Twilight of empires

From The Fall of the Dynasties by Edmond Taylor.  The subtitle is The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922.

The four empires which are chronicled are the Ottoman Empire, the Romanov Empire, the Hohenzollern Empire and the Hapsburg Empire. These covered half of Europe, most the Middle East and North Africa, and fair chunk of northern Asia.  

It occurred to me that the Portuguese Imperial house came to an end in 1910, covering a reasonable portion of Africa.  The Qing dynasty ended in 1912, covering most of modern China.  The Meiji Era in Japan also came to a close in 1912.  

Romanov, Hapsburg, Hohenzollern, Ottoman, Qing, Meiji, Portuguese - that is a lot of royal dynasties ending in the same seventeen year window.  And almost all being replaced by some nominal or quasi form of republic or parliamentary system.  It was a rocky road after the fall of the dynasties and a long time before real power began to transfer to the electorate rather than special interests of one sort or another.  

Indeed, 1900-1930 were probably the heyday of naive utopian idealism as pursued through the still new ideologies of Socialism and Communism.  Two faces of the same authoritarian coin which dominated much of the 20th century.

But if you step back and squint a bit, you can see a gradual tidal movement away from authoritarianism (be it monarchical or ideological Communism/Socialism/Social Justice/CRT, etc.) and towards the Classical Liberal ideal of free societies with consent of the governed, natural rights, and checks and balances on the State.  

We are never as near the ideal as we might wish, there are terrible tragedies along the way, and everything is a slow evolutionary process and not a quick revolution.  But Classical Liberal progress is slowly being made to the benefit of everyone.