Also known simply as a coup (koo), it is the illegal and overt seizure of a state by the military or other elites within the …
Coup d’état
Also known simply as a coup (koo), it is the illegal and overt seizure of a state by the military or other elites within the state apparatus. A coup d’état is considered successful when the usurpers seize and hold power for at least seven days. Although the coup d’état has featured in politics since antiquity, the phrase is of relatively recent coinage; the Oxford English Dictionary identifies it as a French expression meaning a “stroke of state”. The phrase did not appear within an English text before the nineteenth century except when used in translation of a French source, there being no simple phrase in English to convey the contextualized idea of a “knockout blow to the existing administration within a state”.
Typically, a coup d’état uses the extant government’s power to assume political control of the country. In Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook, military historian Edward Luttwak says: ‘A coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder’, thus, armed force (either military or paramilitary) is not a defining feature of a coup d’état ”
According to Clayton Thyne and Jonathan Powell’s coup dataset, there were 457 coup attempts from 1950 to 2010, of which 227 (49.7%) were successful and 230 (50.3%) were unsuccessful. They find that coups have “been most common in Africa and the Americas (36.5% and 31.9%, respectively). Read More…
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Spanish generals Francisco Franco and Emilio Mola lead a right-wing uprising, starting the Spanish Civil War. The main elements of his rule are said to be national conservatism, authoritarianism, anti-freemasonry, anti-Communism, a strong promotion of Roman Catholicism and support of the family. Franco's forces fought the democratically elected Popular Front government – including Communists – government for three years before finally defeating them outside Madrid on ...
An outstanding Major General of the Marine Corps, Smedley Butler, became involved in a controversy known as the Business Plot, when he told a congressional committee that a group of wealthy industrialists (including Goodyear, US Steel, JP Morgan, Heinz, and Maxwell House) were planning a military coup to overthrow the US government & FDR, with Butler selected to lead a march of veterans, install a Fascist ...
Louis McFadden introduced House Resolution No. 158, Articles of Impeachment against the Secretary of the Treasury, two Assistant Secretaries of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and officers and directors of the Federal Reserve Banks for their guilt and collusion in causing the Great Depression. "I charge them with having unlawfully taken over 80 billion dollars from the United States Government in the year ...
In the United States, the Great Depression began soon after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors. Over the next several years, consumer spending and investment dropped, causing steep declines in industrial output and rising levels of unemployment as failing companies laid off workers. By 1933, when the Great Depression reached its nadir, ...
"The surviving crew were detained overnight and forced to sign a pledge under the 'Official Secrets Act', promising to keep secret forever, the actual events of the night of 14th / 15th April, 1912" NOTE: Interestingly, a book was written 14 years previous to the sinking of the Titanic about a ship called the Titan sinking on its maiden voyage. The biggest ship of its kind, ...
The mother of all insider trades was pulled off in 1815, when London financier Nathan Rothschild led British investors to believe that the Duke of Wellington had lost to Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. In a matter of hours, British government bond prices plummeted. Rothschild, who had advance information, then swiftly bought up the entire market in government bonds, acquiring a dominant holding in England’s ...
United States President William McKinley was shot on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition at the Temple of Music in Buffalo, New York, on September 6, 1901 as the result of a conspiracy. On September 11, 1901 (9/11/01) he was poisoned while convalescing at the home of Exposition President John G. Milburn. McKinley died on September 14, 1901. Shortly thereafter, Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th President of ...
In November 1799, in an event known as the coup of 18 Brumaire, Napoleon was part of a group (the Jacobins and Freemasons) that successfully overthrew the French Directory. The Directory was replaced with a three-member Consulate, and Napoleon became first consul, making him France’s leading political figure. In June 1800, at the Battle of Marengo, Napoleon’s forces defeated one of France’s perennial enemies, the Austrians, ...
For purposes of a mainstream account, the official site of the Bank of England provides a flowery version about the background and purported success of the scheme proposed by “William Paterson, envisaged a loan of £1,200,000 to the Government, in return for which the subscribers would be incorporated as the "Governor and Company of the Bank of England". Although the new bank would have risked its ...
