| Around 3500 BC | Pre-Columbian conquest period began. |
| 1492 | Christopher Columbus sighted Cuba. |
| 1512 | Spanish colonial conquest period began. |
| 1762 | Great Britain captured la Habana in the Seven Years War (so named in British history) and permanently opened up trade with North America. |
| 1763 | Great Britain traded Cuba for Florida with Spain and Spain obtained the Louisiana Territory from France. |
| 1767 | Anglo American patriot scientist Benjamin Franklin discussed with the British government the colonising of the upper Mississippi partly to:
“… raise a strength there which, on occasion of a future war, ...to be used against Cuba or Mexico herself.” [He was clearly a man destined to have a centuries long influence.] |
| 1776 | The United States of America declared independent and the American patriots continued their revolution. |
| 1783 | Great Britain accepted that The United States of America (USA) was independent. |
| 1820 | The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK) forced Spain to agree to halt the international slave trade (but not slavery); however, the trade continued. |
| 1825 | Simón Bolívar helped liberate northern Latin America from Spain.
He was warned by USA not to liberate Cuba because USA preferred it to be continued to be ruled by a weak Spain rather than it be independent. |
| 1826 to 1898 | Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and parts of Africa alone remained as Spanish colonies. |
| By the 1840s | 400,000 slaves present in Cuba. |
| 1851 | Narciso López invaded Cuba twice to annex it to USA and preserve slavery. |
| 10 October 1868 | First War of Independence - The Ten Years War - launched by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes at his La Demajagua plantation. He declared the slaves on his plantation to be free. José Martí – aged 16 years – arrested on treason charges in October 1869, imprisoned and then exiled to Spain in 1870. |
| 1878 | First War of Independence ended with pact of El Zanjón which was rejected by General Antonio Maceo in the Protest of Baraguá. José Martí was allowed to return to Cuba. |
| 1878 to 1895 | Process of uniting Cubans for genuine independence was begun by José Martí. The idea of autonomy under Spain became discredited. José Martí exiled again in 1879. |
| 1886 | Slavery abolished in Cuba. |
| 1890 | Universal suffrage in Spain but not in Cuba - neither in UK nor USA! |
| 1892 | José Martí founded Cuban Revolutionary Party based on racial equality and social justice. |
| 1895 | Second War of Independence began and José Martí died in the battle of Dos Rios. War continued by Generals Antonio Maceo and Máximo Gómez, veterans of the First War of Independence. |
| 9 April 1898 | Spain declared cease-fire with the Cubans. |
| 25 April 1898 | USA declared war on Spain and began the invasion of Cuba and their military conquest period. |
| 1898 | Spain defeated by Cuban patriots. |
| 17 July 1898 | The USA refused to allow Cuban Army General Calixto Garcia and his troops to enter Santiago de Cuba for the surrender ceremony because many of the troops were black. (Perhaps a reason for USA invasion was their racists' concern over who would share the government of Cuba?) |
| 1901 | USA’s Platt amendment imposed on Cuba giving it the right to invade Cuba any time. |
| 20 May 1902 | USA military conquest period ends. The pseudo-republic of Cuba period began. The USA retained three areas of Cuba. |
| September 1906 | USA military intervention in the pseudo-republic of Cuba followed Liberal revolt in protest against election fraud by Conservative President Estrada Palma. |
| 1912 | Afro-Cubans demonstrated in Oriente against discrimination by Liberal President José Miguel Gómez – 3000 were killed by government troops. |
| 1912 | USA military intervention to stop a revolt by former slaves in Pinar del Río. |
| 1917 | USA military invasion to ensure flow of sugar during World War I. |
| 1925 | The USA recognised Isla de la Juventud as part of Cuba. |
| 1934 | The USA ceded more independence to Cuba but retained the Guantánamo base under President Roosevelt's Good Neighbour policy. The Platt amendment was repealed. |
| 26 July 1953 | Abel Santamaría, under Fidel Castro’s command, led 119 rebels in an attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba. |
| 16 October 1953 | Fidel Castro tried for his role in the attack on Moncada Barracks, in which he gives “History will Absolve Me” speech. Defence partly based on the illegality of the regime not conforming to the 1940 constitution. |
| 2 December 1956 | Fidel Castro and 82 others landed from Motor Vessel Granma at Playa Las Cloradas - Oriente province. The group is decimated in a clash with Batista’s army at Alegría de Pío but Fidel Castro and 11 others escape into Sierra Maestra. |
| 1 January 1959 | Triumph of the Cuban Revolution. |
| 1959 | Racial discrimination abolished in Cuba. |
| June 1960 | Land nationalised. Oil refineries were nationalised after the companies followed USA government instructions to refuse to refine petroleum from the USSR. |
| June to October 1960 | Telephone and electricity companies, sugar mills including US$800 million US assets, banks, 382 Cuban owned businesses and rented housing were nationalised. |
| 14 April to 20 April 1961 | 1400 USA CIA trained Cuban émigrés set off from Nicaragua (escorted by the USA navy) to invade Cuba, planes bomb Cuba and the whole force was captured or killed at Playa Girón and Playa Larga in the Bahía de Cochinos. |
| April to October 1962 | USSR agrees to install missiles in Cuba. Cuba wanted short range missiles as being sufficient deterrent against attack by USA but the Soviet Union sent medium range missiles. USA objected to Cuba doing the same thing to it as the USA was doing to the Soviet Union. This was the ‘Cuba missile crisis’ that was ended by agreement between the USA and the USSR. |
| 1963 | USA and USSR sign the above-ground nuclear test ban treaty. |
| April 1963 | USA President Kennedy orders CIA to stop financing the attacks on Cuba. |
| August 1963 | Medium size farms taken over - maximum private landholding set at 65 hectare. |
| 1968 | 55,000 small businesses and holdings nationalised. |
| 1970 onwards | Improvements to planning and mechanisation of sugar harvesting followed new generation of technicians and managers replacing those who had left for America. |
| February 1973 | USA and Cuba agree to return highjackers and punish anyone attempting to launch attacks on the territory of the other. |
| 1 September 1977 | USA and Cuba Interests Sections opened in Habana and Washington, DC |
| 1986 | Beginning of ‘rectification of errors’ process to reduce bureaucracy and increase local decision making. |
| January – March 1988 | South Africa invaded Angola. Cuban troops, the Angola Army and the Southwest Africa People’s Organisation defeated the invading South Africa Army at Cuito Cuanavale in Angola. This resulted in South African withdrawal from Angola. More than 2000 Cubans died in liberating Angola. |
| 13 July - 22 December 1988 | Agreement between Cuba, the USA, South Africa and Angola. |
| December 1988 | 50,000 Cuban troops were withdrawn from Angola under the agreement. |
| 2 February 1990 | Liberation of South Africa from centuries of racist rule begins with unbanning of the African National Congress |
| 11 February 1990 | Nelson Mandela released from prison after 27½ years. |
| 21 March 1990 | Independence of Namibia under the agreement. |
| 1990 onwards | Following the collapse of Eastern European communism the Período Especial begins with the eventual loss of US$5 billion a year subsidies from above market prices. |
| 25 May 1991 | Last Cuban troops leave Angola by agreement with Cuba. |
| 25-27 July 1991 | President Nelson Mandela of South Africa visits Cuba and thanks Cuba for its role in ending South African Apartheid. |
| 1991 | Russia announced the withdrawal of 11,000 military and technical advisers but USA retained thousands of their troops in the illegally occupied Guantánamo "Coaling Station and Naval Base". Reference to Marxism-Leninism removed from Cuban constitution. |
| 1992 | USA Torricelli Act forbade foreign subsidiaries of companies from trading with Cuba and banned ships that have called at Cuban ports from docking at USA ports for six months. |
| August 1993 | Cubans allowed to possess US dollars, open dollar bank accounts, spend dollars at hard-currency shops. Self-employment in more than 100 trades legalised. |
| August 1994 | Taxes on dollar incomes and profits announced. |
| October 1994 | Farmers’ markets opened. |
| September 1995 | Foreign companies were allowed to run wholly owned businesses and possess real estate in Cuba. Previously only joint ventures with state-owned companies were allowed. The workforce remained under Cuban control. |
| 1996 | Tourism booming. Taxes were imposed and some private businesses closed down. |
| 12 March 1996 | USA Helms-Burton Law penalises foreign companies which trade with Cuba. |
| June 2002 | New Cuba constitution defines the republic as a socialist state. |
