Theme
Revolutions & Independence
Uprisings, independence movements and the end of empires — how ordinary people overturned old orders.
From the late 1600s onward, a wave of revolutions challenged kings, colonial rulers and empires. England's Glorious Revolution limited royal power; the American, French and Haitian revolutions spread ideas of popular sovereignty and, in Haiti's case, ended slavery by force.
In the 1800s Latin America broke from Spain and Portugal, Japan remade itself in the Meiji Restoration, and Italy and Germany unified into nation-states. The 20th century brought revolution in Russia and China, and a great wave of decolonization as India, Africa and Southeast Asia won independence.
The cycle continued to the end of the century: the revolutions of 1989 brought down communist governments across Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union itself dissolved in 1991 — redrawing the map of Europe and Asia once again.