1608Samuel de Champlain founds Quebec
French traders had been sailing up the St Lawrence for furs since the voyages of Jacques Cartier in the 1530s, but earlier attempts to settle had failed. In 1608 Pierre Dugua de Mons, who held a royal monopoly on the fur trade, sent Samuel de Champlain upriver to set up a permanent base. Champlain, a navigator and mapmaker who had already explored the region, chose a spot where the great river suddenly narrows beneath a high cliff, a place the local people called Kebec.
He arrived there on 3 July 1608, and his men began clearing the ground at the foot of Cap Diamant. They built the Habitation: three linked wooden buildings and a storehouse, surrounded by a ditch and a palisade. The first winter was terrible. Of the 28 men who stayed, only eight were still alive when supply ships returned the following spring, most of the rest having died of scurvy or dysentery. But the post survived. Quebec became the heart of New France and is now one of the oldest cities in North America, and Champlain is remembered as the father of New France.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: The Canadian Encyclopedia: Samuel de Champlain and the founding of Quebec ↗
1848Enslaved people in the Danish West Indies win their freedom
Denmark’s Caribbean colony of St Croix, St Thomas and St John, now the US Virgin Islands, was built on sugar grown by enslaved Africans and their descendants. Denmark had banned the transatlantic slave trade to its colonies, but slavery itself remained, and by the 1840s it had been abolished in the neighbouring British islands. The government in Copenhagen offered only a slow, step-by-step end to it, which left most people still enslaved for years to come.
In early July 1848 the enslaved people of St Croix decided not to wait. Thousands gathered around Fort Frederik at Frederiksted and threatened to burn the town unless they were freed. On 3 July the governor-general, Peter von Scholten, arrived at Frederiksted and declared that all the unfree in the Danish West Indies were free from that day. In Denmark the credit has often gone to the governor; in the Virgin Islands the day is remembered as freedom won by the enslaved themselves. 3 July is still celebrated there as Emancipation Day.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: National Museum of Denmark: The abolition of slavery in 1848 ↗
1866Prussia defeats Austria at Königgrätz
In the 1860s two great powers competed to lead the German states: the Austrian Empire, long the senior partner, and a rising Prussia under its chief minister Otto von Bismarck. In June 1866 the rivalry turned to war. Prussia’s chief of staff, Helmuth von Moltke, used the railways to move three armies quickly into Bohemia, where the Austrians under Ludwig von Benedek had gathered their main force.
On 3 July 1866 the armies met near the fortress town of Königgrätz (Hradec Králové) and the village of Sadová, in the largest battle Europe had seen since Leipzig in 1813. The Austrians held on through the morning, but in the afternoon the Prussian Second Army arrived on their flank and their line broke. Prussian infantry with the breech-loading needle gun could fire far faster than their opponents. Austria lost about 45,000 men, nearly half of them taken prisoner, against fewer than 10,000 Prussians. The peace that followed shut Austria out of German affairs and cleared the way for a Germany united under Prussia.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Battle of Königgrätz ↗
1962France recognises the independence of Algeria
France conquered Algeria from 1830 and later treated it not as a colony but as part of France itself, home to about a million settlers of European origin. The Algerian majority had few political rights. In November 1954 the National Liberation Front (FLN) launched an armed revolt, and a long and brutal war followed, marked by guerrilla attacks, bombings, torture and mass reprisals. It divided France too, and in 1958 it brought Charles de Gaulle back to power.
De Gaulle came to accept that Algeria would have to be free. In March 1962 French and FLN negotiators agreed the Evian Accords, which French voters approved in April. On 1 July Algerians voted in their own referendum: around six million for independence and about 16,000 against. On 3 July 1962 France formally recognised Algeria as an independent state. Algeria celebrates its independence on 5 July, the anniversary of the French capture of Algiers in 1830. Most of the settlers left for France within months.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Algerian War ↗
