Curated category
Former countries of the interwar period
- 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…
- Second Spanish RepublicThe Spanish Republic, commonly known as the Second Spanish Republic, was proclaimed on the 14th of April 1931, and King Alfonso XIII left the country for…
- Italian EritreaItalian Eritrea was born not from a military conquest but from a business deal. In the autumn of 1869, a former missionary named Giuseppe Sapeto paid a small…
- Italian SomalilandItalian Somaliland existed for barely half a century, and it began to unravel with a single ambush few people remember. In November 1896, Consul Antonio…
- Mandate for Syria and the LebanonThe Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon was born on the 29th of September 1923, when France was formally assigned control over a vast stretch of the eastern…
- Italian East AfricaItalian East Africa announced itself to the world from the balcony of Palazzo Venezia on the 9th of May 1936, when Benito Mussolini addressed a crowd of two…
- Kingdom of Hungary (1920–1946)The Kingdom of Hungary, as it existed between 1920 and 1946, had no king. That was the paradox at the heart of this central European state.
- Kingdom of ItalyOn the 17th of March 1861, Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy in Turin. This event marked the birth of a new state from decades of…
- ManchukuoManchukuo lasted just thirteen years, from 1932 until its dissolution in 1945, yet it carried the grand title of empire and the trappings of a brand new…
- Weimar RepublicThe Weimar Republic was born on the 9th of November 1918 from the ruins of a war that had killed more than 20 million people, among them over 2 million…
- Territory of the Saar BasinThe Territory of the Saar Basin flew its own flag from the 28th of July 1920, a horizontal tricolour of blue, white and black.
- Korea under Japanese ruleKorea under Japanese rule began on the 22nd of August 1910, when a treaty signed by Prime Minister Ye Wanyong and Japan's Minister of War, Terauchi Masatake…
- Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet RepublicThe Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic was born from a Soviet invasion, lasted barely fourteen years, and helped write the founding charter…
- Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire began as a single beylik, a small principality founded around 1299 in northwestern Anatolia by a Turkoman tribal leader named Osman I.
- Free City of DanzigOn the 15th of November 1920, the Free City of Danzig officially came into existence under the protection of the League of Nations.
- Second Polish RepublicThe Second Polish Republic lasted exactly twenty-one years, and it was taken on the eve of its own anniversary. On the 7th of October 1918, a new Polish…
- Emirate of AfghanistanThe Emirate of Afghanistan was born on the 14th of March 1823, when Afghan forces lost the Valley of Peshawar to the Sikh Empire at the Battle of Nowshera.