1900s

Atrocities in the Congo Free State were committed by private companies and the Force Publique, with a resultant population decline[note 1] of 1 to 15 million.

From 1904 to 1908, German colonial forces in South West Africa led a campaign of ethnic extermination and collective punishment, genociding 24,000 to 100,000 Hereros and 10,000 Nama.

The First Moroccan and Bosnian crises led to worsened tensions in Europe that would ultimately lead to the World War I in the next decade.

Russia suffered a humiliating defeat in this conflict, contributing to a growing domestic unrest which culminated in the Russian Revolution of 1905.

This famine was directly caused by the 1906 China floods (April–October 1906), which hit the Huai River particularly hard and destroyed both the summer and autumn harvest.

First-wave feminism made advances, with universities being opened for women in Japan, Bulgaria, Cuba, Russia, and Peru.

[3] The foundation of the Women's Social and Political Union by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903 led to the rise of the Suffragettes in Great Britain and Ireland.

The decade saw the widespread application of the internal combustion engine including mass production of the automobile, as well as the introduction of the typewriter.

The Wright Flyer performed the first recorded controlled, powered, sustained heavier than air flight on December 17, 1903.