The Ndebele chieftain, Lobengula, grants Rhodes mining rights in what is now Zimbabwe

The Imperial British East Africa Company is given a charter to adminster Kenya and Uganda

Cecil Rhodes forms the British South Africa Company to push British commerce and imperial control further north

The first Land Run into Oklahoma has settlers galloping in from noon to claim territory previously reserved for American Indians

France and Britain agree colonial boundaries for Senegal and Gambia in west Africa

In the treaty of Uccialli, Menelik II cedes the Ethiopian province of Eritrea to Italy

Cecil Rhodes sends colonists to settle the newly won colony of Rhodesia

Zanzibar, under its Arab sultan, is declared a British protectorate

Hundreds of Sioux Indians are killed by US troops in a massacre at Wounded Knee Creek

Germany takes direct control of German East Africa as a protectorate

Rhodes wins the right to adminster the region from the Zambezi up to Lake Tanganyika, forming present-day Zambia

Britain cedes the tiny island of Heligoland to Germany in return for vast areas of Africa

Frederick Lugard's Maxim machine gun settles a Protestant-Catholic clash in Kampala, the capital of Buganda

The French establish a protectorate in part of the ancient kingdom of Dahomey in west Africa

The Falkland Islands, by now occupied by some 2000 settlers, become a British colony

France claims the Ivory Coast (or Côte d'Ivoire) in west Africa as a French colony

Leander Jameson, finding a pretext for war, drives Lobengula out of his kingdom in Rhodesia

The British Central African Protectorate is set up in the region of present-day Malawi

France incorporates Laos within French Indochina

The territory south of the Zambezi is given the name Rhodesia, in honour of the man who has colonized it

At the end of the Sino-Japanese war China cedes to Japan the island of Taiwan, together with Port Arthur and the Liadong peninsula

Khama III, the king of Bechuanaland, travels to London to demand the continuing protection of the British crown

The British government takes responsibility for Kenya, as the East Africa Protectorate

Leander Jameson leads a disastrous raid into the Transvaal, in an attempt to topple Paul Kruger's government

The Ethiopian emperor, Menelik II, inflicts a shattering defeat on Italian forces at Aduwa