Periods of foreign domination, exploitation, and cultural imposition by colonial powers.
6 events
Following Columbus's 1492 voyage, Spain conquered and colonized vast territories in the Americas, destroying the Aztec and Inca empires, subjugating indigenous populations, and extracting enormous mineral wealth.
The forced transportation of an estimated 12.5 million Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas as enslaved labor over more than three centuries, one of history's greatest crimes against humanity.
Following the 1857 rebellion, the British Crown assumed direct rule of India from the East India Company. For 89 years, a vast colonial bureaucracy governed hundreds of millions of people, building railways and telegraph systems while systematically extracting India's wealth and suppressing self-governance.
European powers rapidly colonized virtually all of Africa, with the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 establishing rules for colonial claims — though no Africans were invited or consulted.
King Leopold II's personal colony in the Congo Free State (1885-1908) was the site of one of history's worst colonial atrocities, where rubber quotas enforced through mutilation, hostage-taking, and terror killed an estimated 1-10 million people (the exact number is heavily debated).
The first global maritime empire, Portugal established trade posts and colonies spanning four continents for nearly 600 years, beginning with the capture of Ceuta in North Africa (1415) and ending with the handover of Macau (1999).