End of Apartheid: South Africa's Democratic Transition

Between 1789 and 1799, the French people overthrew the monarchy, executed the king, and experimented with republican government in the most radical political upheaval in modern European history.

In 1868, Japan ended two and a half centuries of feudal isolation and launched the most dramatic national transformation in modern history, becoming an industrial and military power within a single generation.

Between 1775 and 1783, thirteen British colonies in North America fought and won their independence, founding a republic whose ideals of liberty and self-government would inspire revolutions around the world for the next two centuries.

In October 1917, the Bolsheviks under Lenin seized power in Russia, ending centuries of tsarist rule and establishing the world's first communist state.