In
my Governments of the World class, we had a brief discussion about the
definition of a coup d’état and were
shown a few examples of it. I do not
feel that I fully understood what a coup d’état was, so I am using my second
blog as a reason to do some in depth research and learn some examples of what
this word really means. I searched for
an in-depth definition and I found just that in the Britannica encyclopedia
which states: “coup d’état, also
called Coup, the sudden,
violent overthrow of an existing government
by a small group. The chief prerequisite for a coup is control of all or part
of the armed forces, the police, and other military elements. Unlike a revolution,
which is usually achieved by large numbers of people working for basic social,
economic, and political change, a coup is a change in power from the top that
merely results in the abrupt replacement of leading government personnel. A
coup rarely alters a nation’s fundamental social and economic policies, nor
does it significantly redistribute power among competing political groups.
Among the earliest modern coups were those in which Napoleon overthrew the
Directory on Nov. 9, 1799 and in which Louis Napoleon dissolved the assembly of
France’s Second Republic in 1851. Coups were a regular occurrence in various
Latin American nations in the 19th and 20th centuries and in Africa after the
countries there gained independence in the 1960s.”
18 Brumaire
refers to the coup d’état by which General Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the
French Directory, replacing it with the Consulate. In 1799, members of the
Directory, a body of five directors that held executive
power in France, conspired
with Napoleon to take over the French government by means of a coup d’état.
It was successful, and Napoleon quickly asserted his superior
intelligence and will over others. By 1802 he had full power and by 1804, he
proclaimed himself Emperor Napoleon I.
This period of European history from 1799 to 1815 is generally known as
the Napoleonic Age. Not only did Napoleon gain power in France, but also much
of continental Europe.
The Czechoslovak coup d’état of 1948
often called the Czech coup, was an event in late February of that year in
which the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia with the backing of the Soviets,
assumed control over the government of Czechoslovakia and with this control
ushered in over four decades of dictatorship under its rule. The coup’s
significance extended far beyond the country’s boundaries, as it was a clear
marker along the already full fledged Cold War. The West greeted the event with
full shock and helped spur quick adoption of the Marshall Plan, the creation of
a state in West Germany, vigorous measures were created to keep the Communists
out of power in France and Italy, and steps toward mutual security that
resulted in the establishment of NATO in a little over a year and the
conclusive drawing of the Iron Curtain until the Autumn of Nations in 1989.
The Cuban Revolution
was a civil war that took place in Cuba between December 2, 1956, and January
2, 1959. The guerilla forces led by Fidel Castro, fought against the government
army, under Fulgencio Batista, a dictator who had got into power through a
military coup in 1952. With an armed
militia of only 80 members, Fidel Castro and his brother Raul had sailed from
Mexico to Cuba and landed on Las Coloradas beach, on the south coast of the
island on December 2, 1956. They were defeated in the first military engagement
with the government, but the surviving members penetrated the Cuban jungles of
Sierra Maestra where they recruited more men, collected more weapons, and became
better organized. The 80-member militia grew into thousands. The civil war lasted three years. Under the command of Camilo Cienfuegos, Juan
Almeida Bosques, and Ernesto Guevara, they carried out surprise attacks on the
government. On December 30, 1958, Camilo
Cienfuego defeated a unit of 300 men at the Battle of Yaguajay. On December 31,
the very next day, three guerrilla units defeated Batista’s army again at the
Battle of Santa Clara. Having heard of his defeat, Batista left the island of
Cuba and went into exile to the Dominican Republic. Most of the Cuban people
supported Castro’s revolution because he had promised them to bring back
democracy and freedom to Cuba. However, Fidel Castro was a master of lies and aligned
with the Soviet Union and the European Eastern block of communist nations,
setting up a new dictatorship in Cuba, which would last many times longer than
the one before it, subjecting the island extreme poverty.
Sources
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