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 proclaimed the free state of Haiti in the square of Gonaïves. The choice of the Taíno name was deliberate. The age’s only revolution of the enslaved was complete.

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1863 — Emancipation Proclamation

1 Jan 1863 — The proclamation declares enslaved people in rebel-held territory “thenceforward, and forever free.” As the Union army advances, it becomes a liberating force; Black enlistment opens as well. Europe can no longer pretend that the war is not about slavery.

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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 arranged by gun-salute. Famine was already spreading in the south. Critics at the time and since have placed the splendor of the pageant alongside 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 captured Mandalay within a fortnight. Upper Burma was annexed as a province of British India, and King Thibaw was sent into exile at Ratnagiri on India’s west coast. The conquest of the capital did not end resistance in the countryside, which lasted for years.

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1903 — Delhi Durbar

1 Jan 1903 — At Curzon’s Coronation Durbar, 173 princes rode past according to their rank in a hierarchy of gun-salutes, from 21 guns down to 9. The pageant gave the Raj an appearance of permanence. It had forty-four years left.

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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.

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1956 — Independence of Sudan

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

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