Events, Verisoph

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 ●●

c. 1907 The whole nine yards: origin unknown, Masonic claim unproven unproven 0 cit. The whole nine yards, meaning the entire amount, has one of the most argued origins in American English, with theories ranging from ammunition belts to concrete trucks to cloth for a suit; a Masonic explanation circulates among these. The earliest known print uses are American from the early twentieth century, and no source, Masonic or otherwise, has been proven. It belongs firmly in the disputed column. culture / society ●●

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 A Tumbuka "kingdom" invented under colonial rule ai_extracted 1 cit. Under colonialism, mission-educated Africans and appointed chiefs created a Tumbuka paramountcy that had not existed before. Chilongozi Gondwe was appointed chief in 1907 and began promoting his royal status, supported by an elite that manufactured a myth-history of an ancient Tumbuka empire. ●●

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 ●●●●

1908 Havenstein becomes Reichsbank president ai_extracted 1 cit. Rudolf von Havenstein became president of the German Reichsbank in 1908 and was a strong defender of central bank independence. ●●

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 ●●●●

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 ●●●

1908 The Ford Model T 0 cit. Henry Ford launched the Model T, a sturdy car simple enough to be affordable for ordinary families. It put millions on the road and made the automobile a mass product. 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 ●●●●

c. 1908 Women's Freemasonry in Britain 0 cit. Co-Masonry reached Britain around 1902, and a women-only order that became the Honourable Fraternity of Ancient Freemasons emerged from it by 1908. These bodies work Masonic ritual for women but are not recognized by the male-only United Grand Lodge of England. culture / society ●●

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 ●●●

1908 Eugen Fischer studies the Basters of Rehoboth 0 cit. German anthropologist Eugen Fischer traveled to the colony to study people of mixed Nama and European descent known as Basters, developing racial theories about the effects of interbreeding between Europeans and Africans. His resulting book, published in 1913, argued for restricting the rights and reproduction of mixed-race populations. Fischer's work was later cited approvingly by Nazi race scientists, and he went on to head Nazi Germany's leading eugenics institute and to help draft the Nuremberg racial laws. science ●●●

1908 Camps close and the Herero and Nama population collapses 0 cit. German authorities closed the concentration camp system after several years of internment. The Herero population is estimated to have fallen by roughly 80 percent and the Nama population by roughly 50 percent as a result of the war, flight, and internment since 1904. Survivors lost most of their cattle and land and were subjected afterward to pass laws restricting movement and land ownership. society ●●●

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 ●●

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. 1908 Eugen Fischer studies the Rehoboth Basters 2 cit. German anthropologist Eugen Fischer travels to German South-West Africa to study the Rehoboth Basters, a mixed-descent community, measuring skulls and bodies to develop theories on the biological effects of racial mixing. His 1913 book on the study, "Die Rehobother Bastards," argues that mixed-race populations are biologically inferior and warns against interracial marriage, work later cited directly in Nazi race law. science ●●●

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 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 ●●

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 ●●●

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 Church of Scotland founds the Tumutumu mission 0 cit. The Church of Scotland Mission extended north from Kikuyu and opened a station at Tumutumu near Nyeri in 1908, deep in Kikuyu country. It added a school and hospital and became a base for evangelism, medical work, and teacher training in the region. Tumutumu produced many of the mission-educated Kikuyu who shaped early African politics and church life. religion / society ●

c. 1908 Mission Schools and the Making of a Kikuyu Elite 0 cit. Church of Scotland and Church Missionary Society stations in Kikuyu country offered schooling, literacy, and wage skills, creating a class of mission-educated Christians the Kikuyu called athomi, the readers. This opening divided the community between those who embraced the mission path and those who held to custom, a split colonial rule would later widen into loyalist and rebel. Access to education became a form of power, and the elite it produced shaped Kikuyu politics for generations. 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 ●●

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 ●●●●

January 1908 Moraa wa Ngiti inspires the Gusii rising contested 0 cit. Moraa wa Ngiti was a Gusii seer and healer who urged her people to resist the British after troops seized thousands of Gusii cattle in early 1908. Oral history says she blessed the warriors and gave them charms, and inspired her kinsman Otenyo Nyamaterere, who speared and wounded the British officer Northcote. The rising was put down and Otenyo was executed. Her spiritual leadership rests on Gusii oral tradition, so the detail is contested, but the revolt itself is documented. religion / 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 ●●●●

April 1909 Founding of Tel Aviv 0 cit. Jewish residents founded Tel Aviv as a new town near Jaffa in 1909. It grew into the first modern Hebrew-speaking city. culture / society ●●

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 ●●●

2 July 1909 Haber synthesizes ammonia from nitrogen 0 cit. Fritz Haber showed how to make ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen under high pressure. The reaction opened the way to cheap synthetic fertilizer and explosives. science / technology ●●●●●

1909 The Rosicrucian Fellowship founded by Max Heindel 0 cit. Max Heindel founded the Rosicrucian Fellowship in 1909 and published The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, presenting a Christian mystical and astrological teaching. The group established its headquarters, Mount Ecclesia, at Oceanside, California. religion / science ●●●

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 ●●●●

1909 Quigley: The Round Table launched as a Milner Group organ (1909) ai_extracted 1 cit. Quigley asserts that The Round Table was the second major propaganda effort of the Milner Group after 1909. He says it aimed to do for the whole Empire what the Group had done for South Africa. ●●

1909 American Breeders Association turns to eugenic lobbying ai_extracted 1 cit. At the December 1909 American Breeders Association meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, Charles Davenport convinced the ABA to escalate from pure research into specific ethnic investigation, propaganda, and lobbying for eugenic legislation. ●●

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 ●●

1909 Arthur Conan Doyle's The Crime of the Congo 0 cit. Arthur Conan Doyle, at the height of his fame as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, wrote The Crime of the Congo, a hard-hitting book compiling the evidence of atrocities. He produced it quickly to support E. D. Morel's reform campaign and reach a wide public. It stands as a major literary voice turning global opinion decisively against Leopold in the final year of the Free State. culture / society ●●

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 ●●

c. 1909 Mission Education at the Church of Scotland Mission 0 cit. As a boy Kamau left home for the Church of Scotland Mission at Thogoto, where he learned to read, write, and do carpentry and worked as a houseboy and kitchen hand to pay his way. The mission schooling gave him English and a bridge into the colonial world that shaped the rest of his life. He was baptised there in 1914, taking the Christian name Johnstone Kamau. religion / 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 ●●

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 ●●●

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 Jazz is born in New Orleans 0 cit. In the bars and streets of New Orleans, musicians blended blues, ragtime, and brass band music into jazz. Its swing and improvisation would spread across the world. culture ●●●●

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 ●●

1910 to 1939 Eugenics Record Office opens at Cold Spring Harbor 1 cit. Charles Davenport founded the Eugenics Record Office to collect family data and promote eugenic policy. Its flawed research was used to support sterilization laws and immigration restrictions that harmed thousands. science / society ●●

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 ●●●

July 1910 Rangers and posses lynch Black Texans during the Slocum massacre 0 cit. A white mob killed an unknown but substantial number of Black residents of Slocum, Texas, over several days; state Rangers were dispatched afterward, ostensibly to restore order, but no one was ever prosecuted for the killings. The Slocum massacre is documented mainly through local records and later scholarly reconstruction, since contemporary official accounts minimized it, and historians treat it as part of a broader pattern in which Rangers were sent after racial violence rather than deployed to prevent it. society ●●

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 ●●

1910 Edmond Locard founds the first forensic crime laboratory 0 cit. Edmond Locard established a police laboratory in Lyon dedicated to the scientific examination of physical evidence, generally regarded as the first crime laboratory of its kind. Locard is best known for articulating the exchange principle, the idea that every contact between a criminal and a crime scene leaves a trace. His laboratory became a model that other countries, including the FBI, later copied. science ●●●

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 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 Mission Schools and the First Christian Converts 0 cit. Protestant and Catholic missions spread across Kikuyu country in the early 1900s, and their schools offered literacy, Christianity, and a path into clerical and church employment. The athomi, the readers, became the first mission-educated Africans and gained standing and opportunity through their ties to the colonial order. This new Christian, literate group is the seedbed of the progressive African class that later aligned with the government against the oath-bound fighters. culture / religion / society ●●

1910 Isaiah Shembe founds the Nazareth Baptist Church 0 cit. The Zulu prophet Isaiah Shembe founded the Nazareth Baptist Church, one of the largest of the Zionist-type African independent churches. He wove Zulu custom, dance, and dress together with Christian worship, offering a faith that did not require Africans to abandon their culture. Such churches asserted a spiritual independence that quietly rejected the missionaries' claim to define the true religion. culture / religion / 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 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 ●●

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 Rotary and Freemasonry share roots but not identity 0 cit. In the early twentieth century Rotary grew alongside the older fraternal orders, and many early members also belonged to Masonic lodges. Both traditions valued fellowship, ethics, and mutual aid among men of standing. Rotary, however, is not a Masonic body: it has no secret ritual or oath, publishes its membership and activities, and centers on open community service rather than initiation. religion / 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 ●●●●

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 ●●●●●