European History Timeline
This timeline is designed to help you put Modern European
history events into context and perspective.
Memorizing the dates isn’t the point (although you may want to memorize
them). Seeing how each event causes the
changes that develop is more important than naming
each event and when it happened. Try to
figure out how these dates and events tell the “story” of the history of
The dates below are especially important because they set a time period in mind. Try to match them with the event(s) that happened during these dates.
1453
1492
1517
1603
1648
1715
1776
1789
1815
1848
1870
1914
1939
1945
1954
1968
1980
1989
1992
1400 1600 - Italian
Renaissance
1455 - Printing Press
1452 - 1519 -
Leonardo da Vinci lives in
1492 –
1500 1520 - The
Protestant Reformation
1530 - Spanish
Conquistadors in
1543 - On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs by Copernicus published after his death
1555 - Peace of
1561 - 1650 - Bacon and Descartes describe
inductive and deductive thinking (respectively)
1600 1800 - Mercantilism and the East India Companies bring
cash to
1609 - Galileo Constructs a Telescope
1618 - 1648 - Thirty Years War
1630 - 1640 -
Puritans Settle in
1643 - Louis XIV
Takes Throne of
1648 - Peace of
1649 – Charles I is
executed by Cromwell’s Parliament in
1651 - Hobbes and Locke describe new ways to think about government
1657 - Formation of
1660 - English Restoration
1682 - Peter the Great in
1687 - Mathematical
Principles of Natural Philosophy by
1688 - Glorious Revolution kicks out James II and brings in William and Mary
1713 - War of Spanish Succession and the Peace
of
1713 - Pragmatic Sanction
1720 - The Breaking of the financial ‘Bubbles’
1733 - 1763 - Austrian Succession, French and
Indian War and 7 Years War
1751 - 1772 - The Encyclopedia is published by Diderot
1762 - Catherine the
Great rules
1763 - Peace of
1763 - Steam Engine
first used in
1772 – 1st
Partition of
1775 - The American Revolution
1776 - Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith explains capitalism
1789 - The French Revolution
1791 - Declaration of Pillnitz and the Coalitions
1792 - The Terror
1799 - Napoleon Takes Power
1800 - 1850 - The Rise of Germanic Nationalism
1809 - Defeat of
1812 - War of 1812
1812 - The 1st Defeat of Napoleon
1814 - The Congress of
1815 - The Hundred Days and the Escape of Napoleon
1818 - Congress of
1819 - 1850s - The Isms
1820s - Latin
American
1823 - The
1830s - Revolutions
of
1839 - Opium Wars in
1845 - Mexican American War
1848 - February Revolution
1848 - Louis Napoleon Bonaparte
1848 - March Days and the German Revolutions
1848 - The
1848 - The Communist Manifesto and Marxism
1848 - Communist Manifesto
1850s -
1850 - 1940 -
Migration from
1854 - 1856 - Crimean War
1859 - Italian Unification
1859 - Origin of the Species by Charles Darwin
1867 - Dominion of
1871 -
1871 -
1877 - Russo-Turkish
War and Congress of
1880ish - Rise of Imperialism
1904 - Russo Japanese War
1905 - Revolution of
1905 and Bloody Sunday in
1914 - Assassination of Francis Ferdinand leads
to WWI
1917 - Zimmerman Telegram
1917 - Lusitania Sinking brings the
1917 - Revolution of
1917 brings Communism to
1918 - Treaty of Brest-Litovsk takes
1919 - Treaty of
1922 - Formation of
1922 - Italian Fascism and Mussolini
1924 - Rise of Stalin
1924 - Dawes Plan
1925 -
1926 - English General Strike
1928 – Stalin’s Purges and 5 Year Plans
1929 - Great Depression begins
1932 - FDR Elected
1933 - Reichstag Fire and Rise of the Nazi Party
1935 - Nuremburg Laws
1936 - The Spanish Civil War
1938 -
1941 - Lend-Lease Begins
1943 -
1944 - D-Day
1945 -
1945 - Formation of the United Nations
1945 - Central American Growth
1947 - Marshall Plan
1947 - End of British
rule in
1948 -
1948 –
1948 - The Mess in
the
1950 - The Korean War
1953 - The Death of Stalin and Hardening of the Cold War
1960s - African Pullout
1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis
1963 - Nuclear Arms Treaty
1965 - The Vietnam War
1969 - Moon Landing
1975 -
1986 -
1989 - The
1991 - Gulf War