Shaka, who ruled the Zulu Kingdom from 1816-1828, completely transformed the culture of his people and made the Zulus a formidable foe to British Colonists in South Africa. With an increasing encroachment by both British and Dutch descended white Africans, the Zulus began a campaign against the forces of European nations. Shaka was above all a warrior king, who reorganized his entire society around new regiments of soldiers, and made all aspects of Zulu life serve his military.

The voortrekkers were descendants of the intial Dutch settlers from the Cape Colony. When British colonization of South Africa began in the 1830s, the voortrekkers moved inland to take the inland agricultural areas. In doing this, they displaced many native Africans, often with the use of considerable force.

During the Atlantic slave trade, most African slaves were sent to either Brazil or to plantations in the Caribbean. The Portuguese did not take slaves back to Portugal but rather to their many plantations in Brazil.

Shaka the Zulu is one of the most famous and significant African rulers of the nineteenth century. He is often credited with uniting several tribes into the Zulu nation and his military prowess is revered by some historians. His rule was also one of great brutality and relatively short-lived for such a famous king. (He ruled for a little over a decade.) He continues to be influential in African culture to this day, particularly in South Africa.

The abolition movement began in Britain towards the end of the eighteenth century. In 1807, Parliament passed a law banning the slave trade, which made it illegal for any British citizen to buy or kidnap a slave from Africa; however, the institution of slavery remained in effect in some parts of the British Empire. This was ended by the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

The introduction of firearms in West Africa contributed to increased conflicts in this period among various tribes and kingdoms, leading to the collapse of larger states, including the greatest West African kingdoms (which had emerged before this period) that still remained. The growing Atlantic slave trade did cause societal collapse both by contributing to these growing conflicts and by taking millions of able-bodied people from Africa. Meanwhile, agriculture was transformed (and the demographic losses due to war and slavery were somewhat offset) by introduction of New World crops like peanuts and manioc.

The Edo Period began in 1603, after the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu consolidated power over all Japan and moved the capital to Edo (modern day Tokyo). Tokugawa also stopped the trade networks with the Dutch and the Portuguese that had been established in the sixteenth century, walling Japan off from the rest of the world at a time of global expansion. This state of affairs lasted until the U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to open up by force with a massive fleet in 1854, ending the long held power of the Tokugawa family and heralding a wave of modernization and militarization.

The Meiji Restoration occurred in 1868 in the country of Japan. The Meiji Restoration restored the Imperial government of Japan. It is often stated, particularly in American and European written histories of the time, that the Restoration occurred in order to strengthen Japan against the perceived threat of Western technology and Western economic expansion. The Meiji Restoration dramatically accelerated Japanese industrialization and lead to the country's emergence as an industrial and global power by the time of the Russo-Japanese war from 1904 to 1905. 

The Opium Wars were fought in the middle of the nineteenth century between the British Empire and the Qing Dynasty of China. The wars were ostensibly fought as a result of British introduction of opium into China and the subsequent destruction that caused; however, the more relevant causes were general competition over trading rights and regional hegemony.

The Samurai were a warrior caste of medieval Japan. They were governed by strict rules about how they ought to conduct themselves, and these rules placed great emphasis on loyalty, bravery, and honor. This code of conduct is called “Bushido."