Europe

Fiscal crisis, Enlightenment ideas, and bread shortages forced Louis XVI to summon the Estates-General in 1789. The Third Estate d...

Charles I attempts to rule without Parliament and to impose religious uniformity provoked war with Scotland and then a constitutio...

Corsicans had risen against Genoese rule repeatedly since 1729. In 1755 Pasquale Paoli proclaimed the Corsican Republic with a con...

James II open Catholicism, promotion of absolutist methods, and the birth of a male heir in 1688 alarmed Protestant elites who fea...

Charles X ordinances dissolving the newly elected chamber, censoring the press, and restricting the franchise triggered barricade ...

The 1815 union of Belgium with the Netherlands had generated grievances over language, religion, and Amsterdam control of commerce...

The Filiki Eteria, a secret society founded in 1814, planned coordinated risings in the Balkans. Alexandros Ypsilantis crossed the...

Officers who had seen constitutional Europe during the Napoleonic wars founded secret societies, the Northern and Southern unions,...

Corruption scandals and a ban on reform banquets amid economic depression triggered protests in February 1848. Barricades rose acr...

News from Paris and Vienna ignited risings in Baden and Berlin in March 1848. Rulers granted constitutions, censorship fell, and t...

The April Laws of 1848 enacted by the Hungarian diet abolished serfdom and feudal privilege, established a responsible ministry, a...

Defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the hardship of the German siege, and distrust of the conservative National Assembly elected af...

On Bloody Sunday, 9 January 1905, troops fired on peaceful petitioners marching to the Winter Palace with Father Gapon, shattering...

War losses, inflation, transport breakdown, food shortages, and scandals at a court associated with Rasputin destroyed the legitim...

Lenin returned from exile in April 1917 with his April Theses demanding all power to the soviets and rejection of the war. After t...

Plans of the naval command for a suicidal final sortie against the Royal Navy triggered the sailors mutiny at Kiel at the end of O...

Destalinization after the Khrushchev secret speech emboldened reform communists and students. On 23 October huge crowds toppled th...

Alexander Dubcek became party leader in January 1968 and lifted censorship, eased travel, and began economic reform, seeking democ...

The Movimento das Forcas Armadas, young officers sick of endless colonial wars in Africa, moved to overthrow the Marcelo Caetano r...

Fraud in the May 1989 local elections and the exodus of citizens through newly opened Hungary radicalized the opposition. Monday d...

The 17 November police crackdown on a student march, staged on the fiftieth anniversary of a Nazi-era student martyrdom, ignited n...

Forced relocation of the dissident pastor Laszlo Tokes sparked protests in Timisoara in mid-December 1989 that were bloodily suppr...

Song festivals, banned songs, and heritage movements became lawful vehicles of national revival under the cover of culture. The Ba...

Strikes at the Gdansk shipyard in 1980 created Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc, with nearly ten m...

Milosevic called early presidential elections for September 2000 expecting victory, but the united opposition behind Vojislav Kost...

The 2 November 2003 parliamentary elections were marred by massive fraud documented by domestic monitors and parallel vote tabulat...

The 21 November 2004 runoff between Viktor Yushchenko and the incumbent prime minister Viktor Yanukovych was stolen by systematic ...

Yanukovych refusal to sign the EU association agreement on 21 November 2013 brought students to the Maidan in Kiev. The 30 Novembe...

Rising burdens of serfdom, tithes, and restrictions on common land combined with the ideas of the Reformation, which many peasants...

Heavy taxation, centralization under Philip II, and the persecution of Protestants provoked unrest in the Habsburg Netherlands. Af...

Abuses by renegade janissaries known as the dahije sparked the First Serbian Uprising in 1804 under Karadjordje Petrovic, which wo...

After the partitions of Poland, the Congress Kingdom of Poland was joined to the Russian Empire under the tsar. Violations of its ...

Discontent with the reign of Isabella II, economic crisis, and repression of liberals brought together army generals and civilian ...

The monarchy had been weakened by economic troubles, the British Ultimatum of 1890 over African territory, and the assassination o...

On Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army occupied the General Post Office and o...

After winning most Irish seats in 1918, Sinn Fein members formed their own parliament, Dail Eireann, which declared independence i...

When army officers launched a coup against the Second Spanish Republic in July 1936, workers militias defeated the rebels in Barce...