Founding of the Second International and Designation of May Day as International Workers' Day
- Date
- 14 July 1889
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- Europe
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
On 14 July 1889, the centenary of the storming of the Bastille, a Marxist International Socialist Congress convened in Paris and founded the Second International, a federation of socialist and labour parties drawn from some twenty countries.
Attended by nearly 400 delegates including Wilhelm Liebknecht, Edouard Vaillant, August Bebel, Victor Adler, Keir Hardie, Georgi Plekhanov, Eleanor Marx, and Paul Lafargue, the congress revived international socialist coordination after the collapse of the First International in 1876. Acting on a proposal associated with the French delegate Raymond Lavigne, the congress called for coordinated international demonstrations on 1 May 1890 in support of the legal eight-hour working day, a date chosen to commemorate the 1886 Haymarket affair and general strike in Chicago. The first such demonstrations on 1 May 1890 drew hundreds of thousands of workers across the United States, Europe, and parts of Latin America, establishing May Day as an enduring international workers' holiday. The Second International went on to make mass political parties the chief vehicle of socialism and to debate questions of reform, revolution, and war until its fracturing in 1914.
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Empires active in 14 July 1889
- German Empire1871 CE – 1918 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- Russian Empire1721 CE – 1917 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
Related politics & governance events
- New Zealand Becomes First Self-Governing Nation to Grant Women the Vote19 September 1893
- Berlin Conference and the partition of Africa15 November 1884 – 26 February 1885
- The Meiji Restoration1868 (proclamation 3 January 1868)
- The Xinhai Revolution and the fall of the Qing1911–1912 (Wuchang Uprising 10 October 1911; abdication 12 February 1912)
- Sykes-Picot Agreement partitions the Ottoman Middle East16 May 1916
- Russian Revolutions of 1917March & November 1917 (February & October Revolutions, O.S.)
Also relevant
Further reading
The wider story
Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire
Fast-paced narrative of Portugal's seaborne empire.
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