The Meiji Restoration: Japan's Modernization

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.

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.

After 46 years of state-sanctioned racial segregation and three decades of armed resistance, South Africa held its first fully democratic election on 27 April 1994.

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