Events, Verisoph

1 January 1973 Ireland joins the European Community 0 cit. Ireland joined the European Economic Community, later the European Union, alongside Britain and Denmark. Membership brought farm subsidies, structural funds and access to a large market. It gradually loosened Ireland's economic dependence on Britain and helped modernise the country. diplomacy / economy ●●

c. 1973 Currencies move to floating exchange rates 0 cit. An attempt to patch the fixed-rate system with the Smithsonian Agreement of December 1971 failed within two years, and the major currencies began to float freely against the dollar. The change confirmed the end of the postwar monetary order and gave the United States, as issuer of the dominant currency, unusual freedom in managing its economy. diplomacy / economy ●●

11 September 1973 Chile's Salvador Allende is overthrown in a military coup 0 cit. The elected socialist president Salvador Allende was overthrown by the armed forces under General Augusto Pinochet and died during the assault on the presidential palace, ruled a suicide by later investigations. The 1975 Church Committee documented that the United States had run covert operations to destabilize Chile, including efforts to block Allende's 1970 inauguration and to, in one official's words, make the economy scream. The direct American role in the 1973 coup itself remains debated, and that distinction is kept here. economy / politics ●●●

11 September 1973 Augusto Pinochet's junta takes power in Chile 0 cit. After the coup against Allende, a military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet took control of Chile. The regime detained, tortured, and killed thousands of political opponents while adopting free-market economic policies advised by foreign-trained economists. Pinochet held power until 1990, remaining a Cold War ally of the West. economy / politics ●●●

March 1973 Major currencies move to floating exchange rates 0 cit. After renewed pressure on the dollar, the main industrial economies abandon fixed rates and let their currencies float against each other. The postwar system of pegged exchange rates was over, and the dollar's price would now be set day to day in currency markets. diplomacy / economy ●●●

17 October 1973 The 1973 oil shock and OPEC's price power 0 cit. Arab oil producers cut output and embargo states seen as backing Israel in the Yom Kippur War, and the price of crude roughly quadruples within months. The shock showed OPEC's power over the price of the world's most traded commodity and sent enormous sums flowing to oil exporters. Because oil was priced and paid for in dollars, every importing country needed dollars to buy it. diplomacy / economy / war ●●●

May 1973 SWIFT builds the plumbing of global payments 0 cit. Banks from Europe and North America found SWIFT, a cooperative to carry standardized payment messages between institutions worldwide. Over time it became the backbone of cross-border transfers. Because so much of that traffic clears in dollars through US-linked banks, control over access to this network would later become a tool of American policy. economy / technology ●●

11 September 1973 The overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile 0 cit. Chile's elected president Salvador Allende, a Marxist who nationalized industry, was overthrown in a military coup led by General Pinochet after years of American efforts to undermine his government. Allende was genuinely a socialist, so his case is not one of a false label. It stands instead as an example of a great power moving against an elected left-wing leader in the name of anti-communism, documented in later United States records. economy / politics ●●●

4 April 1973 The World Trade Center towers open in New York 0 cit. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were dedicated in Lower Manhattan after years of construction. At 110 stories, the North Tower briefly ranked as the tallest building in the world. The complex, designed by Minoru Yamasaki, reshaped the city's skyline until its destruction in 2001. economy / technology ●●●

3 May 1973 The Sears Tower tops out as the world's tallest building 0 cit. Ironworkers bolted the final beam into place on the Sears Tower in Chicago, bringing it to 442 meters and 110 stories. It passed the World Trade Center to become the tallest building in the world. The tower, now called Willis Tower, held that record for nearly 25 years. economy / technology ●●●

17 April 1973 Federal Express begins overnight package delivery 0 cit. Federal Express started service from a hub in Memphis, flying 186 packages to 25 cities on its first night. Founder Fred Smith built the company around a hub-and-spoke model that gathered parcels at one center for sorting and quick redistribution. FedEx turned reliable overnight delivery into a large industry. economy / technology ●●

30 October 1973 The Bosphorus Bridge opens linking Europe and Asia 0 cit. The Bosphorus Bridge opened in Istanbul, the first bridge to span the strait between the European and Asian sides of the city. The suspension bridge stretched over a kilometer across the water. Its opening on the 50th anniversary of the Turkish Republic joined the two continents by road for the first time. economy / technology ●●

c. February 1973 France's Micral N ships as an early microcomputer 0 cit. The French firm R2E released the Micral N, a computer built around the Intel 8008 microprocessor and sold as a finished machine rather than a kit. It was first used to control processes such as highway toll systems. Many historians count it among the first commercial microcomputers. economy / technology ●●

c. 1973 Stagflation breaks the old Keynesian consensus 2 cit. The 1970s brought high inflation together with weak growth and unemployment, a combination that old Keynesian fine-tuning handled poorly. The Great Inflation, oil shocks and collapsing confidence gave monetarists and new classical economists their opening against the postwar Keynesian consensus. economy / politics ●●●●●

1973 African company ownership widens inside Kenya capitalism 2 cit. By the early 1970s, African participation in registered Kenyan companies had grown sharply. This was not socialism. It was Africanisation inside a capitalist structure: ownership shifted toward Africans, but the commanding framework remained private property, banks, export crops, state patronage and access to political office. economy / politics ●●●

18 November 1974 Founding of the International Energy Agency 0 cit. Industrialized oil-importing countries create the IEA within the OECD framework after the 1973 oil crisis, to coordinate emergency oil stocks and energy policy. diplomacy / economy ●●

26 June 1974 Collapse of Herstatt Bank 0 cit. German regulators close Bankhaus Herstatt after huge foreign exchange losses, while counterparties who had already paid Deutsche Marks were left waiting for dollars. The episode gives its name to settlement risk and prompts the creation of the Basel Committee. economy ●●●

c. June 1974 The petrodollar system takes shape 0 cit. The United States and Saudi Arabia reached agreements that linked oil sales to the dollar and directed Saudi surpluses into US assets. The arrangement helped keep global demand for the dollar high. economy / politics ●●●

c. 8 June 1974 The Petrodollar Arrangement 0 cit. The United States and Saudi Arabia agreed to economic and military cooperation under which oil was priced in dollars and surplus revenue was recycled into US assets. The arrangement tied Gulf oil wealth to American finance and security guarantees. economy / politics ●●●●

1 December 1974 Founding of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision 0 cit. After the collapse of Germany's Herstatt Bank exposed cross-border settlement risks, central bank governors of the Group of Ten set up the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision at the BIS. It became the main body for writing common rules on bank safety. economy / politics ●●●●

1974 Kenneth Hagin and the Word of Faith movement 0 cit. Kenneth Hagin founded the Rhema Bible Training Center and became the leading teacher of the Word of Faith movement, stressing positive confession, healing and prosperity as the believer's right. He drew extensively on E. W. Kenyon's earlier writings. economy / religion ●●●

August 1974 UN World Population Conference in Bucharest 1 cit. The 1974 UN World Population Conference in Bucharest adopted a World Population Plan of Action, though developing nations pushed back against Western pressure to curb births. It marked the peak of the mid-century view that population growth was a crisis to manage. economy / politics ●●●

10 December 1974 Kissinger memo NSSM 200 links population to US security 0 cit. A 1974 US National Security Study Memorandum led by Henry Kissinger argued that population growth in developing countries threatened American strategic and economic interests and urged expanded family planning aid. Declassified in the 1990s, the document is a genuine policy record that is also cited in later depopulation claims. economy / politics ●●●

1974 The petrodollar ties the world's oil to the dollar 0 cit. After the gold link ended, the United States arranges for oil to be priced in dollars, creating a permanent world demand for the currency. The petrodollar turned the dollar into the indispensable money of the planet and a lever of American power. diplomacy / economy / pillar ●●●

1974 Hayek awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences 1 cit. Friedrich Hayek shares the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for their work on money, economic fluctuations, and the interdependence of economic, social, and institutional phenomena. The award gave fresh international visibility to Austrian School and free-market economics after decades in which Keynesian economics had dominated the mainstream. economy / science ●●●

1974 Immanuel Wallerstein publishes The Modern World-System 0 cit. Sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein published the first volume of The Modern World-System, proposing that the global economy since the 1500s has operated as a single system divided into a wealthy "core," a struggling "periphery," and an intermediate "semi-periphery," with former colonies structurally assigned to peripheral roles supplying raw materials and cheap labor. Wallerstein's world-systems theory extended Prebisch and Frank's dependency arguments into a longer historical framework and remains influential, though contested, in explaining persistent global inequality after decolonization. economy ●●

May 1974 FIFA expands the World Cup and its commercial reach under João Havelange 0 cit. João Havelange becomes FIFA president and expands the World Cup field, brings in major sponsors like Coca-Cola and Adidas, and grows FIFA into a global commercial power. His three-decade tenure is documented as the period when FIFA became enormously wealthy, and also when practices later exposed as systemic bribery took root. culture / economy ●●●

15 May 1974 Ulster Workers' Council strike 0 cit. A general strike organised by loyalist workers and paramilitaries, backed by intimidation and paramilitary enforcement of power cuts and roadblocks, brought Northern Ireland to a standstill for a fortnight. The strike was intended to bring down the Sunningdale power-sharing executive, and it succeeded: the executive collapsed on 28 May 1974 and direct rule resumed. Power-sharing would not be attempted again until the Good Friday Agreement almost a quarter of a century later. economy / politics ●●

1974 Wallerstein's world-systems theory: core and periphery 0 cit. Immanuel Wallerstein publishes the first volume of The Modern World-System, arguing that since the sixteenth century there has been a single capitalist world economy split into a wealthy core, a dependent periphery, and a middle semi-periphery. In this view a country's fate is set less by its own policies than by its place in the whole system. The framework reshaped how sociologists and historians study global inequality. economy / politics ●●●

c. 1974 Samir Amin on unequal development and delinking 0 cit. The Egyptian economist Samir Amin, working in Dakar, argues that the world economy is built to keep the periphery specialized in exports that serve the center. He calls for 'delinking', a partial break from the world market so poor countries can develop on their own terms. His work built on the theory of unequal exchange and remained a reference point for critics of globalization. economy / politics ●●

c. 1974 Petrodollar recycling floods the South with loans 0 cit. After the 1973 oil-price jump, oil exporters deposit huge surpluses in Western banks, which lend the money on to developing countries at low, floating interest rates. Governments across Latin America and Africa borrowed heavily, often for projects that never paid off. The easy credit of the 1970s set up the debt crisis of the 1980s when rates rose. economy / politics ●●

May 1974 The call for a New International Economic Order 0 cit. At a special UN session, developing countries win a declaration calling for a New International Economic Order: fairer commodity prices, control over their own resources, technology transfer, and a bigger say in global finance. Buoyed by OPEC's recent show of strength, the South pressed for structural change rather than aid. The rich countries resisted, and the debt crisis soon shifted the balance of power against the reformers. diplomacy / economy ●●●

1974 The petrodollar ties oil to the US dollar 0 cit. In the wake of the embargo, the United States and Saudi Arabia reach understandings that keep oil priced in dollars and recycle Saudi earnings into US assets. The petrodollar system underpinned American financial power and gave Washington a lasting stake in Gulf stability. diplomacy / economy ●●●

1974 The UN sets up a watchdog for transnational corporations 0 cit. Spurred partly by revelations about ITT in Chile, the United Nations created machinery to study and monitor transnational corporations, leading to the UN Centre on Transnational Corporations. Its work included a long, ultimately stalled effort to draft a binding code of conduct for multinationals. The episode marked the first serious attempt at global governance aimed squarely at corporate power across borders. economy / politics ●●

25 June 1974 Singapore creates the state holding company Temasek 0 cit. The government incorporated Temasek Holdings to own and manage its stakes in companies such as the national airline, bank, and shipping and telecom firms. The state acted as an active shareholder running a commercial portfolio. It is a defining piece of the idea that Singapore is governed like a corporation. economy / politics ●●

c. 1974 The petrodollar keeps the dollar central without gold 0 cit. After the 1973 oil shock, the United States and Saudi Arabia reached understandings under which oil continued to be priced and sold in dollars, and oil-exporting states recycled their surpluses into American assets. This arrangement kept the world demanding dollars for trade and reserves even after the link to gold was gone, entrenching American financial power on a new basis. diplomacy / economy / politics ●●●

8 June 1974 The US-Saudi Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation 0 cit. Henry Kissinger and Saudi leaders sign an agreement creating a joint commission to tie the two countries together through trade, technology, and military cooperation. It framed a lasting bargain in which the United States offered security and goods and Saudi Arabia became a stable, dollar-friendly oil supplier. diplomacy / economy / politics ●●●

July 1974 Saudi Arabia agrees to buy US Treasuries contested 0 cit. Treasury Secretary William Simon negotiates an arrangement for Saudi Arabia to invest its oil surpluses in US government debt, with Saudi purchases handled outside normal Treasury auctions and kept confidential for decades. Records declassified in 2016 confirmed the deal to recycle petrodollars into Treasuries. The broader popular story of a single sweeping secret pact tying oil, arms, and the dollar into one document is contested; what is documented is dollar pricing, Treasury purchases, and a close security relationship. diplomacy / economy / politics ●●●

c. 1974 Petrodollar recycling funds developing-world lending 0 cit. Western banks take in the flood of oil-producer deposits and lend them on to governments across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. This recycling of petrodollars fueled a lending boom through the 1970s. Much of that debt was priced in dollars at floating interest rates, setting up the crises that followed when rates rose. economy ●●

c. 1974 Nobel laureates among staff and alumni 0 cit. People connected to the LSE have won a large share of Nobel Prizes, especially in economics and peace. Friedrich Hayek shared the economics prize in 1974, and the LSE-trained economist Arthur Lewis won it in 1979. The School counts more than a dozen Nobel laureates among its staff and former students. economy / science ●●

1974 Kenya's auto sector assembles kits rather than manufactures 0 cit. Plants such as Kenya Vehicle Manufacturers in Thika and Associated Vehicle Assemblers in Mombasa put together vehicles from imported completely-knocked-down kits. This is assembly, not full manufacturing: the engines, bodies, and major parts are made abroad and shipped in. Kenya has no domestic mass-production of cars, so most vehicles on its roads are either imported whole or assembled from foreign kits. economy / society ●●

1974 Antony Sutton advances his Wall Street thesis 0 cit. Antony Sutton, an economist who had worked at the Hoover Institution, published Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution. In it he argues that a circle of Western financiers deliberately helped the Bolsheviks to power for their own ends. This is Sutton's interpretation, built on real contacts and funding but going well beyond what most historians accept. economy / politics / society ●●●

c. 1974 The Philippines builds a state system to train nurses for export 0 cit. Under President Ferdinand Marcos the Philippines set up state machinery, later the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, to send workers abroad and earn foreign currency. Nursing schools geared toward overseas jobs, and the country became the largest single source of migrant nurses, supplying roughly a quarter of the world's overseas nurses. Remittances now fund a large share of the national economy. economy / politics / society ●●●

1974 Amboseli is fenced off and the Maasai lose the swamps 0 cit. The Amboseli basin, long used by Maasai herders for dry-season water and grazing, was gazetted as a national park in 1974. Herders were pushed out of the central swamps and springs that had kept their cattle alive in drought. Promised benefits and water schemes were slow and partial, and the Maasai lost reliable access to a key refuge. economy / environment ●●●

1974 Amboseli made a national park and the Maasai removed 0 cit. Amboseli, a key Maasai dry-season refuge around its swamps, was gazetted as a national park by presidential decree. The Maasai were barred from grazing cattle in the central basin they had relied on for generations. It became a textbook example of how a herding landscape was turned into a fenced tourist attraction, with the herders left outside. economy / environment / society ●●

c. 1974 J.M. Kariuki attacks Kenya's growing inequality 0 cit. Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, a wealthy but populist backbench MP, drew crowds by attacking the gap between rich and poor. He warned that Kenya risked becoming a nation of ten millionaires and ten million beggars, a line aimed squarely at the ruling elite. His popularity and his willingness to name the problem made him a growing irritant to people close to power. economy / politics ●●

1974 Cooperatives become a state ministry and a rural finance pillar 2 cit. By 1974 cooperatives had become important enough to receive full ministerial status. That institutionalized them as pillars of rural production, savings, credit, land access and marketing. This is double-edged. Cooperatives give ordinary people a way to pool capital and acquire land or market crops collectively. But if officials, managers or political patrons capture the cooperative, they control loans, titles, factories, deductions, licences and payment schedules. economy / politics / society ●●●●

15 November 1975 Founding of the Group of Seven (G7) 1 cit. Leaders of France, West Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US hold the first economic summit at the Chateau de Rambouillet amid oil shock and recession. Canada joined in 1976, making it the G7. diplomacy / economy / politics ●●●

28 May 1975 Founding of ECOWAS 0 cit. Fifteen West African states sign the Treaty of Lagos creating the Economic Community of West African States to promote economic integration, later adding security and peacekeeping roles. diplomacy / economy / politics ●●●

4 April 1975 Founding of Microsoft 0 cit. Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft in Albuquerque to sell BASIC for the Altair microcomputer. Its MS-DOS and Windows operating systems come to run the vast majority of the world's personal computers. economy / technology ●●●●

c. April 1975 Neoliberal shock therapy in Chile 0 cit. Chicago-trained economists under Pinochet's dictatorship impose sweeping privatization, deregulation, and spending cuts. Chile becomes the first large-scale test of neoliberal economics. economy / politics ●●●

20 June 1975 Jaws launches the summer blockbuster 0 cit. Steven Spielberg's Jaws opened in a wide summer release backed by heavy television advertising. Its huge earnings created the model of the summer blockbuster. culture / economy ●●●●

15 November 1975 First G7 summit at Rambouillet 1 cit. Leaders of six major industrial democracies met at Rambouillet in France to coordinate on economic policy, joined the next year by Canada to form the G7. The summits became a regular forum for the leading Western economies. economy / politics ●●●●

c. 1975 Chile's economic shock therapy begins 0 cit. The Chicago Boys, with informal advice from Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, implement a sweeping program of privatization, deregulation, trade liberalization, and monetary austerity in Chile. Inflation fell sharply and the economy eventually grew, but the program also produced a severe recession in the early 1980s and a marked rise in inequality, outcomes that critics cite as evidence of the human cost of rapid market liberalization under authoritarian rule. economy / politics ●●●

c. March 1975 Friedman's visit to Chile and "The Fatal Conceit" controversy 0 cit. Milton Friedman visits Chile, gives lectures, and meets briefly with Pinochet, advising a rapid, comprehensive program to curb inflation. The visit drew lasting criticism that Friedman lent academic legitimacy to a dictatorship, a charge he addressed publicly by saying he did not regard advising a government as endorsing its politics. The episode remains a central point of contention in assessments of the Chicago School's global influence. economy / politics ●●

November 1975 Angolan civil war begins, drawing in diamond-funded factions 0 cit. Following independence from Portugal, Angola descended into a civil war between the MPLA government and UNITA rebels that lasted, with interruptions, until 2002. UNITA financed much of its war effort by controlling alluvial diamond fields in the northeast and selling stones into international markets, including through De Beers buying channels for part of the conflict. economy / war ●●

c. 1975 K Street becomes shorthand for the Washington lobbying industry 0 cit. Through the 1970s the number of registered lobbyists and lobbying firms clustered on and near K Street in Washington grows sharply, as businesses and interest groups build permanent operations to influence Congress and federal agencies. 'K Street' becomes a documented shorthand for organized, well-funded lobbying as a normal channel of policy influence, distinct from any single hidden conspiracy. economy / politics ●●

c. 1975 Kleptocracy and Cold War patronage 0 cit. Mobutu ran Zaire as a personal kleptocracy, diverting state revenues and mining wealth into foreign bank accounts and lavish spending while infrastructure and services decayed. The United States, France, and Belgium propped him up as a reliable Cold War ally against Soviet influence in Africa. His rule became a byword for corruption sustained by foreign backing. economy / politics ●●●

February 1975 The Bananagate bribery scandal and Eli Black's fall 0 cit. Facing losses, United Brands paid a bribe of about 1.25 million dollars to Honduran officials, reportedly reaching President Oswaldo López Arellano, to win a cut in the banana export tax. In February 1975 Eli Black jumped to his death from his Manhattan office tower. The scandal, dubbed Bananagate, surfaced afterward through a US securities investigation and helped topple the Honduran government. economy / politics ●●●

March 1975 J. M. Kariuki and Ten Millionaires and Ten Million Beggars 0 cit. The populist politician J. M. Kariuki, a former detainee, warned that Kenya risked becoming a country of ten millionaires and ten million beggars and attacked the elite's land grabbing. He was abducted and murdered in March 1975, his body found in the Ngong Hills, in a killing widely linked to figures around the Kenyatta government. His death is read as a warning to anyone who tried to turn the fighters' grievances into a challenge to the new establishment. economy / politics ●●●

c. 1975 The Unresolved Land Question 2 cit. After independence, the land question was normalized rather than solved. Huge estates and valuable parcels ended up with founding families, senior officials, chiefs, Home Guard networks, land-buying company bosses and politically connected companies. The poor were left with small plots, debt, informal settlement, squatting or migration. Later inquiries documented illegal public-land grabbing, but they did not reopen the whole private-title settlement created by conquest, Swynnerton and willing-buyer purchase. economy / politics / society ●●●●●

c. 1975 Mama Ngina Kenyatta and the Ivory Trade 0 cit. The president's wife, Mama Ngina Kenyatta, built extensive interests in land, hotels, commercial farming, and trade, part of the ruling family's rise to become one of Kenya's largest property owners. During the poaching boom of the mid-1970s that gutted Kenya's elephant and rhino herds, she and members of the ruling circle were widely linked to a lucrative ivory and rhino-horn export trade; the traffic was documented in the press and touched on by a 1975 parliamentary inquiry, though the family's exact role was shielded from full investigation. The scale of wealth built while in office became a textbook case of what Jean-Francois Bayart called the 'politics of the belly,' the use of state power for private gain. economy / politics / society ●●

1975 The Kenyatta circle and the ivory trade 0 cit. In 1975 the British 'Sunday Times' and later historians reported that members of the Kenyatta family and well-connected officials profited from the ivory and game-trophy trade, even after a 1974 ban on private ivory exports. The president's daughter, Margaret Kenyatta, chaired a company named among the exporters. These are documented allegations reported at the time; no commission of inquiry ever tried or convicted the family, so they should be read as reported claims rather than proven findings. economy / politics ●●

1975 Colin Leys reads Kenya's settlement as neo-colonial 0 cit. In Underdevelopment in Kenya, political economist Colin Leys argues that the financed buyout of settler farms entrenched inequality by handing land to a rising African elite rather than the rural poor. In his reading, independence transferred political power while leaving colonial economic structures, including land, largely intact. It is one of the earliest scholarly statements of the pattern that later recurs in Zimbabwe and South Africa. economy / society ●●

c. 1975 OPEC keeps pricing oil in dollars 0 cit. As the dollar floated and lost value, OPEC members debated pricing oil in a basket of currencies to protect their revenue. They kept the dollar as the currency of oil, a choice Saudi Arabia favored. Dollar pricing of oil meant steady global demand for dollars regardless of whether the currency was backed by gold. diplomacy / economy ●●

c. 1975 Saudi Arabia recycles oil surpluses into the dollar system 0 cit. Flush with oil revenue, Saudi Arabia prices its crude in dollars and channels its surpluses into US Treasuries, bank deposits, and American arms and construction contracts. This recycling gave Washington a large, reliable buyer of its debt and bound the kingdom's wealth to the value of the dollar. diplomacy / economy ●●

1975 Colin Leys reads Kenya through dependency theory 0 cit. The scholar Colin Leys published Underdevelopment in Kenya, arguing that the colonial economic structure persisted after independence and kept the country dependent on foreign capital and commodity exports. In this dependency reading, Kenya's place as a raw exporter and manufactures importer was not an accident of policy but a legacy built into the economy. The interpretation is attributed to Leys and later dependency scholars, and other economists dispute it. economy / society ●●

11 November 1975 Independence and the flight of the retornados 0 cit. Angola and Mozambique became independent in 1975, Mozambique in June and Angola in November. By then Portuguese settlers numbered roughly 330,000 in Angola and about 200,000 in Mozambique, a scale far beyond colonial Kenya's white population. Most fled within months in a chaotic exodus, and around half a million people, known as the retornados, arrived in a Portugal that had not planned for them. economy / politics / society ●●●

c. 1975 The ivory trade scandal touches the ruling family contested 0 cit. As poaching stripped Kenya's elephant herds in the 1970s, press and parliamentary reports linked the lucrative ivory trade to people close to the Kenyatta family. Those named denied involvement, and no senior figure was prosecuted. The affair fed a wider picture of an elite using state connections for private gain. economy / politics ●●

1975 Ontulili forest excisions become the Timau Angaine dispute 3 cit. Legal notices in 1975 and 1977 excised about 930 hectares from Mt Kenya forest near Ontulili and Timau. Decades later, squatters, the Angaine family, Flamingo/Homegrown and other claimants fought over whether the land had been meant for landless people or lawfully passed into private title. The National Land Commission recommended restitution in 2019, but the Environment and Land Court sent the dispute back for a fresh hearing because affected parties had not been properly heard. economy / politics / society ●●●●●

1975 Seeds law moves food security into certified seed 1 cit. The Seeds and Plant Varieties Act was assented to in 1972 and commenced in 1975, giving the state powers over seed testing, certification, variety lists and plant breeders rights. Food security was now also about who could certify seed, release varieties, control quality and define official planting material. economy / politics / technology ●●●

1 April 1976 Founding of Apple 0 cit. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne found Apple to sell Wozniak's Apple I computer. The Macintosh, iPod, and iPhone later make Apple the most valuable company in the world. economy / technology ●●●●

c. 1976 Founding of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority 0 cit. Abu Dhabi established a state fund to manage its oil surplus, which grew into one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world. Such funds turned Gulf oil income into global financial power. economy ●●●

1976 Friedman awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences 1 cit. Milton Friedman receives the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and the complexity of stabilization policy. The award cemented monetarism and Chicago School economics as a mainstream rival to Keynesianism at the highest level of the profession. economy / science ●●●

1976 Prince Charles founds The Prince's Trust 0 cit. Prince Charles founded The Prince's Trust to help disadvantaged young people in Britain find work and training, using part of his Royal Navy severance pay as seed funding. It grew into one of the UK's largest youth charities, supporting hundreds of thousands of people. It is one of many charities founded directly by a working royal rather than simply patronized by one. economy / society ●●

1976 KKR founded 0 cit. Jerome Kohlberg, Henry Kravis, and George Roberts left Bear Stearns to found Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), a firm dedicated to buying companies using large amounts of borrowed money, a technique that became known as the leveraged buyout. KKR would go on to complete some of the largest and most famous LBOs of the 1980s. Supporters said the model sharpened management focus by loading firms with debt they had to service; critics said it left companies fragile and prone to selling off assets to pay down that debt. economy ●●●

1976 Abu Dhabi launches its sovereign wealth fund 0 cit. Abu Dhabi created the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to turn oil income into a diversified global portfolio of stocks, bonds, and property. The emirate manages national wealth the way a large asset manager runs a fund. It became one of the biggest sovereign investors in the world. economy / politics ●●

c. 1976 Pablo Escobar and the rise of the Medellín cartel 0 cit. Pablo Escobar built the Medellín cartel into a machine that shipped cocaine into the United States on an industrial scale. His fortune bought politicians, judges, and police, and made him one of the richest and most feared criminals in the world. economy / politics ●●●

8 January 1976 The Jamaica Accords make floating rates the rule 0 cit. The IMF's members meet in Kingston and agree to amend the Fund's rules, formally accepting floating exchange rates and ending gold's official role in the monetary system. The changes confirmed a world of paper currencies with no metal anchor, in which the dollar remained the reference point by weight of use rather than by law. diplomacy / economy ●●

1976 Sutton extends the thesis to Hitler's rise 1 cit. In Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler, Sutton argues that some of the same Western financial and corporate interests also helped bring the Nazis to power. Taken with his Bolshevik book, his claim is that a single set of interests backed both communism and fascism as instruments of control. This coordinated-plan reading is Sutton's own, and it is the part historians reject. economy / politics / society ●●●

1977 Founding of the International Fund for Agricultural Development 0 cit. IFAD is established as a UN specialized agency in Rome, an outcome of the 1974 World Food Conference, to finance agricultural development and fight rural poverty. diplomacy / economy / society ●●

16 June 1977 Founding of Oracle 0 cit. Larry Ellison and partners found Software Development Laboratories, later Oracle, to build the first commercial SQL relational database. Oracle databases become the standard for corporate data. economy / technology ●●●

4 August 1977 Founding of the Department of Energy 0 cit. In the wake of the 1970s oil shocks, Carter signs the act merging energy agencies and the nuclear weapons complex into a cabinet department that opens on October 1, 1977. The department runs the national laboratories and the nuclear arsenal's production and stewardship. economy / technology ●●●

25 May 1977 Star Wars changes Hollywood 0 cit. George Lucas's Star Wars became a runaway hit and a merchandising powerhouse. It pushed Hollywood toward effects-driven franchises and tie-in products. culture / economy ●●●●

1977 Oracle is named for the prophetic oracle of Greek religion 0 cit. The software company, founded in California in 1977, is named for the oracle, a source of prophecy and truth in Greek religion, most famously the Oracle of Delphi. economy / religion / technology ●●●

1977 Kronos software is named for the Greek figure of time 0 cit. The workforce and timekeeping software firm, founded in Massachusetts in 1977, is named after Chronos, the personification of time in Greek myth, often rendered Kronos. economy / religion / technology ●●

1977 Founding of the Cato Institute 0 cit. Edward Crane, Charles Koch, and Murray Rothbard found the Cato Institute as a libertarian think tank promoting free markets, limited government, and individual liberty. It became one of the most prominent American vehicles for advancing Hayekian and Chicago School policy ideas in Washington. economy / politics ●

c. 1977 Jamaica and other Caribbean states adopt IMF programs amid 1970s crisis 0 cit. Jamaica's government under Michael Manley, after pursuing more independent economic policies including bauxite-industry nationalization steps, turned to the IMF for balance-of-payments support and accepted conditions requiring currency devaluation and spending cuts. Manley later wrote critically about the experience, arguing it showed how little room newly independent, commodity-dependent economies had to set policy against the preferences of international lenders. economy ●

1977 The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act 0 cit. Bananagate, alongside other corporate bribery scandals of the 1970s, pushed Congress to pass the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The law made it a crime for American companies to bribe foreign officials. It marked a first attempt to rein in the corporate statecraft that firms like United Fruit had long practiced abroad. economy / politics ●●

1977 The Economist coins "Dutch disease" 0 cit. The Economist used the phrase "Dutch disease" to describe how the Netherlands' natural gas boom pushed up its currency and hurt its other exports and manufacturing. The pattern generalizes: a sudden rush of resource money can hollow out the rest of an economy, leaving a country more dependent on the one commodity. Economists still use the term for oil and mineral states that fail to build anything beyond the mine or well. economy ●●

1977 The 'Dutch disease' names the resource curse 0 cit. The Economist coins 'Dutch disease' to describe how a natural-gas boom can raise a currency and hollow out a country's other industries. The idea fed into the wider 'resource curse' thesis, later named by Richard Auty, that mineral wealth often brings slower growth, weaker institutions, and dependence on a single export. Economists still debate how strong and how avoidable the effect is. economy / politics ●●

1977 Chandler names the visible hand of management 0 cit. The historian Alfred Chandler published The Visible Hand, arguing that in big modern business the coordinating work Adam Smith gave to the market's invisible hand was instead done by the visible hand of salaried managers, working through accounting and internal reporting. The book won a Pulitzer and framed how scholars understand managerial capitalism, though later historians have qualified its sweep. culture / economy / society ●●

5 June 1977 Wangari Maathai starts the Green Belt Movement 0 cit. Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977, organising rural women to plant trees against deforestation and erosion. The work gave women income, standing, and a reason to organise, and it grew into millions of trees and thousands of trained women. It also became a base for challenging the state over land, forests, and democracy. Maathai put women back at the centre of public life around the land they had always worked. economy / society ●●●

1977 Kenya's 1977 hunting ban forces the Ogiek toward farming 5 cit. Kenya's nationwide ban on hunting outlawed a core part of Ogiek subsistence and pushed many families into settled agriculture and livestock keeping. Combined with continued eviction from reserved forest, the ban reshaped a way of life built on mobility and the forest. Some Ogiek kept beekeeping alive alongside the new crops. economy / environment / politics ●●

1977 The 1977 hunting ban deepens Waata marginalisation 3 cit. Kenya's total hunting ban finished the outlawing of Waata subsistence begun under colonial game laws. Many struggled to make a living from farming in dry, poor country, and some turned to illegal ivory trading or charcoal burning while others drifted to towns. The Waata slid into poverty and near-invisibility as a distinct people. economy / politics / society ●●

December 1977 Government moves to acquire Kisima Farm land at Timau 1 cit. In late 1977 the Commissioner of Lands issued Gazette notices for compulsory acquisition proceedings over two Timau land portions farmed by Kisima Farm as one unit. A 1978 High Court judgment records that Kisima was also in the process of being sold to Katheri Farmers Co. The case captures Timau as a postcolonial land-transfer arena, not just a settled agricultural landscape. economy / politics ●●●

18 December 1978 Deng Xiaoping's reforms begin 0 cit. The Communist Party's Third Plenum endorses Deng Xiaoping's policy of reform and opening. China turns toward markets and foreign trade, beginning the fastest large-scale rise out of poverty in history and China's return as a great power. economy / politics ●●●●

18 December 1978 Deng Xiaoping launches reform and opening 0 cit. The Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee endorses Deng Xiaoping's program of market reform and opening to the world. China begins its shift from a planned economy toward state-managed capitalism. economy / politics ●●●●

1978 Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening 0 cit. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping launched market reforms and opened China to foreign trade and investment. The policy transformed China into one of the world's fastest growing economies. economy / politics ●●●●●

1978 Versace uses the head of Medusa as its emblem 0 cit. Gianni Versace founded his Italian fashion house in 1978 and chose the head of Medusa, the snake-haired Gorgon of Greek myth, as its symbol. He said she stood for a beauty with no way back. culture / economy / religion ●●