French Africa

State · 1846–1957 CE · at its largest around 1945 CE

French colonial rule in Africa combined conquest, forced labor and settler land grabs, especially in Algeria, with a 'civilizing mission' that schooled a small elite in French language and culture. Today French remains widely spoken, and the bitter war in Algeria still shapes memory on both sides.

On its lands while it lasted

Kingdom of Kongo (c. 1390–1914 CE): Central African kingdom with its capital at Mbanza Kongo; after Portuguese contact in 1483 its rulers adopted Christianity, and it later became deeply entangled in the Atlantic slave trade.
Slave trade, Angola to Brazil (c. 1550–1850 CE): The largest single branch of the Atlantic slave trade carried millions of captives from West Central Africa, above all Luanda, directly to Brazilian ports such as Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, until Brazil ended imports in 1850.
Ashanti Empire (1701–1901 CE): Akan state founded by Osei Tutu with its capital at Kumasi, which grew wealthy on gold and trade and resisted British expansion in a series of wars.
Suez Canal route (1869 CE): The Suez Canal, opened in 1869, linked the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, letting ships sail between Europe and Asia without rounding Africa and cutting the London–Bombay voyage by thousands of kilometres.
Scramble for Africa (1881–1914 CE): Invasion, occupation and partition of almost all of Africa by European powers between the 1880s and 1914, formalised in part at the Berlin Conference of 1884–85.
Congo Free State (1885–1908 CE): Colony privately ruled by King Leopold II of Belgium, where forced labour for rubber collection caused mass deaths; international outcry led Belgium to annex it in 1908.
Haile Selassie (1892 CE – 1975 CE): Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974 who appealed to the League of Nations against the Italian invasion; deposed by the Derg military junta in 1974.
Battle of Adwa (1896 CE): Ethiopian forces under Emperor Menelik II decisively defeated an Italian army on 1 March 1896, securing Ethiopia's independence during the Scramble for Africa.
Herero and Nama genocide (1904–1908 CE): Campaign of extermination by German colonial forces in South West Africa (Namibia) that killed tens of thousands of Herero and Nama people; often called the first genocide of the 20th century.
Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman (1908 CE): Prospectors financed by William Knox D'Arcy struck oil at Masjed Soleyman, the first major oil discovery in the Middle East, leading to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
HIV/AIDS pandemic (c. 1920 CE): Genetic studies trace the pandemic strain of HIV-1 to Kinshasa around the 1920s; AIDS was identified in 1981 and has killed tens of millions of people, with sub-Saharan Africa most affected.
Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb (1922 CE): Howard Carter's excavation revealed the nearly intact tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62) in the Valley of the Kings, with its gold burial mask and thousands of objects.
Second Italo-Ethiopian War (1935–1937 CE): Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia in October 1935, using chemical weapons, and occupied Addis Ababa in May 1936; the League of Nations failed to stop it.
Palestinian exodus of 1948 (1947–1949 CE): About 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes during the 1947–1949 war, an event Palestinians call the Nakba ('catastrophe').
Declaration of the State of Israel (1948 CE): David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel in Tel Aviv on 14 May 1948 as the British Mandate ended, followed by war with neighbouring Arab states.