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Curated category

Former Christian states

  • Federal State of AustriaThe Federal State of Austria lasted just four years, from 1934 to 1938, but its story is one of the most compressed political dramas in modern European…
  • Austrian EmpireThe Austrian Empire began with a stroke of the pen in 1804, when Holy Roman Emperor Francis II declared himself Emperor of Austria, creating an entirely new…
  • Republic of GenoaThe Republic of Genoa earned four nicknames over its long life: la Superba, la Dominante, la Dominante dei mari, and la Repubblica dei magnifici.
  • Crown of AragonThe Crown of Aragon began with a monk who never wanted to be a king. Ramiro II, raised in the Monastery of Saint Pons de Thomières as a Benedictine, was the…
  • Kingdom of EnglandThe Kingdom of England was born on the 12th of July 927, when the monarchs of Britain gathered at Eamont Bridge, in what is now Cumbria, to recognise a…
  • Kingdom of PrussiaThe Kingdom of Prussia was proclaimed on the 18th of January 1701, when Frederick III of Brandenburg crowned himself "King in Prussia" in an act that…
  • Kingdom of RomaniaThe Kingdom of Romania was born on the 15th of March 1881, when the Romanian parliament raised the country to the status of a kingdom and crowned a German…
  • Slovak Republic (1939–1945)On the 14th of March 1939, the Slovak parliament gathered in Bratislava and voted unanimously to break away from Czechoslovakia.
  • Kingdom of SerbiaThe Kingdom of Serbia lasted only thirty-six years, from 1882 to 1918, yet in that brief span it fought four wars, doubled its population, and dissolved…
  • Kingdom of FranceThe Kingdom of France began not with a crown placed on a French king's head, but with a treaty signed in 843 that divided a dying empire.
  • Confederate States of AmericaOn the 12th of April 1861, artillery shells arced over Charleston Harbor and slammed into the walls of Fort Sumter. The Confederate States of America had…
  • Kingdom of Great BritainThe Kingdom of Great Britain came into being on the 1st of May 1707, not with a battle or a conquest, but with a signature.
  • Kingdom of WürttembergFrederick III assumed the title of King Frederick I on the 1st of January 1806. He abrogated the constitution and united Old and New Württemberg under one…
  • Spanish EmpireThe Spanish Empire existed for nearly five centuries, from 1492 to 1976, stretching across the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
  • Austria-HungaryAustria-Hungary was, for roughly half a century, the second-largest country in Europe by area, surpassed only by Russia.
  • First Bulgarian EmpireThe First Bulgarian Empire was born from a humiliation so complete that the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes the Confessor could barely write it down.
  • Empire of NicaeaIn 1204, Byzantine emperor Alexios V Doukas Mourtzouphlos fled Constantinople after crusaders invaded the city. Soon after, Theodore I Laskaris, the…
  • Habsburg monarchyThe Habsburg monarchy began with a single castle in present-day Switzerland, built by a man named Radbot of Klettgau in the late 10th century.
  • Kingdom of JerusalemThe Kingdom of Jerusalem was born on a specific summer day: the 15th of July, 1099, when Crusader armies stormed the holy city after a weeks-long siege.
  • Kingdom of GreeceThe Kingdom of Greece was born from a secret society formed in 1814 by three men who met in Odesa. Nikolaos Skoufas, Emmanuil Xanthos, and Athanasios…
  • Empire of ThessalonicaModern scholars use the phrase Empire of Thessalonica to describe a specific Greek state that existed between 1224 and 1246.
  • Succession of the Roman EmpireIn 476 AD, a military commander named Odoacer deposed the last Western Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus. He did not declare himself emperor.
  • Byzantine EmpireThe Byzantine Empire never called itself Byzantine. Its citizens used the term Roman Empire and called themselves Romans, in Greek Romaioi.
  • Ethiopian EmpireThe Ethiopian Empire survived for more than seven hundred years, from the rise of Yekuno Amlak in 1270 to the military coup that ousted Haile Selassie in…
  • Hospitaller MaltaIn 1530, Emperor Charles V handed the islands of Malta and Gozo to the Order of St. John. This transfer followed a seven-year period where the Knights…
  • SwedenSweden stretches from the 55th parallel to the 69th, a country so long that its southern tip sits closer to Rome than to its own Arctic north.
  • Kingdom of PortugalThe Kingdom of Portugal was a monarchy that endured from the mid-12th century all the way to the early 20th century, outlasting empires and dynasties across…
  • Kingdom of SardiniaThe Kingdom of Sardinia traces its origins to a single political transaction in 1297, when Pope Boniface VIII created a fictional realm on paper and offered…
  • Holy Roman EmpireThe Holy Roman Empire was, in the words of the philosopher Voltaire, "in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." That sardonic line has clung to it for…
  • Western Roman EmpireThe Western Roman Empire did not fall in a single dramatic moment. On the 4th of September 476, a Germanic military leader named Odoacer deposed a teenage…
  • Republic of VeniceThe Republic of Venice endured for over 1,100 years, longer than any other major European state of its era. At its peak, between the 13th and 16th centuries…
  • Republic of FlorenceThe Republic of Florence was born from a single death. In 1115, when Matilda of Tuscany died and left her vast territories without an obvious heir, the…
  • Kingdom of HungaryThe Kingdom of Hungary endured for nearly a thousand years, from 1000 to 1946. That span covers crusades, Ottoman sieges, Habsburg wars, a communist…
  • Duchy of MilanThe Duchy of Milan came into being on the 11th of May 1395, when a single document signed in Prague changed the shape of Northern Italy forever.
  • Kingdom of NaplesThe Kingdom of Naples bore an official name that almost nobody used: the Kingdom of Sicily on this side of the lighthouse.
  • Crown of the Kingdom of PolandIn 1385, the Union of Krewo marked a turning point where the concept of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland began to take shape as a distinct political entity.
  • Empire of TrebizondIn April 1204, Alexios Komnenos and his brother David marched from Georgia to seize the city of Trebizond. They arrived with troops provided by their aunt…
  • Grand Principality of MoscowMoscow is first mentioned in chronicles under the year 1147, as part of the principality of Rostov-Suzdal. At that point it was a minor settlement on the…
  • Novgorod RepublicThe Novgorod Republic called itself Lord Novgorod the Great, and for three centuries it lived up to that name. Stretching from the Gulf of Finland to the…
  • Russian EmpireThe Russian Empire announced itself to the world on the day the Treaty of Nystad was signed in 1721, when the Governing Senate and Synod bestowed upon Peter…
  • Kingdom of Armenia (antiquity)The Kingdom of Armenia endured for nearly eight centuries, from 331 BC to 428 AD, outlasting empires that most schoolchildren learn as the dominant powers of…
  • Papal StatesThe Papal States lasted more than a thousand years, from 756 to 1870, as a stretch of Italian territory ruled not by a king or an emperor but by the head of…
  • Polish–Lithuanian CommonwealthThe Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was, for a stretch of two centuries, the largest country in Europe by territory. On the 1st of July 1569, the Union of…
  • Tsardom of RussiaThe Tsardom of Russia began on the 16th of January 1547, when Ivan IV was crowned tsar and grand prince of all Russia in a ceremony modeled on the rituals of…