The coup is the sudden and violent overthrow of a current government by a small group. The chief requirement for a coup is control of all armed forces, the police, and other military elements. From the top, a coup is a change in power that hardly results in the abrupt replacement of leading government personnel, unlike a revolution, which is usually achieved by large numbers of people working for essential social, economic, and political change. A coup rarely modifies a nation’s fundamental economic and social policies, nor does it significantly redistribute power between competing political parties or groups. The earliest coups were those in which Napoleon abolished the Directory on November 9, 1799, and in which Louis Napoleon ended the assembly of France’s Second Republic in 1851.
A coup occurs when there is a sudden overthrow of the government, usually by its military. The act’s motive is to replace the government with another body from the military or a civilian chosen by the authority. There is no doubting the loss of life and property no matter who ends up with control of the country, and not forget the high chance of civil war that follows coups.
Check out some of the most famous coups of all time:
- The Beer Hall Putsch:
The Beer Hall Putsch is the famous coup attempt that drove Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf. Adolf Hitler led over 2000 Nazis to the beer hall in 1923, where they eventually take control of the country by holding the government to ransom. In this attempt, the Nazis failed miserably. They underestimated the government, and ultimately, their weapons turned out to be incompetent. The German police killed around 16 Nazis at that time. There was also a rumor about Hitler hiding behind others while trying to find a way out. He was finally arrested and thrown into prison for this, where he ended up writing the book.
- Malian Coup:
The Malian coup is one of the worst coups that happened in history. In 2012, the Malian soldiers, angered with President Amadou Toumani Touré’s control of the Tuareg rebellion, created the National Committee for the Restoration of Democracy. Touré is a range of insurgencies occurring since 1916 as rebels fought for the Independence of Northern Mali. The capital of Barnako was attacked by the military apart from the military barracks, the presidential mansion, and government-controlled news stations. The coup resulted in the displacing of over 1,00,000 civilians and the death of 15,000 soldiers.
- The Regime of the Colonels:
1967 to 1974, known as the Colonels’ Regime, was a dark one for the Greeks. The country was under direct military rule right after a group of colonels abolished the government. Also, the Greek king of that time didn’t even try to stop the coup. When tensions grew between Greece and Turkey, things got out of hand for the military. This incident got too unstable, and the king finally fell from power. The king is still alive but is surviving like any other commoner.
- The Musharraf coup:
Pakistan has seen many coup attempts in the past. To be precise, there were six since their independence; Parvez Musharraf overthrew the Pakistani government, with the latest taking place in 1999. Musharraf assumed control of the entire country by declaring an emergency, and it was a bloodless coup, and as a result, many laws were mocked. The Pakistani supreme court called in, ordering that the military rule only lasts for another three years before democracy is restored, but Musharraf was set it should last longer. A vote was raised by him, which he won by a staggering 98 percent, and dictators win referendums by 98%, which suggests the corrupted state of that time.
- Napolean Bonaparte:
France was under the control of a five-member Directory back in the 1700s, and Napolean wasn’t too happy about it. In October of 1799, when he returned from an Egyptian military campaign, he started planning a way to overthrow the directory. The conspirators were two of the five directors in with him, and so were many other high-level directors. Napolean arranged for a special legislative assembly outside Paris on November 10 to bribe or intimidate the men in power. However, the lower house humiliated him with chants of “down with dictator” and chased him away from the chamber. He did manage to get his way through and overthrew the directory by convincing the troops to clear the area. He appoints him to a three-member Consulate instead by picking a group of legislators to abolish the guide. He crowned himself the emperor in 1804. This coup started the first French Empire and ended the French revolution.
Final Words:
The world has witnessed many military coup attempts in the last sixty years. Although today, coups are much rarer than in their adolescence in the 60s and 70s, praised claims are premature. Since the French Revolution, a new study finds a cyclical pattern rather than the linear pattern of coups. Coups were pretty rare around the 18th century but swelled and waned in several series over the next 300 years. Coups could occur more often in the following decades if history repeats itself.