THE DAY IN HISTORY · JANUARY 1

January 1 in history

What happened on January 1: 7 moments from the Maps of History atlases, in 1804, 1863, 1877, 1886, 1903, 1942 and 1956, each linked to the map that shows it.

1804 — Haiti declares independence

1 Jan 1804 — Dessalines proclaims the free state of Haiti — the Taíno name, chosen deliberately — in the square of Gonaïves. The age’s only revolution of the enslaved is complete.

READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONS MAP → · THE FULL STORY →

1863 — Emancipation Proclamation

1 Jan 1863 — Enslaved people in rebel-held territory are declared “thenceforward, and forever free.” The Union army becomes a liberating force wherever it marches, Black enlistment opens, and Europe can no longer pretend the war is not about slavery.

READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MAP → · THE FULL STORY →

1877 — Victoria proclaimed Empress of India

1 Jan 1877 — Lord Lytton’s Imperial Assemblage proclaimed Queen Victoria Kaisar-i-Hind, Empress of India, before princes ranked by gun-salute. In the south the famine was already spreading, and critics then and since have set the pageant beside the relief camps.

READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE INDIAN INDEPENDENCE & PARTITION MAP → · THE FULL STORY →

1886 — Third Anglo-Burmese War

Nov 1885 – 1 Jan 1886 — A river force steamed up the Irrawaddy and took Mandalay within a fortnight; King Thibaw was exiled to Ratnagiri on India’s west coast, and Upper Burma was annexed as a province of British India. Resistance in the countryside lasted for years.

READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE INDIAN INDEPENDENCE & PARTITION MAP → · THE FULL STORY →

1903 — Delhi Durbar

1 Jan 1903 — Curzon stages the Coronation Durbar: 173 princes ride past in order of gun-salute, a hierarchy of 21 guns down to 9. The pageant is the Raj’s theory of itself — permanence performed. It has forty-four years left.

READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE INDIAN INDEPENDENCE & PARTITION MAP → · THE FULL STORY →

1942

Twenty-six Allied nations sign the Declaration by United Nations in Washington — the first official use of the name that will outlive the war.

READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE WW2 MAP →

1956 — Independence of Sudan

1 Jan 1956 — Sudan raises its own flag over the Anglo-Egyptian condominium, choosing self-rule over union with Egypt — a Nile-valley precedent watched from Cairo to Kampala.

READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE DECOLONIZATION OF AFRICA MAP → · THE FULL STORY →