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From the 16th to the 19th century, an estimated 12.5 million enslaved Africans were shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas, with profound consequences for both continents.
The shogunate expels the Portuguese and severely restricts foreign contact, allowing only Dutch and Chinese trade at Nagasaki.
The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat, a series of reforms modernising Ottoman administration, law and the army.
Potato blight triggers a famine that kills about a million people and drives more than a million to emigrate from Ireland.
A series of armed conflicts between the colonial government and Māori iwi, chiefly over land and sovereignty, which led to large confiscations of Māori land.
The discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill draws some 300,000 people to California from around the world, transforming the American West.
Hong Xiuquan's movement founds the 'Taiping Heavenly Kingdom'; the ensuing civil war causes tens of millions of deaths.