For a country slightly bigger than the state of Indiana — a country on the tip of the Iberian peninsula, bordered on two sides by its much larger neighbor, Spain — Portugal has played an outsize role in world affairs. Portuguese explorers such as Vasco da Gama, Bartolomeu Dias, and Pedro Alvares Cabral explored much of South America, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent, making Portugal one of the largest far-flung empires. For much of that history, Portugal itself was a monarchy, but after a series of humiliating defeats to Britain in South Africa, the Portuguese overthrew their king.

On this day, October 5, in 1910 a republican coup d’etat overthrew the government of the abdicated King Manuel II, and imposed the First Portuguese Republic.

The coup in Portugal was less about freedoms than about economic well-being, and in response the stable government that formed out of it concerned more economic reform than personal liberty. For four decades Portugal ran itself as a “corporate state,” emerging only after WW II — during which they remained neutral — to join NATO as one of the charter members.