Welcome!
Welcome to Global Political History! My goal with this website is to provide human-produced and curated material on politics around the world, from the perspective of an amateur historian. This includes lists of heads of state and government for states past and present as well as members of cabinets and legislatures in some cases, as well as information and data pertaining to elections, and some of my own analysis.
Below you can find a directory of states as well as non-state organizations and institutions, as well as links to things that I’ve written and recent updates.
Hello! Today is Thursday, June 11, 2026. Here are today’s birthdays:
- 1662: Tokugawa Ienobu | Shogun of Japan (1709 – 1712) | d. 1712
- 1832: Augustus Garland | C.S. Representative from Arkansas (1862 – 1864); C.S. Senator from Arkansas (1864 – 1865); Governor of Arkansas (1874 – 1877); U.S. Senator from Arkansas (1877 – 1885); U.S. Attorney General (1885 – 1889) | d. 1899
- 1895: Nikolai Bulganin | Minister of the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union (1947 – 1949); Minister of Defence of the Soviet Union (1953 – 1955); Premier of the Soviet Union (1955 – 1958) | d. 1975
- 1947: Henry Cisneros | Mayor of San Antonio (1981 – 1989); U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (1993 – 1997) | 79 years old
Directory
Current States
This section includes the currently-existing sovereign states that have been added to the website thus far. Click on a country’s name to find the page for that country.
Past States
This section includes states that no longer exist and have no successor states. The decision to include a particular state here is sometimes easy; for example, the Roman Empire clearly no longer exists. In other cases, however, I have judged that it makes more sense to include a past state under the heading of a currently-existing state. So, for instance, the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union can be found on the Russia page; the Ottoman Empire can be found on the page for Turkey, and so on.
These are sometimes subjective judgements, and they do to some extent require taking a stance on the continuity between different regimes. Should the Holy Roman Empire, which was largely based in what is today Germany for most of its history, be regarded as a predecessor state of modern Germany? (In that particular case, I have chosen not to organize things that way). And many modern nation-states will make claims to great antiquity that assume an unbroken connection between the currently-existing state and the distant past that rarely have much basis in reality.
As a general rule, I have chosen to treat past states as the predecessors of modern states when there has been some sort of direct institutional continuity. Thus, for example, the Soviet Union becomes Russia, the Ottoman Empire becomes Turkey, and so on.
International Institutions
This section covers a wide variety of institutions that are (in most cases) not states, ranging from international organizations such as the United Nations to central banks to religious institutions. In the latter case, religious institutions such as the Roman Catholic Church and the Islamic Caliphate did indeed physically occupy territory in which they exercised sovereign authority (and still do, in the case of the Catholic Church). Nevertheless, their claims to spiritual authority extended well beyond the territory they physically occupied, and so they are treated here as international institutions rather than as states.
Updates
- June 11, 2026
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June 10, 2026
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Completed the
Deputy Prime Ministers of Saudi Arabia.
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Completed the
Members of the Parliament of Canada for Kitchener Centre.
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Completed the
Governors-General of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
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Completed the
U.S. Representatives from Texas’ 8th Congressional District.
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Completed the
Presidents of Cuba (1902 – 1959)
and the
Presidents of Cuba (1959 – present).
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Completed the
Members of the Parliament of Canada for Huron—Bruce.
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Completed the
U.S. Representatives from Texas’ 6th Congressional District.
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Completed the
Leaders of the Opposition of the United Kingdom.
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Completed the
U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
and its predecessor committees (Public Buildings and Grounds; Rivers and Harbors; Roads; Flood Control; Public Works; Public Works and Transportation).
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Completed the
U.S. House Committee on Small Business (1941 – present).
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Completed the
U.S. House Rules Committee (1849 – present).
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Completed
Prime Ministers of Spain (1975 – present).
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Completed
Presidents of Turkey (1923 – present).
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Completed
Vice Presidents of Turkey (2018 – present).
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Completed
Leaders of Free France (1940 – 1944).
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Completed
Heads of State in Nazi Germany (1933 – 1945).
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Completed
Kings of Spain (1975 – present).
Older updates are available here.