(List / Interactive)
| DATE | EVENT | NOTE |
| 1492 | Columbus’s voyage to the ‘New World’, landing in the Bahamas | |
| 1494 | Columbus’ 2nd voyage, landing in Jamaica | |
| 1497 | John Cabot set sails from Bristol, discovers Newfoundland | |
| 1509 | Henry VIII rises to the throne | |
| 1547 | Edward VI becomes king. | |
| 1552 | Society of Merchant Venturers formed – The Society was set up to regulate Bristol’s overseas trade. It still exists today | |
| 1553 | Queen Mary I becomes queen | |
| 1562 | Sir John Hawkins a British privateer makes the first known British Slaving trip to Africa. He was born in Plymouth | |
| 1558 | Queen Elizabeth1 coronation | |
| 1564-5 | Hawkins makes Second ‘slave hunting’ voyage with ship loaned for the purpose by Queen Elizabeth I | |
| 1588 | Spanish Armada sails against England with the aim to overthrow Elizabeth | |
| 1601 | Queen Elizabeth I calls by Royal Proclamation for the expulsion of black people ‘blackamoores’ from England | |
| 1600 | British East India Company receives its charter from Elizabeth I – The company was to become the major force in British imperial expansion in the 17th and 18th centuries. | |
| 1603 | James I becomes king | |
| 1623 | St Kitts settled by the British | |
| 1625 | Charles I becomes king | |
| 1625 | Island of Barbados claimed for the British Empire | |
| 1628 | Island of Nevis settled by British | |
| 1630 | First slave rebellion in an English colony | Bristol merchants give credit to early colonists in Caribbean in return for a share in their tobacco crops |
| 1642 | First English Civil War with conflict between ‘parliamentarians’ and ‘royalists’ | |
| 1649 | Charles I is beheaded and Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord protector of the commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. | |
| 1652 | First coffee house established in Britain | |
| 1655 | British take Jamaica from the Spanish – Bristol Admiral Sir William Penn in command | Slaves on this island who escaped to the mountains-soon came to be known as Maroons |
| 1660 | The monarchy is restored and Charles II becomes king | |
| 1672 | The London-based Royal African Company is established, with a monopoly of British trade to Africa | |
| 1657 | Juan de Bolas, a Jamaican leader of escaped slaves (‘Maroons’) surrenders to the British but on terms of pardon and freedom. Other Maroons continue to fight British rule | |
| 1677 | First mention of a Bristol coffee house (in the tenure of John Kimber of High Street) | |
| 1679 | Slave revolt in Haiti | |
| 1685 | James II is king | |
| 1688 | The Bristol ship Society laden with enslaved Africans and ‘elephants teeth’ from Guinea is seized and condemned in Virginia as was the Betty, also of Bristol, for breaking the monopoly of the Royal African Company | |
| 1689 | William and Mary are formally proclaimed king and queen | |
| 1689 | Bill of Rights’ is confirmed by an act of parliament | |
| 1696 | Bristol Society of Merchant Venturers builds the Merchant Venturer’s almshouse for sick and old sailors at the end of King Street | |
| 1698 | Royal African Company monopoly ended as slave trade open up to private traders | |
| 1698 | First legal slaving venture out of Bristol with The Beginning carried enslaved people from Africa to Jamaica | |
| 1699 | 80% of Caribbean residents are African slaves | |
| 1701 | English, Dutch and Austrians sign the Treaty of the Grand Alliance | |
| 1702 | Queen Anne is throned | |
| 1707 | Act of Union unite England and Scotland | |
| 1708 | Colston’s School for boys was started by Edward Colston | |
| 1711-13 | Bristol Corporation and Society of Merchant Venturers campaign to stop the Royal African Company regaining monopoly status, arguing the importance of the slave trade to Bristol’s economy | |
| 1713 | Royal African Company regaining monopoly status, arguing the importance of the slave trade to Bristol’s economy | |
| 1714 | King George I is king | |
| 1718 | British convicts start being transported to penal colonies overseas | Between 1718 and 1776, over 50,000 convicts were transported to Virginia and Maryland in the modern United States. The American Revolution made further transportation impossible. |
| 1719 | Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe is published | |
| 1720 | Enslaved Scipio Africanus dies at Henbury Court, Bristol | |
| 1727 | King George II comes to the throne | |
| 1727 | Queen square is completed and named in honour of the previous monarch | |
| 1729 | Ignatius Sancho , a self educated slave and the first African prose writer in Britain is born. | |
| 1729 | Britain’s Attorney General Sir Philip Yorke asserts that a slave in England was not automatically free, nor did baptism ‘bestow freedom on him’ | |
| 1730 | Britain becomes the biggest slave trading country: from 1690 to 1807 British ships transport about 2.8 million enslaved Africans | |
| 1737 | Bristol overtakes London as Englands number one slaving port , with 37 voyages this year | |
| 1727 | Bristol Royal Infirmary built | |
| 1739 | Britain declares war on Spain and the ‘War of Jenkins’s Ear’ begins | |
| 1745 | Birth of Olaudah Equiano . He was the first political leader of England’s black community and wrote the most important surviving black literacy contribution to the campaign for abolition | |
| 1747 | Liverpool overtakes Bristol as Britain’s premier slaving port, with about 49 voyages a year against Bristol’s average of 20 | |
| 1750 | The African Company of Merchants takes over from the Royal African Company’s with membership of 237 Bristol merchants, 157 London merchants and 89 Liverpool merchants | |
| 1750 | Major slave revolt aboard the Bristol ship, the King David | |
| 1750 | Bristol’s first bank, the Bristol Bank, opened by partners Tyndall, Elton, Lloyd, Knox and Hale. | |
| 1753 | Bristol Corn Exchange is completed | |
| 1756-63 | Seven Years War between Europe’s major powers. Britain gains Dominica, Grenada, St Vincent and Tobago | |
| 1759 | William Wilberforce, the abolitionist, is born in Hull | |
| 1760 | King George III is king | |
| 1760 | Thomas Clarkson, the abolitionist, is born. | |
| 1762 | Thomas Farr builds Blaise Castle Folly to view his ships coming up the River Avon | |
| 1768-1771 | Captain James Cook leads his first expedition to the Pacific | |
| 1770 | French writer Abbé Raynal publishes a work calling for a ‘Black Spartacus’ to arise and avenge slavery which the author calls a crime against nature | |
| 1771 | Factory Age’ begins with the opening of Britain’s first cotton mill | |
| 1772 | The Somerset case in London. Chief Justice Lord Mansfield rules that enslaved people in England cannot be forced to return to the West Indies. | |
| 1772-1773 | John Stedman joins a military expedition to suppress a slave rebellion in Surinam, South America and is appalled by the inhumanity shown to Africans. In 1796 he publishes a full account of his experiences that becomes a classic of abolitionist lite | |
| 1774 | John Wesley publishes anti-slavery tractThoughts Upon Slavery | |
| 1775 | American War of Independence begins | |
| 1778 | House of Commons appoints a Committee to investigate the British slave trade | |
| 1781 | Americans defeat the British army at Yorktown, Virginia | |
| 1781 | 133 Africans are thrown overboard the slave ship ‘Zong’ | |
| 1786 | Thomas Clarkson’s Essay on Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species is published | |
| 1786 | Wills tobacco company founded | |
| 1787 | Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade is formed | |
| 1787 | Quaker anti-slavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson visits Bristol and the Seven Stars pub to try and find out more about Bristol and its involvement in the slave trade | |
| 1788 | In response to growing concern about conditions in the ‘Middle Passage’ the Dolben Act limits the number of enslaved people a ship is permitted to carry. Even with these restrictions, conditions remain dreadful | |
| 1788 | Established poet and playwright, published a poem on Slavery, and joined the campaign to fight for the abolition of the slave trade | |
| 1789 | French Revolution encourages an insurrection of slaves in Haiti | |
| 1790 | The Georgian House was built for John Pinney | |
| 1791 | Parliament rejects William Wilberforce’s bill to abolish the slave trade | |
| 1792 | Sierra Leone is established under British rule as a home for former slaves | |
| 1793 | British troops attempt to suppress Toussaint L’Ouverture’s rebellion in Haiti | |
| 1794 | French Revolutionary Government outlaws slavery | |
| 1794 | Second Maroon war in Jamaica | |
| 1795 | First British West Indian Regiments raised consisting of Black soldiers led by White officers | |
| 1796 | Blaise Castle House is built for Merchant John Harford | |
| 1798 | Toussaint L’Ouverture, leader of African slaves, wins full control of Haiti Kofi’s rebellion a small uprising in Jamaica | |
| 1800 | Napoleon sends in troops to re-establish slavery in the French Caribbean | Gabriel Prosser leads a slave rebellion in Virginia |
| 1801 | L’Ouverture is captured and brought to France where he is imprisoned and dies | Haiti retains independence but under increasingly authoritarian rulers. |
| 1803 | Last slave ship voyage out of Bristol | |
| 1804 | Saint Domingue becomes an independent republic named Haiti | |
| 1807 | Britain abolishes the slave trade | |
| 1808 | British West Africa Squadron is formed to suppress slave trading | |
| 1808 | USA abolishes the slave trade (the buying and selling of enslaved people) | |
| 1815 | Slave rebellion in Jamaica | |
| 1817 | African company of Merchants sign treaty with Ashanti recognising their sovereignty over African coastal areas | |
| 1816 | Bussa’s Rebellion in Barbados | |
| 1820 | King George IV assumes the throne | |
| 1822 | Britain’s attention turns to the emancipation of the slaves in British colonies | |
| 1823 | Slave rebellions in Jamaica and Demerara (now Guyana | |
| 1823 | Anti-Slavery Committee formed in London to campaign for total abolition of slavery. | |
| 1823 | 1st Anglo-Ashanti War | |
| 1830 | King William IV is king | |
| 1830 | The Bristol Riots | |
| 1831 | Major slave revolt called ‘The Baptists’ War’ breaks out in Jamaica, led by Baptist preacher Sam Sharpe, and is brutally suppressed. | |
| 1831 | Slave rebellions in Antigua, Jamaica and Virginia | |
| 1831 | The History of Mary Prince is published in London and becomes an important part of the anti-slavery literature | |
| 1833 | Abolition of Slavery Act – Britain abolishes slavery and provides for the emancipation of enslaved people in the British West Indies, | |
| 1834 | Abolition of Slavery Act comes into force in British Colonies. British plantation owners are awarded £20 million in compensation. Those enslaved are forced to be apprentices for for years in their existing roles on plantations to their existing masters. | |
| 1837 | Queen Victoria comes to the throne after the death of William IV | |
| 1838 | Period of apprenticeship ends for the former slaves. Indentured labour is transported to the Caribbean from other parts of the empire including India, China and Africa | |
| 1863 | 2nd Anglo-Ashanti War | |
| 1873-74 | 3rd Anglo Ashanti | |
| 1895 | Statue of Sir Edward Colston is unveiled in Bristol |