Events, Verisoph

31 August 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention 0 cit. Agreement dividing Persia into spheres of influence and settling disputes over Afghanistan and Tibet. It completed the Triple Entente of Britain, France, and Russia. diplomacy / politics ●●●

17 December 1907 Founding of the Kingdom of Bhutan 0 cit. no story Ugyen Wangchuck is crowned as the first hereditary king of Bhutan, unifying the country under the Wangchuck monarchy. politics ●●

26 September 1907 Dominion of New Zealand 0 cit. no story New Zealand becomes a self-governing dominion within the British Empire, a key step toward full independence. politics ●●●

15 June 1907 Second Hague Peace Conference 0 cit. A larger follow-up conference of 44 states expanded the rules of warfare and arbitration. It reinforced the idea of a codified body of international law governing relations between states. politics / war ●●

9 April 1907 Indiana passes the world's first sterilization law 1 cit. Indiana enacted the first law allowing the state to forcibly sterilize people it labeled unfit, including prisoners and people with disabilities. It opened the door to tens of thousands of coerced sterilizations across the United States. politics / science ●●●

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 Indiana passes the first compulsory sterilization law 0 cit. Indiana enacted the world's first compulsory sterilization law in 1907, authorizing the forced sterilization of people held in state institutions. It opened the way for similar laws in more than thirty US states. politics / science ●●●●

26 September 1907 Dominion of New Zealand established 0 cit. New Zealand's status changed from colony to dominion within the British Empire, granting it greater self-governance while remaining under the Crown. New Zealand had already granted women the vote in 1893, ahead of Britain itself. The dominion retained the British monarch as head of state. politics ●

1907 Native ordinances entrench land and labor controls 0 cit. German colonial authorities issued ordinances stripping surviving Herero and Nama communities of remaining land rights and requiring Africans over the age of seven to carry identification passes. The measures barred African land and cattle ownership on the scale that had existed before the war and pushed survivors into wage labor on settler farms and mines. These laws formed the legal basis for decades of racial land dispossession in the territory. politics ●●

c. 31 March 1907 Colonial administration declares the uprisings over 0 cit. The German colonial government formally declares the Herero and Nama wars ended, after roughly 80 percent of the pre-war Herero population and roughly half of the Nama population have died from combat, exposure in the Omaheke, and camp conditions, according to the scholarly consensus drawn from German census and mission records. Survivors are stripped of land and cattle by decree and required to carry identification passes, restricted from owning livestock or land, and bound into a colonial labor system. politics / war ●●●

25 January 1907 German Reichstag election fought over colonial policy 0 cit. Chancellor Bülow dissolves the Reichstag after the Center Party and Social Democrats criticize colonial military spending and the conduct of the war in South-West Africa, and calls a snap election. The vote, remembered as the "Hottentot election," becomes a referendum on German colonial policy and returns a nationalist majority supportive of continued colonial rule. politics ●

9 March 1907 Indiana Passes First Sterilization Law 0 cit. Indiana enacted the first eugenic sterilization law in the world, authorizing forced sterilization of people in state institutions judged "confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists." The law was signed by Governor J. Frank Hanly and applied to inmates of state prisons, reformatories, and homes for the "feeble-minded." It became the model that other states copied over the following decades. politics / science / society ●●●

c. 1907 Policing the colour bar 0 cit. Colonial Kenya ran on a racial hierarchy that reserved land, jobs, and town spaces for Europeans, and the police enforced it through pass laws, vagrancy rules, and segregation of urban areas. Africans in towns needed passes and could be detained for being in the wrong place. Everyday policing kept the colour bar in place. politics / society ●●

18 August 1907 The Stuttgart Congress and the war question 0 cit. The Second International's Stuttgart congress adopts a resolution committing socialist parties to work against militarism and war. An amendment pressed by Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and Julius Martov added that, should war break out, socialists should use the resulting crisis to hasten the fall of capitalism. How far parties would actually resist a war was left unresolved. diplomacy / politics / war ●●

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 ●●●●

c. 1907 Colonial policing imports the Irish and Indian model 3 cit. The force was not simply copied from the unarmed London beat constable. British colonial policing in Kenya mixed the Royal Irish Constabulary model of barracked, semi-military political control with Indian colonial police law and some Metropolitan Police practices in towns and detective work. The result was a force closer to gendarmerie than public service. politics / society ●●●●

26 July 1908 Founding of the FBI 0 cit. Attorney General Charles Bonaparte creates a small force of special agents in the Justice Department; it grows into the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the national police and counterintelligence service. politics ●●●

26 July 1908 Bureau of Investigation founded 0 cit. Attorney General Charles Bonaparte creates a force of special agents inside the Department of Justice, without waiting for congressional approval. It is renamed the Bureau of Investigation in 1909 and becomes the FBI in 1935. This is the direct ancestor of today's Federal Bureau of Investigation. politics ●●●

15 November 1908 Belgian state annexes the Congo 0 cit. Under sustained international pressure over the atrocities of the Congo Free State, Leopold II transferred personal ownership of the territory to the Belgian government, which renamed it the Belgian Congo. Forced labor and extraction continued under state administration, though with somewhat less overt brutality than under Leopold's personal rule. The Belgian Congo remained a colony until Congolese independence in 1960. politics ●●

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 Sorel publishes Reflections on Violence 0 cit. Georges Sorel publishes Reflections on Violence, arguing that a unifying myth and heroic action can bind a movement together. Though Sorel came from the revolutionary left, later writers trace his idea of mobilizing myth as one of the intellectual currents that fed into fascism. culture / politics ●●

15 November 1908 Leopold hands the Congo to Belgium and is never tried 0 cit. After the international outcry over the rubber terror, the Belgian parliament takes control of the Congo from Leopold II, ending his personal rule and renaming the territory the Belgian Congo. Forced-labour practices continue under state administration in modified form, particularly during the rubber and later mineral booms. Leopold himself is never tried for the abuses committed under his authority. politics / society ●●●

c. 1908 Belgium rules the Congo as a paternalist state 0 cit. Belgium runs the Congo as a paternalist state built on a partnership of the colonial administration, the Catholic Church, and large companies. Africans are provided basic schooling and health care aimed at producing obedient workers, but are barred from higher education, political rights, and senior jobs by an informal colour bar. The system keeps Congolese people subordinate while presenting itself as benevolent guardianship. politics / religion / society ●●●

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 ●●

July 1908 Young Turk Revolution 0 cit. The Committee of Union and Progress, known as the Young Turks, forces Abdul Hamid II to restore the constitution and parliament. A modernizing, nationalist movement, it soon dominated the government and led the empire into World War I. Its rule mixed reform with a harder Turkish nationalism. politics / society ●●

c. 1908 The Kitawala and Watchtower movement in Central Africa 0 cit. Watch Tower teaching, spread from about 1908 by preachers such as Elliot Kamwana in Nyasaland, took root across Central Africa as the movement called Kitawala. Its message that God's kingdom would soon sweep away earthly rulers was heard as a promise of the end of colonial power. Authorities across several territories saw it as subversive and banned and jailed its adherents repeatedly. politics / religion / society ●●

1908 Otenyo, Moraa and the 1908 Gusii Rising 4 cit. The young warrior Otenyo Nyamaterere, urged on by the prophetess Moraa wa Ng'iti, speared the British administrator Northcote, who survived, and sparked a rising that took a month to put down. A punitive expedition raided the cattle enclosures of Kitutu and seized several thousand head, and Otenyo was captured and shot by firing squad. Gusii tradition holds that his head was taken to Britain, and to this day elders campaign for its return, though the details rest on oral accounts. politics / religion / war ●●

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 ●●●

1908 The Elgin Pledge reserves the highlands for Europeans 0 cit. Colonial Secretary Lord Elgin gave an informal assurance that the fertile highlands would be kept for white settlers. In practice this shut Indians out of buying farmland in the most valuable part of the colony. It set the pattern for a long political fight over land and status. politics ●●

1908 Otenyo, Moraa and the Gusii rising of 1908 0 cit. As British administration pushed into Gusii country, the prophetess Moraa Ng'iti roused resistance and the young warrior Otenyo Nyamaterere speared the district officer G. A. S. Northcote, who survived the wound. The British answered with a punitive expedition that burned villages, seized cattle and killed many Gusii, and Otenyo was later captured and executed. The rising marks the hinge where Gusii independence gave way to colonial conquest. politics / war ●●●

1908 Otenyo Nyamaterere spears the British commissioner 0 cit. In the 1908 Gusii rising against British taxation and rule, the young warrior Otenyo Nyamaterere, inspired by the prophetess Moraa Ngiti, speared and wounded the British officer G.A.S. Northcote. The British answered with a punitive expedition that killed many Abagusii and seized their cattle. Otenyo was hunted down, captured, and executed, and he is remembered as a Gusii hero of resistance. politics / society / war ●●●

1908 Subjugation of Meru 1 cit. The Meru, on the north-eastern shoulder of Mount Kenya, were subdued by a military expedition in 1908, with the Tharaka among those putting up the hardest fight. As elsewhere, allied African auxiliaries did much of the fighting and cattle were carried off. A British post at Meru followed, completing the encirclement of the mountain by 1910. politics / war ●●

1908 The colonial intrusion and the crisis of authority 1 cit. British conquest in 1907 and 1908, led by E. B. Horne, stripped the generation-sets of their political core by ending warfare, disarmament, and territorial defence, leaving the kiama as little more than a court for settling disputes. Famine, epidemics, and wartime demands then killed perhaps a quarter to a third of the people. Anne-Marie Peatrik argues the crisis deepened when H. E. Lambert recognised the njuri ncheke as the official "tribal authority" in the 1930s, a selective body that masked the real generational divisions rather than restoring the old order. politics / society / war ●●●●

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 ●●●●

c. 1909 to c. 1979 California leads U.S. in forced sterilizations 1 cit. California sterilized about 20,000 people under eugenic law, more than any other state, targeting immigrants, the poor, and people in institutions. The state later apologized and set up compensation for survivors. politics / society ●●

12 February 1909 NAACP founded to fight racial injustice 0 cit. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded to fight lynching, segregation, and disenfranchisement. It became a leading force in the long legal and political battle for civil rights. politics / society ●●●

1909 to 1979 California's eugenic sterilization program 0 cit. California forcibly sterilized about 20,000 people held in state institutions between 1909 and the 1970s, the most of any US state. Many were poor, disabled, or Latina women sterilized without meaningful consent. politics / society ●●●●

c. 1909 Round Table movement founded 0 cit. Alumni of Milner's Kindergarten, led by Lionel Curtis, founded the Round Table movement to promote closer union among Britain and its self-governing dominions. Local Round Table groups were set up across the British Empire, staffed heavily by Rhodes Scholars and former colonial administrators. The movement became a channel through which a small, informally networked elite discussed and shaped imperial and later Commonwealth policy. politics ●●

12 February 1909 NAACP founded 0 cit. A group of Black and white activists, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells, founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in response to lynching and race riots. It became the leading legal and organizing force against segregation for the next century. Its Legal Defense Fund later argued Brown v. Board of Education. politics / society ●●●

1909 Harry Truman is initiated a Freemason 0 cit. Harry Truman was initiated into a Masonic lodge in Belton, Missouri, in 1909. He became an active and enthusiastic Mason, serving as Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Missouri in 1940, a decade before his presidency. This is documented in Missouri Grand Lodge records. politics / society ●●

26 April 1909 California Enacts Sterilization Law 0 cit. California passed its own compulsory sterilization statute, allowing sterilization of people confined in state hospitals and prisons who were diagnosed as "feebleminded" or judged to have a hereditary disease or condition. Washington and Connecticut passed similar laws the same year. California went on to sterilize far more people than any other state, roughly a third of all sterilizations performed nationwide. politics / science / society ●●●

c. 1 January 1909 Yevno Azef Exposed as Double Agent 0 cit. Yevno Azef simultaneously led the Socialist Revolutionary Party's terrorist Combat Organization, which carried out assassinations of senior Russian officials, while secretly working as a paid informant for the Okhrana, the Tsarist secret police. Investigator Vladimir Burtsev exposed his dual role in early 1909, revealing that Azef had both organized real assassinations and betrayed fellow revolutionaries to the police, sometimes doing both to the same plot. His case remains a defining example of a state agent provocateur operating at the highest level of a revolutionary organization. politics / society ●●

1 October 1909 Secret Service Bureau founded 0 cit. The British government set up the Secret Service Bureau to counter German espionage and to run British intelligence gathering abroad. It was a joint Admiralty and War Office body, headed jointly by Captain Vernon Kell and Commander Mansfield Cumming. It is the common ancestor of both MI5 and MI6. politics / war ●●●

c. 1 October 1909 Secret Service Bureau splits into home and foreign sections 0 cit. Britain's new Secret Service Bureau divided into a home section, which became the Security Service (MI5), and a foreign section, which became the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Because MI5 officers had no powers of arrest, Special Branch became its operational arm for domestic cases, carrying out arrests, surveillance, and evidence-gathering on MI5's behalf. politics ●●●

20 February 1909 Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto 0 cit. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti publishes the Futurist Manifesto on the front page of Le Figaro, glorifying speed, machines, violence, and war as the world's only hygiene. Many Futurists later rallied to fascism, and historians often point to the movement as part of its cultural background. culture / politics ●●

17 December 1909 Leopold II dies unrepentant 0 cit. Leopold died a year after losing the Congo, his funeral cortege booed by parts of the Belgian public. Estimates of the death toll under his rule vary widely and remain contested, with the historian Adam Hochschild popularizing a figure of around ten million while other scholars give different ranges based on incomplete records. The scale of the loss of life is documented in outline even where exact numbers are disputed. politics / society ●●

April 1909 Adana massacre 0 cit. Amid the political turmoil that followed the Young Turk revolution, mobs and troops kill Armenians in the city and region of Adana. Estimates of the dead generally range from about 15,000 to 30,000. The violence shows that the change of Ottoman government had not made Armenians safe. politics / war ●●

1909 The first international drug control agreements 0 cit. The Shanghai Opium Commission of 1909 and the Hague Opium Convention of 1912 began the modern system of international drug control. After a century of profiting from opium, the imperial powers started to build the treaties that would define narcotics as a global problem to be policed. diplomacy / politics ●●

c. 1909 The Northern Frontier District takes shape 3 cit. Britain grouped the vast arid lands north of Mount Kenya into a single Northern Frontier District, run by a handful of officers as a lightly held buffer against Ethiopia, Italian Somaliland, and raiding. The region was administered on the cheap as a strategic edge, not as a part of the country to be developed. Historians describe the early frontier boundaries as fluid, so the founding date is approximate. politics / society ●●

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 ●●

21 September 1909 Kwame Nkrumah is born in the Gold Coast 0 cit. Kwame Nkrumah was born in Nkroful, a village in the western Gold Coast, into a modest family. He trained as a teacher at Achimota College in Accra and taught at Catholic schools before deciding to study abroad. His early years under British colonial rule shaped his later drive for African self-rule. politics / society ●●

c. 1909 Missions carve Kenya into denominational spheres 0 cit. To avoid competing for the same souls, the Protestant missions agreed on comity, spheres of influence that divided Kenya into territories, each left mostly to one society. The Church Missionary Society, the Church of Scotland Mission, the African Inland Mission, the Methodists, the Quakers, and the Adventists each took their zones. A rival Catholic network of Holy Ghost, Consolata, and Mill Hill fathers spread alongside them. politics / religion / society ●●●

June 1909 Wangu wa Makeri falls after the kibaata dance 0 cit. Wangu wa Makeri lost her office in 1909 after a scandal at a dance. The best-known account says she danced the kibaata, a men's warrior dance forbidden to women, and was exposed when her skirt fell, giving her rivals the opening to force her out. The dance story is embellished in the retellings and its details are disputed, but her removal is documented. Men who resented a woman's power used a breach of custom to end it. politics / society ●●

31 May 1910 Formation of the Union of South Africa 0 cit. no story Four British colonies unite as the self-governing Union of South Africa; the country became a republic in 1961 and a full democracy in 1994. politics ●●●●

29 August 1910 Fall of the Korean Empire 0 cit. On 29 August 1910 Japan formally annexed Korea, ending the Korean Empire and the long Joseon dynasty. Korea remained under Japanese colonial rule until 1945. politics ●●●

c. 1910 to c. 1970 Australia removes Aboriginal children for assimilation 0 cit. For much of the twentieth century Australian authorities removed many Aboriginal children from their families to be raised and schooled as white, a group later called the Stolen Generations. Official inquiries documented lasting harm. politics / society ●●

c. 1910 The Round Table journal launched 0 cit. The Round Table movement launched its quarterly journal, 'The Round Table: A Quarterly Review of the Politics of the British Commonwealth.' The journal gave the network a public voice for arguing its views on imperial federation and Commonwealth affairs. It continues publication today, now focused on Commonwealth and international affairs rather than imperial unity. culture / politics ●

31 May 1910 Union of South Africa formed 0 cit. The British colonies of the Cape, Natal, Transvaal, and Orange River united into the self-governing Union of South Africa within the British Empire. Political power was reserved for white voters; Black, Coloured, and Indian South Africans were largely excluded from the franchise, with only a limited qualified vote retained in the Cape. Louis Botha, a former Boer general, became the Union's first Prime Minister. politics ●●●

c. 1 January 1910 Bureau splits into Home and Foreign Sections 0 cit. The Secret Service Bureau divided into a Home Section under Vernon Kell, which handled counter-espionage inside Britain and its empire, and a Foreign Section under Mansfield Cumming, which ran agents abroad. The Home Section grew into the Security Service, MI5. The Foreign Section grew into the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. politics ●●

c. 1910 Paternalist rule and the colour bar 0 cit. Belgium ran the Congo as a paternalist state built on a partnership of the colonial administration, the Catholic Church, and large companies. Africans were provided basic schooling and health care aimed at producing obedient workers, but were barred from higher education, political rights, and senior jobs by an informal colour bar. The system kept Congolese people subordinate while presenting itself as benevolent guardianship. politics / society ●●

c. 1910 The lodge as a networking club of the colonial establishment 0 cit. Freemasonry in colonial Kenya functioned mainly as a network of status and mutual aid among administrators, settlers, and professionals, meeting behind closed doors for ritual and dining. Membership signaled standing in the small European elite and could smooth business and official ties. This was a secular fraternal role, distinct from the missions, whose purpose was evangelism and schooling. The date marks the pattern rather than a single event, so it is approximate. politics / society ●●

1910 The Union of South Africa and the exclusion of Black South Africans 0 cit. Britain unites its colonies and the former republics into the self-governing Union of South Africa in 1910, reconciling with the defeated Boers. The settlement is made between whites, and the black majority is left almost entirely without the vote. The compromise hardens into a system of land and labour control that leads on to formal segregation and, after 1948, apartheid. politics / 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 Missionaries borrowed the local name for God 0 cit. When missionaries translated the Bible, they usually took the existing high-god name for the Christian God. Kikuyu scripture used Ngai, Luo and Luhya texts used Nyasaye and Were, and so on. This eased conversion, since the God preached seemed to be the God already known, and it quietly conceded that the people had worshipped one creator before the missionaries came. politics / religion ●●●

c. 1910 Colonial and missionary readings of the Mbwaa story 1 cit. Anne-Marie Peatrik traces how the recorded versions were reshaped by their collectors. Early administrators such as Hobley, Horne, and Hopkins pressed the story into a migration narrative that made the population legible for government and dropped its absurd episodes, while missionaries matched the water-crossing to the biblical Exodus to serve conversion. Lambert's later linguistic reconstruction added its own errors, wrongly tracing "Mbwaa" to a Swahili word for coast across unrelated languages. culture / politics / religion ●●

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 ●●●●

29 December 1911 Independence of Mongolia 0 cit. no story Outer Mongolia declares independence from Qing China under the Bogd Khan; independence was secured by the 1921 revolution. politics ●●●

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 ●●●●●

1911 Xinhai Revolution and fall of the Qing 0 cit. An uprising at Wuchang in October 1911 sparked a revolution that spread across China. It ended more than two thousand years of imperial rule. politics / war ●●●●●

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 ●●●●●

1911 Official secrecy: the classification of state knowledge 0 cit. Britain's Official Secrets Act and its imitators give the state the power to classify information and punish its disclosure. Control of secret knowledge, what the public may and may not know, became a defining tool of the modern security state. pillar / politics / society ●●●

1911 Franklin D. Roosevelt is initiated a Freemason 0 cit. Franklin D. Roosevelt was initiated into Holland Lodge No. 8 in New York City in 1911. He remained a Mason throughout his political career, and his membership is documented in lodge and Masonic biographical records. politics / society ●●

18 August 1911 The first Parliament Act ends the Lords' veto over money bills 0 cit. After the unelected House of Lords blocks the Commons' 1909 budget, the Parliament Act removes the Lords' power to veto money bills and limits it to a two-year delay on other legislation. It settles, in law, that the elected Commons holds ultimate authority over finance and, increasingly, over lawmaking generally. politics ●●●

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 ●●●

August 1911 The Official Secrets Act of 1911 passes in a day 0 cit. Amid a public panic about German spies, Parliament rushed a sweeping new Official Secrets Act through in a single day with almost no debate. Its notorious Section 2 made the unauthorized sharing of any official information a crime, no matter how trivial or harmless. The catch-all clause stayed on the books until 1989 and became a model for secrecy laws across the British Empire. politics / war ●●●

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 Muhumusa and the Nyabingi resistance 0 cit. The Nyabingi movement of the Uganda-Rwanda borderlands centered on a female spirit, Nyabingi, whose priestesses claimed her power to heal and to command. The best known, Muhumusa, led armed resistance to German and then British authority until her capture and detention by the British in 1911. The cult continued under other mediums for years, and its persistence pushed the British to outlaw it. politics / religion / war ●●

1911 The Second Maasai Move and the Maasai Case 2 cit. A second agreement in 1911 forced the northern Maasai off the Laikipia plateau, which settlers coveted, and crowded them into an enlarged southern reserve. Some Maasai leaders challenged the move in court in 1912 to 1913, arguing the treaty had been broken, but the case was thrown out on the ground that a dispute between the Crown and its protected subjects was not one the courts could hear. The move stripped the Maasai of about half their remaining land and remains a live grievance. diplomacy / politics / society ●●●

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 second Maasai Agreement clears Laikipia for ranches 0 cit. A second Anglo-Maasai Agreement removes the northern Maasai from Laikipia and moves them to an enlarged southern reserve. The plateau is thrown open to European ranching, and its Maasai occupants never regain the land. This forced move is the origin of the large private holdings that still dominate Laikipia. politics / society ●●●

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 ●●●●

1911 Nairobi builds fingerprints, CID and criminal intelligence files 2 cit. Police training in Nairobi was paired with a fingerprint section in 1911, then a Criminal Intelligence Unit in 1926 to record criminals, undesirable persons and suspicious persons. This is where the Scotland Yard side of the inheritance matters: detective bureaucracy, fingerprints, files and political intelligence were built into the colonial police before independence. politics / society / technology ●●●

28 November 1912 Independence of Albania 0 cit. no story Ismail Qemali declares Albania independent from the Ottoman Empire at Vlore during the First Balkan War. politics / war ●●●

1 January 1912 Proclamation of the Republic of China 0 cit. no story The Republic of China is proclaimed after the revolution that ended the Qing dynasty; its government has been based on Taiwan since 1949. politics / war ●●●

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 ●●●●

12 February 1912 Fall of the Qing Dynasty 0 cit. On 12 February 1912 the child emperor Puyi abdicated, ending the Qing dynasty and more than two thousand years of imperial rule in China. The Republic of China took its place. politics ●●●●●

1912 Founding of the Republic of China 0 cit. The Republic of China was proclaimed in 1912 with Sun Yat-sen as provisional president, and the boy emperor Puyi abdicated. China became a republic for the first time. politics ●●●●●

24 July 1912 First International Eugenics Congress meets in London 0 cit. Scientists and officials from many countries gathered to promote eugenics as a global movement. The congress helped spread policies of sterilization and racial ranking that had no sound scientific basis. politics / science ●●

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 ●●●

8 January 1912 African National Congress founded 0 cit. Black South African leaders, including lawyers and clergy, founded the South African Native National Congress in Bloemfontein to oppose racial discrimination and advocate for African political rights. The organization was renamed the African National Congress (ANC) in 1923. It would go on to become the central organization of the anti-apartheid struggle and South Africa's governing party after 1994. politics ●●●

1912 Ernest Oppenheimer becomes mayor of Kimberley 0 cit. Ernest Oppenheimer was elected mayor of Kimberley, giving him political standing in the diamond town alongside his growing commercial interests. He used the position and his trade contacts to expand his influence over South African mining finance. politics ●

16 July 1912 Herman Rosenthal murdered outside his protection dispute with police 0 cit. Gambler Herman Rosenthal, who had publicly accused a police lieutenant of extorting protection payments from his gambling operation, was shot dead outside the Hotel Metropole in Manhattan. The killing, arranged to silence him before he could testify, set off a major scandal implicating the police department in organized crime. politics ●●●

c. October 1912 Lieutenant Charles Becker convicted in the Rosenthal murder 0 cit. NYPD Lieutenant Charles Becker was tried and convicted of arranging Herman Rosenthal's murder to prevent him from exposing Becker's extortion of the city's gambling operators. Becker maintained his innocence, and his guilt was and remains debated by historians, but the case became the most prominent single instance of police corruption tied directly to a killing. politics ●●●

24 November 1912 The Basel Manifesto against war 0 cit. An extraordinary congress of the Second International, convened in Basel Cathedral as the Balkan Wars raised fears of a wider conflict, issues the Basel Manifesto. It warned governments that a European war would be met by the united resistance of the working class. Two years later most of the same parties backed their own nations in the First World War. diplomacy / politics / war ●●

1912 to 1913 The Balkan Wars 0 cit. A coalition of Balkan states drives the Ottomans out of nearly all their remaining European territory in the first war, then fights over the spoils in the second. The empire loses almost its entire European heartland and sees another huge wave of Muslim refugees. The defeats deepened the sense of crisis on the eve of World War I. politics / war ●●

1912 The D-Notice system asks the press to stay quiet 0 cit. Britain set up a joint committee of officials and newspaper editors that issued Defence Notices, requests to the press not to publish material said to endanger national security. The system was voluntary and had no legal force, but editors mostly complied. Supporters called it a sensible partnership; critics called it a polite form of censorship that trained the press to self-silence. politics / war ●●

1912 The Third Home Rule crisis and the arming of Ulster 0 cit. A third Home Rule Bill passed in 1912 but was fiercely resisted by Ulster unionists, who signed a mass covenant and formed the armed Ulster Volunteers. Nationalists responded with their own Irish Volunteers, and both sides imported weapons. The country edged toward civil conflict before the First World War suspended the crisis in 1914. politics / war ●●