The Iranian Revolution took place in 1979. The revolution witnessed the deposing of the ruling Shah of Iran (the leader of Iran’s pro-western monarchy) and his replacement with the Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini was elected Supreme Leader of an authoritarian and theocratic government. The Iranian Revolution is unusual in that it took place in a country enjoying relative peace and prosperity and was extremely sudden (at least from a western perspective).

Deng Xiaoping took over as leader of the Chinese Communist Party in 1978. He immediately enacted several reforms, including the final repeal of the last tenets of the Cultural Revolution. In general, the reforms made by Deng Xiaoping can be summarized as: substantial economic reforms, minimal political reforms. Under Deng, Chinese markets became more open and communism was applied less rigidly. However, political freedoms hardly improved at all.

The People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan was the primary socialist party in Afghanistan from 1965 until the early 1990s. It gained power with support of the Soviet Union and ruled over the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from 1978 to 1987.

Porfirio Diaz was president of Mexico from 1876-1911. He was extremely successful at industrializing Mexico, developing infrastructure, and attracting foreign investment. However, opposition was violently suppressed. By the election of 1910, he was old enough that the problem of presidential succession came to the fore. Diaz had controlled the previous seven elections (which he had won), but in 1910 Fransisco Madero challenged him and campaigned vigorously against him. To ensure that Madero lost, Diaz had him arrested just before the election. When the news of the fixed election emerged, a group of Madero supporters took up arms against him. Madero proved quite inept, and armed groups, including those led by Zapata and Villa, emerged. 

In 1917, Mexico adopted a new constitution that reformed prior issues of inequitable land distribution and increased rights of workers and women, including universal suffrage. However, the increased nationalist sentiment meant that the government took control of industries that had been built under the Diaz regime and discouraged foreign investment.

In 1923, Reza Shah was selected as the Prime Minister of Iran by the National Assembly, becoming the first democratically elected monarch in the country’s history. He established a constitutional monarchy that lasted until the Revolution of 1979. He established a secular state and instituted many reforms to bring Iran in line with the western world, including infrastructure building, modern education, industrialization, public health, and loosening restrictions on women.

The Iranian Revolution occurred in 1979. The regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was overthrown and replaced by an Islamic regime led by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. 

In 1979 the Iranian Revolution overthrew Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and Ruhollah Khomeini came into power. He ruled Iran as the Supreme Leader until his death in 1989 when Ali Khamenei took the position.

After the First World War President Ataturk of Turkey and the Shah of Iran laid out aggressive policies for the modernization of their two nations. These policies moved away from the religiously governed law codes, and enforced western culture, business, and legal practices. 

The May Fourth Movement was an anti-imperialist political movement that began in China in the late 1910s. By that time, the Qing dynasty had fallen and China was a fragment nation dominated by foreign Western powers. As a result, young intellectual and nationalists in China advocated reform, attacking traditional Confucian ideals and advocating adoption of Western science and democracy.