The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution, Second French Revolution or Trois Glorieuses in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown. It marked the shift from one constitutional monarchy, the Bourbon Restoration, to another, the July Monarchy; the transition of power from the House of Bourbon to its cadet branch, the House of Orléans; and the substitution of the principle of popular sovereignty for hereditary right. Supporters of the Bourbon would be called Legitimists, and supporters of Louis Philippe Orléanists.

On 16 September 1824, Charles X ascended to the throne of France. He was the younger brother of Louis XVIII, who, upon the defeat of Napoleon I, and by agreement of the Allied powers, had been installed as King of France. The fact that both Louis and Charles ruled by hereditary right rather than popular consent was the first of two triggers for Les Trois Glorieuses, the "Three Glorious Days" of the July Revolution.

The 14 July Revolution was a coup which took place on 14 July 1958 in Iraq, marking the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy established by King Faisal I in 1932 under the auspices of the British. In 1958, the coup overthrew King Faisal II, the regent and Crown Prince 'Abd al-Ilah, and Prime Minister Nuri al-Said, all of whom were perceived as cooperating with the British. The coup established an Iraqi Republic and was a result of a number of different grievances with Hashemite Iraqi policies. One of the most salient themes that the Free Officers, the group that engineered and executed the coup, represented was anger at Western imperialist control of Iraq through its monarchic mediators.

During World War II, Iraq housed a growing presence of Arab nationalist sympathizers. The Arab nationalists aimed, in part, to remove British imperial influence in Iraq. This sentiment grew from a politicized educational system in Iraq and an increasingly assertive and educated middle class. Schools served as instruments to internalize Pan-Arab nationalist identity because the leaders and the designers of the Iraqi educational system in the 1920s and 1930s were Pan-Arab nationalists who made a significant contribution in the expansion of that ideology in Iraq as well as the rest of the Arab world. The nationalist directors (Sami Shawkat and Fadhil al-Jamal) of the educational system in Iraq employed teachers who were political refugees from Palestine and Syria. These exiles fled to Iraq because of their roles in the anti-British and anti-French contentions, and subsequently fostered nationalist consciousness in their Iraqi students. Institutions like school added to the general awareness of Arab identity and generated criticism of imperialism.