The first big influx of British settlers, numbering some 5000, arrives at Cape Town in South Africa

An Egyptian army makes its camp at Khartoum, subsequently the capital of an Egyptian province in the Sudan

The Sante Fe Trail, from Missouri to New Mexico, is opened up by the US trader William Becknell

Stephen Austin begins the process of American settlement in the Mexican province of Texas

The Turkish governor of Algiers, flicking at the French consul with his fly whisk, finds that he has provoked a French blockade and eventually invasion

The Cherokees adopt an American-style constitution and publish the first American-Indian newspaper

James Stirling explores up the Swan River in western Australia to find a site for the settlement which he names Perth

A French army invades Algeria, beginning the process which brings the region within the French empire

Congress passes the Indian Removal Act, to push the American Indian tribes west of the Mississippi

The last surviving Aborigines of Tasmania are moved by the British to a small island where they soon die out

Britain ejects the Argentinians from the Falklands and begins the process of settlement with British farmers

Melbourne, founded by settlers from Tasmania, develops as the centre of a sheep-rearing community

200 Texans, among them Davy Crockett, hold out for twelve days in San Antonio before being killed in the Alamo by a Mexican army

Hendrik Potgieter sets off with some 200 Boers and their cattle at the start of the Great Trek to the north

A site is selected for Adelaide and emigration begins from Britain to south Australia

Hendrik Potgieter and the Boers, protected by a laager at Vegkop, hold off an attack by a large force of Ndebele tribesmen

After a victory at Vegkop, Boers massacre the inhabitants of a dozen Ndebele villages in secret dawn raids

Piet Retief emerges as the new leader of the Great Trek, replacing Potgieter

Potgieter defeats the Ndebele at the Marico river and drives them north of the Limpopo

Piet Retief reaches a provisional agreement with Dingaan, the Zulu leader, for a Boer settlement in southern Natal

During a ceremony to celebrate their treaty with Dingaan, Piet Retief and his Boer companions are overpowered and killed

Dingaan's warriors massacre Boer families in a series of dawn raids near the Bloukrans river

Five American Indian tribes are forcibly escorted to a new Indian Territory west of the Mississippi in the process that becomes known as the Great Removal

The river Ncome becomes known as the Blood River after thousands of Zulu die attacking Andries Pretorius and the Boers

The British seize the strategic port of Aden and administer it as a province annexed to India