Adsactly Education: A Brief History of Democracy

Even in democracies today, crucial knowledge is available to only a few individuals … —Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, 1997

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Democracy and democracies have appeared and disappeared throughout the recorded history of mankind, and probably even prior to that. Where did they come from? Where did they go? Those are questions we must answer before we can contemplate the state of Democracy today.

There is no hard and fast definition of Democracy. It is generally considered to need all of these four criteria at the minimum to be called a democracy today.

1. Ultimate power of the state is in the hands of the populace as expressed by majority rule. Whether that be election of representatives or by direct acclimation the people ultimately run the show. This requires the citizens to actively participate in elections and civic engagements.
2. Minority rights. Protection of the rights of all citizens of the state, not just of the majority.
3. Rule of Law that treats all citizens equally.
4. Free and fair elections without any impediments on citizen participation with every vote carrying the same weight.

You will note that many of the democracies mentioned in this history do not fit the definition as quoted above. It is a process that has been evolving for thousands of years.

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A Brief History

Modern Democracy is generally credited with beginning in Athens in the 5th century BC. The very word comes from Greek meaning “rule of the people”. Athens did not have the first democratic form of governance, but they codified it and made it work. After a fashion. It was indeed rule of the people so long as you were male and upper class and privileged. Everybody else was out of the equation.

Sparta developed their own form of democratic rule, where all votes were votes of acclimation. All male citizens were expected to participate. Decisions were taken to the people and the people voted yea or nay by voice. Truly majority rule. The Athenians thought it crude and ineffective and the Spartans thought the Athenian system was rife with corruption and intrigue.

The Roman Republic pushed the bar of Democracy a little higher in some respects, but free and fair elections were not a part of it. Votes were limited to male citizens and they were weighted according to your social class. Accordingly, the positions of power went to a very small ruling class in Rome.

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The middle ages saw most of the world ruled by feudal Lords and/or Clergy. There were some attempts at what we would call democratic process in various places. Most of these consisted of small assemblies that voted on specific items at specific times. None of them would be considered a Democracy even in the Greek or Roman sense, but many areas had some form of voting.

It is notable that these attempts came in widely scattered areas most of which could have no knowledge of the Greek and Roman history such as Scandinavia, Russia, India, Mali, Nigeria, North America and Japan.

The Magna Carta was written and adopted in 1215 in England. It very specifically spelled out the rights of ordinary citizens in regard to due process of the law. The first Parliament in England grew out of the Magna Carta in 1265. It was a body that was appointed by and served at the whim of the Monarch, but it was a more or less national assembly that had some voting powers and addressed the concerns of ordinary people.

Modern Democracy

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What we know as Democracy today all goes back to England in the 17th Century, The Magna Carta was strengthened and expanded. The Bill of Rights which laid out the rights and responsibilities of everyday English citizens was passed in 1689 and remains in effect today.

The Cossacks in Ukraine elected their supreme leader throughout much of the 16th and 17th Centuries.

America got into the game early and often. The colony at Jamestown elected ‘the House of Burgess’ in 1619, the first formal elected assembly in North America. The other colonies used Democratic Process as practiced in their respective churches. The Puritans, the Baptists, and the Quakers all used some form of democracy in the everyday government for their colonies. Many citizens of the American Colonies learned about and practiced democracy for 150 years before they ended up codifying those practices.

The Act of Union between England and Scotland brought about the first real English Parliament in 1707, though only about 3% of the population was eligible to vote for the MPs. The Monarchy was becoming less and less relevant, but the general population didn’t have a voice.

The Corsican Republic in 1755 became the first nation to install a constitution and provide universal suffrage. All men and women over the age of 25 could vote.

America in the 1760s and beyond was becoming more and more democratic. Suffrage was limited to white male property owners in the Colonies, but the further west the frontier extended, the more democratic the processes became.

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The successful American Revolution led to the ratification of the Constitution of the United States in 1787, making it the oldest continuously standing national constitution. Voting was still limited to white adult male property owners as women, slaves, free blacks, and natives were not allowed to vote. This condition was not completely rectified until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 granted universal suffrage to all American citizens over the age of 21.

The Bill of Rights passed in 1791 codified the idea of universal protection under the law and laid out the rights of ordinary Americans in very clear terms. The Bill of Rights was largely ignored by the government and the courts until the early 1900s when it truly became the law of the land.

It is interesting to note that the founding fathers of the US did not call it a democracy but rather referred to it as a republic.

The French Revolution led to the ‘Rights of Man’ in 1789 and a freely elected National Convention in 1792 that featured all citizens of France being allowed to vote. It was not to last.

19th Century Democracy

By the early part of the 19th Century most of the European experiments with Democracy had ended or been squashed. The English pushed the level of suffrage through a series of acts that culminated in 1833 with the ‘Slavery Abolition Act’ that banned the ownership of humans throughout the Empire. It also had the effect of making former slaves eligible to vote.

1848 was the year of the Revolution in Europe. The second revolution in France led to the creation of the French Republic and universal male suffrage. Many countries in Europe suffered revolutions as the population in general demanded more rights and for their voices to be heard. Democratic process and the granting of human rights spread very quickly.

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The United States, meanwhile, continued their more or less successful experiment with Democracy, though 15 Southern States held firmly to the idea and practice of Slavery. Suffrage gained in the Northern states and in the Western additions, but the South held firm making Civil War inevitable in 1862. With the defeat of the South roughly 4 million former slaves became theoretically eligible to vote.

The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1868 guaranteed citizenship to all native born and naturalized individuals. Did not apply to Native Americans at the time. The 15th Amendment in 1870 guaranteed all male citizens the right to vote. The Dawes act of 1887 allowed Native Americans that were willing to give up their tribal allegiances the right to citizenship and the vote.

20th Century Democracy

Democracy flourished in the first third of the 20th Century. Many countries in Europe, Asia and South America became democracies at least in name. The end of WW1 brought about the establishment of many new countries across Europe and most of them became democracies. Universal suffrage became the norm with women finally being allowed to vote.

The world wide depression of the 1930s saw a great many of these new democracies devolve into single party rulership or dictatorship. Rights and rule of law disappeared in many of these places, not to be seen again until after WWII.

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The end of WWII saw a huge swing to democracy. Most of Western Europe and many of the former colonies turned to democracy for governance. Eastern Europe was under the Soviet System until 1986 when Russia collapsed and most of those countries chose some form of Democracy also. South America and Africa saw democracy emerge in many countries.

By the dawn of the 21s century more than two thirds of the world’s governments are a democracy and more than fifty percent of the world’s population lives in a democracy.

The next part of this series will delve into the nature and specifics of modern democracy particularly how they apply themselves to the rights and freedoms of their citizens.

Words and ideas are mine. I used this Wikipedia Page for historical perspective and accuracy.

Authored by: @bigtom13

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