breakup set a precedent that a government could dismantle a company on grounds of size and market power alone. economy / politics ●●

1911 The Second Maasai Move 0 cit. Only seven years after promising the northern reserve was permanent, the government forced the Laikipia Maasai to trek south so their plateau could be opened to settlers. A new agreement in 1911, of doubtful validity, joined the two reserves into one southern block, and the drive south cost many cattle and lives. The broken promise made clear that colonial treaties with Africans held only as long as they suited the settlers. economy / politics ●●

1911 The 1911 removal empties Laikipia for white ranchers 3 cit. A second agreement in 1911 forced the northern Maasai to leave Laikipia and crowd into an enlarged southern reserve, breaking the promise that the earlier reserves would last as long as the Maasai existed. The move was pushed through so that settlers could take the well-watered Laikipia grasslands for ranches. Driving herds south cost the Maasai many more cattle along the way. economy / politics ●●●●

5 February 1912 Founding of the Bank of China 0 cit. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, the imperial Da-Qing Bank is reorganized as the Bank of China under the new republic. It serves at times as central bank and foreign exchange bank, and today is one of China's big four state banks. economy / politics ●●●●

1912 to 1913 Pujo Committee money-trust hearings 0 cit. A House subcommittee led by Arsene Pujo investigated concentrated control of finance, the so-called money trust, in 1912 and 1913. Morgan testified in December 1912, and the hearings fed support for banking reform. economy / politics ●●●

1912 Hercules Powder is named for the strongman hero of Greek myth 0 cit. Hercules Powder Company, spun off from DuPont in 1912, made explosives and took the name of Hercules, the Greek hero known for superhuman strength. economy / religion ●

c. 1912 DuPont builds the dashboard of the corporation 0 cit. Engineers and managers at DuPont developed the return-on-investment formula and a chart linking profit margin, asset turnover, and capital, giving head office a single number to judge every division. Combined with Frederick Taylor's scientific management, cost accounting became the nervous system of the big industrial firm, letting a few managers control sprawling operations from the top. economy / technology ●●

c. 1912 Cattle quarantines and veterinary control undermine the herders 0 cit. The colonial state used disease-control quarantines to block pastoralists from moving and selling stock, ostensibly to protect settler herds from cattle diseases. The rules cut herders off from markets and dry-season grazing while doing little for the pastoralists themselves. Framed as science, the quarantine regime worked in practice to hem in and impoverish the herding economies. economy / science ●●

23 December 1913 Federal Reserve Act signed 0 cit. President Woodrow Wilson signs the Federal Reserve Act, creating a central bank for the United States. The new system underpins the dollar's rise to global dominance. economy / politics ●●●

23 December 1913 Founding of the Federal Reserve 0 cit. President Wilson signs the Federal Reserve Act, creating a central banking system of twelve regional banks after the Panic of 1907 exposed the need for a lender of last resort. The Fed becomes the most influential central bank in the world. economy / politics ●●●●●

1 December 1913 Ford launches the moving assembly line 0 cit. Ford installs the first moving assembly line for cars at its Highland Park plant, cutting Model T chassis assembly from over 12 hours to about 93 minutes. Mass production transforms manufacturing worldwide. economy / technology ●●●●

3 February 1913 Ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment 0 cit. The amendment gives Congress clear power to tax incomes without apportioning the tax among the states, overriding an 1895 Supreme Court ruling. The modern income tax follows within months and becomes the government's main revenue source. economy / politics ●●●●

4 March 1913 Founding of the Department of Labor 0 cit. On his last day in office, President Taft signs the act splitting Commerce and Labor and creating a separate Department of Labor to promote the welfare of wage earners. It later administers labor statistics, workplace standards, and unemployment programs. economy / society ●●●

1913 The moving assembly line 0 cit. Ford introduced a moving assembly line that brought the work to the worker and slashed the time to build a car. Mass production lowered prices and became the model for modern manufacturing. economy / technology ●●●●

23 December 1913 Federal Reserve Act of 1913 0 cit. President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, creating a central banking system with twelve regional reserve banks. It gave the United States a lasting institution to manage credit and currency. economy / politics ●●●●●

9 September 1913 Bosch scales up ammonia production at Oppau 0 cit. Carl Bosch turned Haber's laboratory reaction into a full industrial process at a BASF plant. The Haber-Bosch process made fertilizer on a scale that fed a growing world population. economy / technology ●●●●●

1 December 1913 Ford starts the moving assembly line 0 cit. Ford installed a moving assembly line at Highland Park that carried cars past stationary workers. It cut the time to build a Model T from hours to minutes and made mass production the industrial standard. economy / technology ●●●●●

31 March 1913 J.P. Morgan dies in Rome 0 cit. John Pierpont Morgan died in Rome in March 1913. Control of the bank passed to his son, J.P. Morgan Jr. economy ●●●

23 December 1913 Founding of the US Federal Reserve 0 cit. The Federal Reserve Act created a central banking system for the United States after repeated banking panics, most recently the Panic of 1907. It set up twelve regional reserve banks, of which the New York Fed became the most influential. economy / politics ●●●●

19 June 1913 Natives Land Act restricts African land ownership 0 cit. The Natives Land Act barred Black South Africans, roughly two-thirds of the population, from buying or leasing land outside designated reserves, which made up less than ten percent of the country's land. The law forced many Black farmers into wage labor or tenancy on white-owned farms and mines. It became one of the foundational pieces of segregationist legislation later expanded under apartheid. economy / politics ●●●

31 May 1913 Mombasa Lodge consecrated 0 cit. Mombasa Lodge No. 3645 was consecrated on 31 May 1913 under the English constitution, giving the coastal port its own Masonic lodge distinct from the earlier Nairobi and Zanzibar foundations. Mombasa's role as the colony's main port and a mixed British, Arab, and Indian trading town gave its lodge a somewhat different membership base than the upcountry railway and settler lodges. A Freemasons' Hall was later built in Mombasa to house the lodge. economy / society ●●

c. 1914 New York as the world's financial capital 0 cit. The First World War turns the United States into the world's creditor and shifts financial leadership from London to Wall Street. Home to the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the largest banks and asset managers, the city has topped global rankings ever since. economy ●●●●●

1914 Founding of Merrill Lynch 0 cit. Charles Merrill opens a brokerage in New York, joined months later by Edmund Lynch. The firm brings Wall Street to Main Street with retail stockbroking and is sold to Bank of America in September 2008 at the height of the financial crisis. economy ●●●

26 September 1914 Founding of the Federal Trade Commission 0 cit. Woodrow Wilson signs the act creating an independent commission to police unfair methods of competition and deceptive business practices. The FTC becomes a twin pillar of antitrust enforcement alongside the Justice Department. economy ●●

1914 to 1918 World War I turns the United States into the world's creditor 0 cit. Wartime loans and arms sales shifted the United States from a net debtor to the world's leading creditor nation, while Britain ran up heavy debts to American lenders. The financial balance of the Atlantic began tilting westward. economy / war ●●

October 1914 Benjamin Strong takes charge of the New York Fed 0 cit. Benjamin Strong became the first Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He dominated American monetary policy through the 1920s and built close personal ties with Europe's central bankers. economy / politics ●●●

1914 Maserati's logo is the trident of the Roman god Neptune 0 cit. The Italian carmaker, founded in Bologna in 1914, took its trident logo from the statue of Neptune, the Roman sea god, in the city's central fountain. economy / religion / technology ●●

1914 FTD's emblem is the messenger god Mercury 0 cit. The florist network, founded in 1910, took a running Mercury as its emblem in 1914. The winged messenger god fit a business that carried flowers across distances. economy / religion ●

1914 The British state buys into Persian oil 0 cit. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company, formed out of the D'Arcy concession, gained a controlling investment from the British government at the urging of Winston Churchill, who wanted secure fuel for the Royal Navy. This tied Britain's military and strategic interests directly to Persian oil. The company, later Anglo-Iranian and then BP, would keep the lion's share of oil profits for decades. economy / politics / war ●●

1914 The Giriama Uprising and the Burning of Kaya Fungo 0 cit. The Giriama refusal to supply labour hardened into open revolt in 1913 and 1914, met with a military campaign that killed hundreds and drove people from their land. Colonial forces razed Kaya Fungo, the sacred forest shrine at the heart of Giriama religion and authority, and imposed a heavy collective fine and demands for carriers for the coming world war. Destroying the kaya was an attack on the community's very identity, meant to break the elders and the spirits who sanctioned resistance. economy / religion / war ●●

August 1914 Marcus Garvey founds the UNIA in Jamaica 0 cit. Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which after he moved to the United States grew into the largest mass Black movement of its era. It preached racial pride, economic self-reliance, and a redemption of Africa often summed up as Back to Africa. Garvey remains a contested figure: admirers hail his mass appeal, while critics point to his 1922 meeting with the Ku Klux Klan and his 1923 conviction for mail fraud tied to the Black Star Line. economy / politics / society ●●●

1914 The First World War drains British power 0 cit. The war of 1914 to 1918 cost Britain enormous sums and turned it from the world's leading creditor into a debtor, largely to the United States. British industry and manpower were strained to the limit, and much overseas investment was sold off to pay for the fighting. Britain won the war but came out of it financially weakened and dependent on American credit. economy / politics / war ●●●●

c. 1915 Hollywood becomes the film capital 0 cit. Film companies gathered in Hollywood for its sun, space, and cheap land, and built the studio system. Los Angeles became the center of the world film business. culture / economy ●●●

1915 Morgan bank funds Allied war loans 0 cit. During the First World War the Morgan bank acted as purchasing agent for Britain and France and arranged large Allied loans in 1915. The role tied American finance closely to the Allied cause. economy / war ●●●

c. 1915 to c. 1920 Rise of Service Clubs 0 cit. Groups such as Kiwanis and Lions Clubs joined Rotary in building networks of business people organized around charity and civic projects. They spread the service club model across many countries. economy / society ●

28 July 1915 US Marines occupy Haiti and take over its treasury 0 cit. US Marines landed in Haiti and, citing instability and unpaid debts to American and French creditors, occupied the country until 1934. Washington placed US officials in direct control of Haitian customs revenue and the national bank to guarantee bondholders were paid. The occupation is a frequently cited early example of a foreign power controlling a nominally independent state's finances by force. economy / politics ●●

20 February 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition 0 cit. This fair celebrated the completion of the Panama Canal and San Francisco's rebuilding after the 1906 earthquake. Its Palace of Fine Arts, designed by Bernard Maki, is the only major structure still standing, later rebuilt in permanent materials because of its popularity. economy / technology ●●

1915 The kipande pass system 1 cit. The Native Registration Ordinance of 1915, put into full effect around 1919 to 1920, required every African man to carry a kipande, a fingerprinted identity and labour pass held in a metal container worn round the neck. Police enforced it, and a man found without his kipande could be arrested, fined, or jailed. The system controlled African movement and labour and became one of the most hated symbols of colonial rule. economy / politics ●●●

1915 Crown Lands Ordinance Entrenches the White Highlands 0 cit. The Crown Lands Ordinance extended settler leases to 999 years and confirmed African land as Crown property, hardening the reservation of the fertile central highlands for white settlers. Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru communities lost claim to land they regarded as ancestral, and Africans were legally barred from owning land in the areas that became known as the White Highlands. This land alienation is the documented root grievance behind the later uprising. economy / politics ●●●

1915 American capital takes over Chuquicamata copper 0 cit. The Guggenheim mining interests developed Chuquicamata in northern Chile into one of the largest open-pit copper mines on Earth, later held by the American firm Anaconda. Chilean copper became a foreign-owned enclave whose profits left the country for shareholders abroad. Resentment at this arrangement built for decades and fed a national demand to reclaim the copper. economy / technology ●●

c. 1915 The Native Reserves Confine the Africans 7 cit. As the highlands passed to settlers, the colonial state confined each African group to demarcated native reserves, a system extended by the Crown Lands Ordinance of 1915 and later the Native Lands Trust Ordinance. The reserves separated Africans from the alienated highlands and grew steadily overcrowded as populations rose within fixed boundaries. Land hunger in the Kikuyu reserves, set against the empty acres of the White Highlands next door, sharpened the sense of dispossession. economy / politics / society ●●●

1915 The Crown Lands Ordinance of 1915 1 cit. The 1915 ordinance stretched leases to 999 years and redefined Crown land so broadly that it included land occupied by Africans, who were reduced to tenants at the will of the Crown. Africans could now be moved off land their families had farmed for generations with no right to stay. This law, more than any other, turned the highlands into secure white freehold and left Africans legally landless on their own soil. economy / politics ●●●

1915 The Native Registration Ordinance imposes the kipande 0 cit. The Native Registration Ordinance of 1915, enforced from 1919-20, requires every African man over fifteen to be fingerprinted and to carry a registration certificate, the kipande, in a metal container worn around the neck. It recorded his employment and movements, tied him to his employer, and was used to control labour and hunt down deserters. Africans loathed it as a badge of servitude, and its abolition became a central demand of the independence movement. economy / politics / society ●●

c. 1915 Land alienation and the making of a grievance 0 cit. British settlement took much of the fertile Kikuyu highland for European farms, an area that became the White Highlands. Many Kikuyu lost land near Kiambu, Nyeri, and Murang'a and became squatters and laborers on farms that had once been their own. This loss of land, and the tenant status that came with it, created the deep grievance that oathing would later mobilize. The oath gave a scattered, dispossessed population a way to act as one. economy / politics / society ●●

1915 Crown Lands Ordinance formalises the White Highlands 0 cit. Legislation entrenched European control of the highlands and made it effectively impossible for Indians to acquire farmland there. Combined with limits on the franchise and on immigration, it sharpened the contest between settlers and the Indian community. This bundle of grievances became known as the Indian Question. economy / politics ●●

c. 1915 Britain turns to America to finance the Great War 0 cit. To pay for the First World War, Britain borrowed heavily in the United States, with the bank J.P. Morgan acting as its purchasing agent for American munitions and supplies. The world's greatest creditor nation was becoming a debtor, and Adam Tooze argues in The Deluge that this dependence quietly shifted financial power across the Atlantic. diplomacy / economy / war ●●●

c. 1915 Banda walks south to the mines 0 cit. As a young man Banda leaves Nyasaland on foot, travelling hundreds of miles through Southern Rhodesia to the goldfields of the Witwatersrand. He works as a clerk and interpreter around the mines of the Rand for several years. There he saves money and forms the plan to seek an education abroad. economy / society ●

21 January 1915 Kiwanis founded in Detroit 0 cit. Kiwanis was organized in Detroit as a club of business and professional men, at first focused on networking and later on community service. Within a few years it committed to service work and made helping children its central and lasting cause. It grew into an international organization with clubs across North America and beyond. economy / society ●●

1915 The White Highlands and the settler plantation base 4 cit. The Crown Lands Ordinance of 1915 secured the fertile highlands for European settlers and locked Africans out of the best farmland. Large estates grew coffee, tea, sisal, and pyrethrum for export using cheap African labour. This plantation base made Kenya a producer of raw cash crops for British and world markets. economy / politics ●●