Will we be seeing more revolutions around the world?…
Most recently, the people of Sri Lanka overthrew their government by storming the President and Prime Minister’s palace.
1. The Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution resulted when their leader, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, fled the country in January 1979.
Fierce Anti-Shah protests and demonstrations began in 1978 and gained momentum from that point. There was much discontent among the working and middle class who were fundamentally opposed to the “White Revolution” implemented by the shah that many felt only supported members of the elite.
Many Islamic leaders were vehemently opposed to what they believed was the westernization of Iran.
A Shiite cleric named Ayatollah Khomeini was especially vocal and demanded the removal of the shah, and the birth of an Islamic state in Iran.
A significant flashpoint of this revolution was reached on September 8, 1978, when the security force of the shah fired upon a massive group of protesters.
Hundreds of these protesters died, and thousands were wounded.
Subsequently, thousands of Iranians rioted in the streets of Tehran and began destroying the symbols of westernization like banks and liquor stores.
2. The American Revolution (1765–1783)
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791.
The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), gaining independence from the British Crown, and establishing the constitution that created the United States of America, the first modern constitutional liberal democracy.
The Boston Tea Party (1773)
Another notable act of rebellion happened on December 16, 1773, was when American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company, into the harbor, an event that became known as the Boston Tea Party.
3. French Revolution (1789–1799)
In the early morning of 1789, the city of Paris was in a state of alarm. The rumors spread that the King would open fire on the populace.
The people began to gather and tear down a number of state buildings in search of weapons.
Parisian revolutionaries and mutinous troops stormed and dismantled the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison that had come to symbolize the tyranny of the Bourbon monarchs, on July 14, 1789.
This dramatic action signaled the beginning of the French Revolution, a decade of political turmoil and terror in which King Louis XVI was overthrown and tens of thousands of people, including the king and his wife Marie Antoinette, were executed.
By the summer of 1789, France was moving quickly toward revolution.
Bernard-René Jordan de Launay, the military governor of the Bastille, feared that his fortress would be a target for the revolutionaries and so requested reinforcements.
On July 12, royal authorities transferred 250 barrels of gunpowder to the Bastille, and Launay brought his men into the massive fortress and raised its two drawbridges.
At dawn on July 14, a great crowd armed with muskets, swords, and various makeshift weapons began to gather around the Bastille. Launay’s men were able to hold the mob back, but as more and more Parisians were converging on the Bastille, Launay raised a white flag of surrender over the fortress. Launay and his men were taken into custody, the Bastille’s gunpowder and cannons were seized, and the seven prisoners were freed. Upon arriving at the Hotel de Ville, where Launay was to be arrested and tried by a revolutionary council, he was instead pulled away by a mob and murdered.
4. The Chinese Revolution (1934-1935)
Between 1911 and 1949, China saw a series of major political changes that finally led to Communist Party leadership and the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
The imperial Manchu monarchy was overthrown in 1912 by a nationalist uprising. The Nationalists were constantly challenged by the developing communist movement under the leadership of Sun Yat-Sen and Chiang Kai-shek.
The communists’ 10,000-kilometer Long March towards the northwest, which they took from 1934 to 1935 to avoid Kuomintang surveillance, ended in Mao Zedong’s rise as a communist ruler. Numerous Chinese political entities combined military assets against the Japanese enemies during World War II, but the conflict flared up again in 1946, resulting in open civil war.
Mao’s forces were the core of the Red Army, which reignited the civil conflict against the nationalists in 1949, destroying them near Huai-Hai and Nanjing. The Kuomintang was crushed in Nanjing in 1949, forcing them to evacuate to Taiwan. With Mao Zedong’s guidance, communist law was introduced in the People’s Republic of China.
5. The “Russian Revolution” (1917)
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“Russian Revolution” is the collective term for a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the eventual rise of the Soviet Union.
The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, and the old regime was replaced by a provisional government during the first revolution of February 1917 (March in the Gregorian calendar; the older Julian calendar was in use in Russia at the time).
In the second revolution that October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a Bolshevik (Communist) government.
6. The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804)
The Haitian Revolution was a successful anti-slavery and anti-colonial insurrection that took place in the former French colony of Saint Domingue.
It lasted from 1791 until 1804 and impacted the institution of slavery throughout the Americas.
Self-liberated slaves destroyed slavery at home, fought to preserve their freedom, and with the collaboration of mulattoes, founded the sovereign state of Haiti.
Between 1791 and 1804, the Haitian Revolution was a difficult series of confrontations. It included Haitian servants, colonists, as well as the forces of both the French and British occupiers. The Haitian people finally gained freedom from France after a long battle, becoming the first country founded by former slaves.
Soon after Italian sailor Christopher Columbus found the island in 1492, the local Ciboney and Taino occupants were sold into slavery by the Spanish. The Spaniards forced the island’s people to search for gold. The island’s residents were nearly wiped off by the end of the 16th century, after suffering from harsh labor conditions and European illnesses.
Numerous slaves from surrounding Caribbean islands were brought in as a result of this. The French seized control of the territory once the reserves were empty. Stable communities were formed. By the end of the 1700s, rich landowners had raised the number of African slaves to almost 5000.
7. The Cuban Revolution (1953)
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