Republicanism History
Republic (government) Modern Republics
Introduction to Republicanism History
The era of modern republicanism began with the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1789. Elements of republican government were present in the administrative institutions of the English New World colonies, but republicanism did not become dominant in American political thinking until the colonists declared their independence. The establishment of the United States as a federal republic with a government made up of three coordinate branches, each independent of the others, created a precedent that was subsequently widely emulated in the western hemisphere and elsewhere.
The French Revolution also created a republic based on suffrage-the first national republican state among the powers of Europe-and like its American predecessor it enunciated fundamental principles of liberty. Although this first French republic was short-lived, its impact on French and European society was virtually continuous. In the view of many historians the Napoleonic Wars that followed were essentially a military extension of the political assault on the remnants of the Continent’s feudal structure and eventually resulted in a new era of republicanism.
During the 19th century republics were established in most instances where revolutionary struggles were waged outside Europe. Thus, all the Latin American republics were products of revolutionary struggles for national independence; many of these governments, however, became military dictatorships. Two African republics, the South African Republic (1852) and the Orange Free State (1854), were finally annexed by Britain after the Boer War (1899-1902). Both in the United States and other republics, however, the passage of the century was generally marked by democratization of the electoral process through the enlargement of the electorate.
Two waves of new-state formations occurred in the 20th century-the first one after World War I, the second after World War II. Most of the newly independent states established themselves as republics, although some of those created in the first wave began as monarchies.
A new chapter in the history of republicanism began with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent transformation of the Russian Empire into the USSR. The development of the Soviet Union into a one-party totalitarian state demonstrated once more that republic and democracy are not synonymous, a fact that became even more obvious after World War II, when all the republics of Eastern Europe were fashioned in a similar mold as one-party “people’s republics” under the tutelage of the Soviet Union.
Of the dozens of new republics that have come into being since World War II, most have, in fact, displayed a definite trend away from democratic ideals and instead assumed the nature of oligarchies, single-party states, or military dictatorships. The many economically and politically developing nations that emerged from the liquidation of European colonial empires posed profound problems for democratic republicans. One was whether truly representative governments could be elected by nonliterate, ill-informed voters. Another was how to establish majority rule in a fundamentally tribal society. The hold of ingrained traditions on the one hand and the introduction of new doctrinaire ideologies on the other added a further element of chaos. The result, most often, was an authoritarian one-person, one-party, or military rule. Thus, in the last quarter of the 20th century, although some three-fourths of the nations in the world styled themselves republics, only a very few could be described as democracies.” (1)
Resources
Notes and References
- Information about Republicanism History in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia
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