section_path: Types/Early history
section_name: Early history
paragraph_text: Early history
  
  The short-lived Corsican Republic (1755–1769) was the first country to grant limited universal suffrage to all citizens over the age of 25.
  
  In 1819, 60–80,000 women and men from 30 miles around Manchester assembled in the city's St. Peter's Square to protest their lack of any representation in the Houses of Parliament. Historian Robert Poole has called the Peterloo Massacre one of the defining moments of its age. (The eponymous Peterloo film featured a scene of women suffragists planning their contribution to the protest.) At that time Manchester had a population of around 140,000 and the population totals of Greater Manchester were around 490,000.
  
  This was followed by other experiments in the Paris Commune of 1871 and the island republic of Franceville (1889). From 1840 to 1852, the Kingdom of Hawai'i granted universal suffrage without mention of sex. In 1893, when the Kingdom of Hawai'i was overthrown in a coup, New Zealand was the only independent country to practice universal (active) suffrage, and the Freedom in the World index lists New Zealand as the only free country in the world in 1893.