I normally frequent Worldbuilding StackExchange, and I recently asked a question about werewolves attempting to declare themselves an independent, sovereign state in the American West. However, this led me to consider another question which is more applicable to human history in general. In general, do revolutions need the support of the populace to achieve long-term success? I mostly ask this because in the werewolf scenario by definition you would have a small minority of the population imposing their political will over the majority. You have a group that would be basically going from a marginalized underclass (follow standard urban fantasy Masquerade rules) to installing themselves as the ruling class. I'm pretty sure the average human citizen in the American West would neither consent to their state/province seceding from the United States/Canada against their will nor being ruled by werewolves (which would by implication be an oligarchic government where they have reduced power since they are...not werewolves). This is something that could easily be applied to human geopolitics throughout history minus the werewolves.
This lead me to wonder if a revolution led by a minority of the population was even feasible from a historical perspective. I can't think of any examples where a historically marginalized minority group overthrows the majority and installs themselves as the ruling class. However, I'm not a history expert and I'm more knowledgeable about pre-Industrial history than post-Industrial history, so I'm not sure if I'm overlooking something. When a country is run by a minority population, it's usually because that group has control of the military or superior technology that acts as a force multiplier they can use to impose their will on the majority (e.g., Ptolemaic Egypt, the Mongols, the Spanish New World colonies, etc.). Additionally, these groups typically have backing from far-off powers who can support these groups with the numbers of soldiers necessary to back up claims of dominance (again, Mongols, Spain to the Spanish colonies).
I can think of many cases where an oppressed underclass overthrew the ruling class and became the dominant class, but in those cases the underclass actually significantly outnumbered the previously dominant class. And indeed the fact that the ruling class could not maintain power in the face of a disgruntled populace seems to support the idea that governors cannot maintain power without at least tacit approval of the governed (or else superior firepower). Revolutions in general seem to be dependent on the support of the common people, as that is where the revolutionaries get their supplies from since they cannot rely on government infrastructure to supply them with the arms and supplies that they need to fight a revolution.
So given this, are there any historical situations where a political/ethic/socio-economic minority that did not belong to a rich aristocracy seized control of a nation-state at the expense of the majority? The closest example I can think of is the case of the American Revolution where 45% of the colonists were patriots and 15-20% of the population were British loyalists. However, that's still 80-85% of the population who are supportive or at least neutral to the revolutionaries. I'm not sure if there are situations where a group who was disliked by the masses got into power via a revolution.
