Europe, 1848.

In this age, your nationality & ethnicity hardly mattered; rather the monarch + royal family did; it had been this way for a millennia, but all of that was going to change. The revolutions that ignited this year would spread shockwaves across Europe, and established ideas of nationalism throughout all the Western world.

In January the first crowds gathered to demand reform – barricades went up, and within hours the news was transmitted to millions. Like a virus, the unrest leapt from host to host. Encouraged by what they saw and heard, crowds turned out in cities thousands of miles apart to demand votes, jobs, constitutions and their human rights.

Governments were caught utterly unaware, paralyzed they watched helplessly as troops refused to fire on crowds. Ministers fell, kings fled. The year was 1848, and if you think 2018 has been turbulent, it has a long way to go before it matches the seismic events of 1848, the Year of Revolutions.

I mention these revolutions not only to teach us interesting history, but as a reminder that similar events to these may possibly occur in the not-so-distant future; mass nationalist uprisings across the western world, fighting for the same worthy cause.