Topic of Discussion – What Is a Revolution?

Discussion 7-3 US History ~ Chapter 7 Topic Discussions E Lundberg Topic of Discussion – What is a Revolution?

Related Topics Chapter Information ~ Ch 7; 4 sections; 35 pages The French Revolution The American Revolution (1775-1783) Major Revolutions throughout history Section 1 ~ The Early Years of the War Pages 194-203 Revolutionary Leaders Section 2 ~ The War Expands Pages 204-211

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Key Ideas Key Connections - 10 Major (Common) Themes 1. How cultures change through the blending of different ethnic groups. The American Revolution was unique. 2. Taking the land. 3. The individual versus the state. 4. The quest for equity - slavery and it’s end, women’s suffrage etc. The American Revolutionary Leaders were not typical 5. Sectionalism. 6. Immigration and Americanization. revolutionaries. 7. The change in social class. 8. Technology developments and the environment. The Battle for Independence was over home rule and 9. Relations with other nations. 10. Historiography, how we know things. democratic values.

Talking Points I Introduction – What is a Revolution

A revolution is a fundamental change in political power that takes place over a relatively short period of time. Revolutions have occurred throughout human history for many different reasons. Their results include major changes in culture, economy and socio-political institutions. Here are the ten most influential revolutions.

II French Revolution

1. The French Revolution (1789–1799) was a period of radical social and political upheaval in both French and Euro- pean history. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed within three years.

2. French society underwent an epic transformation as feudal, aristocratic and religious privileges evaporated under a sustained assault from liberal political groups and the masses on the streets. Old ideas about hierarchy and tra- dition succumbed to new Enlightenment principles of citizenship and inalienable rights. The French Revolution began in 1789 with the convocation of the Estates-General in May. The first year of the Revolution witnessed members of the Third Estate proclaiming the Tennis Court Oath in June, the assault on the Bastille in July, the pas- sage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August, and an epic march on Versailles that forced the royal court back to Paris in October. The next few years were dominated by tensions between the various liberal assemblies and a conservative monarchy intent on thwarting major reforms. A republic was proclaimed in September, 1792, and King Louis XVI was executed the next year. External threats also played a dominant role in the development of the Revolution. The French Revolutionary Wars started in 1792, and ultimately featured

Questions to Think About Supporting Materials What defines a Revolution? The Radicalism of the American revolution by Wood What is the difference between a revolution and a America at War by Finn coup de ta? Leaders of the American Revolution by Wade 7 Leadership Lessons from the American Revolution by Antal Why are the American revolutionary leaders different? Discussion 7-3 US History ~ Chapter 7 Topic Discussions E Lundberg Topic of Discussion – What is a Revolution?

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Talking Points spectacular French victories that facilitated the conquest of the Italian peninsula, the Low Countries, and most territories west of the Rhine—achievements that had defied previous French governments for centuries. Internal- ly, popular sentiments significantly radicalized the Revolution, culminating in the Reign of Terror from 1793 until 1794, when between 16,000 and 40,000 people were killed. After the fall of Robespierre and the Jacobins, the Directory assumed control of the French state in 1795 and held power until 1799, when it was replaced by the Consulate under Napoleon Bonaparte.

3. The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. The growth of republics and liberal democ- racies, the spread of secularism, the development of modern ideologies, and the invention of total war all mark their birth with the Revolution.

4. Subsequent events whose roots can be traced back to the Revolution include the Napoleonic Wars, two separate restorations of the monarchy, and two additional revolutions as modern France took shape. During the following century, France would be governed at one point or another as a republic, as a constitutional monarchy and as two different empires.

III Glorious Revolution

1. To a large extent, the Roman Catholic James II (1633-1701), King of Great Britain from 1685 until he fled to France in 1688, brought the “Glorious” revolution down upon himself. When he succeeded his brother, Charles II, to the

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Talking Points English throne, he proceeded to alienate virtually every politically and militarily significant segment of English society by commencing ill-advised attempts to catholicize the army and the government, and to pack parliament with his supporters.

2. He employed the Dispensing Power (the royal prerogative allowing suspension of the operation of various stat- utes, declared illegal in the Bill of Rights of 1689) to evade the Act of Uniformity and the Test Act. His Declaration of Indulgence, issued in 1687-88, suspended penal legislation against religious nonconformity, allowing Dissenters to worship in meeting houses and Catholics to worship in private.

3. When he had a son in June, 1688, fears of the establishment of a Catholic dynasty in England led prominent Protestant statesmen to invite William of Orange to assume the throne. William landed with an army in Novem- ber, 1688, promised to defend the liberty of England and the Protestant religion, and marched unopposed on Lon- don. James fled ignominiously to France. Parliament then met, denounced James, offered the throne to William and his wife Mary as joint sovereigns, and placed constitutionally significant legal and practical limitations on the monarchy. A rebellion of Scottish Jacobite’s under Dundee threatened the rule of William and Mary, but Dundee himself was killed 1689. The next year the Irish were defeated in Ireland at the Battle of the Boyne. As soon as William felt secure on the throne, after the Jacobite defeat, he brought England into the War of the League continued until 1697.

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Talking Points IV October Revolution

1. Also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution, this was a political revolution and part of the Russian Revo- lution of 1917. It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 25th October, 1917 (Julian calendar), which corresponds with 7th November, 1917 (Gregorian calendar). It was the second phase of the Russian Revolu- tion, after the February Revolution of the same year. The October Revolution in Petrograd overthrew the Russian Provisional Government and gave the power to the local soviets, dominated by Bolsheviks. The revolution was not universally recognized outside of Petrograd, and further struggles followed. This resulted in the Russian Civil War (1917–1922) and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922.

2. The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence in the Petrograd Soviet to organize the armed forces. Bolshevik Red Guard forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began to take over government buildings on 24th October, 1917 (Julian calendar)). The following day, the Winter Palace (the seat of the Provision- al government located in Petrograd, then capital of Russia), was captured.

V Taiping Revolution/Rebellion

1. The Taiping Rebellion was a large-scale revolt, waged from 1851 until 1864, against the authority and forces of the Qing Empire in China, conducted by both an army and civil administration inspired by the Hakka, self-proclaimed mystics named Hong Xiuquan and Yang Xiuqing. Hong was an unorthodox Christian convert, who declared himself

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Talking Points the new Messiah and younger brother of Jesus Christ. Yang Xiuqing was a former salesman of firewood in Guang- xi, who was frequently able to act as a mouthpiece of God to direct the people, as well as gain himself a large amount of political power. Hong, Yang and their followers established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (also, and officially, Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace) and attained control of significant parts of southern China.

2. Most reliable sources put the total deaths during the fifteen years of the rebellion at about 20 million civilians and army personnel, although some argue the death toll was much higher (as many as 50 million, according to one source). Some historians estimate the combination of natural disasters combined with the political insurrections may have cost as many as 200 million Chinese lives between 1850 and 1865. That figure is generally thought to be an exaggeration, as it is approximately half the estimated population of China in 1851. The war, however, qualifies as one of the bloodiest ever, prior to World War II. It can be seen as a consequence of the collision between the imperial powers and traditional China; this introduced new concepts and ideals about governance and people’s rights, which clashed with existing customs.

3. While the rebellion had popular appeal, its eventual failure may have stemmed from its inability to integrate for- eign and Chinese ideas, which, arguably, the twentieth century Chinese leader, Mao Zedong, achieved with his brand of Marxism as “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

VI Young Turk Revolution

1. The Young Turk Revolution of July, 1908, reversed the suspension of the Ottoman parliament that had been enact-

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Talking Points ed by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who abdicated in a move that marked the return to Constitutional government. The Young Turk movement brought together various intellectuals and dissidents, many of whom were living in exile or as officers in the army, especially those based at the headquarters of the Third Army Corps in Salonika. Although it was inspired by the nationalist spirit that was sweeping through Europe at the time, which had already had cost the Empire most of its Balkan provinces, the movement promoted a vision of a democratic multi-national state. Some support for the movement came from Bulgarians, Arabs, Jews, Armenians and Greeks.

2. The Revolution restored the parliament, which had been suspended by the Sultan in 1878. However, the process of replacing existing institutions with constitutional institutions proved to be much more difficult than expected. Before long, power was vested in a new elite group led by the Grand Vizier. On one hand, the movement wanted to modernize and democratize, while on the other, it wanted to preserve what was left of the empire. The promised policy of decentralization was abandoned when the leaders realized that this compromised security. In fact, the periphery of the Empire continued to splinter under pressure from local revolutions. Indifference from former allies such as the British, who, along with France, had ambitions in the region, compelled the Young Turks to em- brace Germany as an ally in hopes that this would preserve the empire. Instead, this alliance led to the Ottoman defeat in World War I, and to the decline of their power after the war. However, they laid some of the ground- work upon which the new nation-state of Turkey would be built, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, himself a Young Turk.

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Talking Points 3. The potential democratization project represented by the Young Turk Revolution had no parallel at the time among other imperial powers, such as the British and French, whose leaders were nowhere near contemplating granting self-determination to their African and Asian possessions.

VII Chinese Revolution

1. The Chinese revolution was a series of great political upheavals in China between 1911 and 1949, which eventually led to Communist Party rule and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. In 1912, a nationalist revolt overthrew the imperial Manchu dynasty. Under the leaders Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalists, or Kuomintang, were increasingly challenged by the growing communist movement. The 10,000-km Long March to the northwest, undertaken by the communists from 1934 to 1935, to escape Kuomintang harassment, resulted in the emergence of Mao Zedong as a communist leader. During World War II the various Chinese political groups pooled military resources against the Japanese invaders, but, in 1946, the conflict reignited into open civil war. Mao’s troops formed the basis of the Red Army that renewed the civil war against the nationalists and emerged victorious after defeating them at Huai-Hai and Nanjing in 1949. In 1949, the Kuomintang were defeated at Nan- jing and forced to flee to Taiwan. Communist rule was established in the People’s Republic of China under the leadership of Mao Zedong.

VIII Cuban Revolution

1. On March 10th, 1952, General Batista overthrew the president of Cuba, and canceled all elections. This angered a

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Talking Points young lawyer, Fidel Castro, and for the next seven years he led attempts to overthrow Batista’s government. On July 26th, 1953, Castro led an attack against the military barracks in Santiago, but he was defeated and arrested. Although Castro was sentenced to 15 years in prison, Batista released him in 1955 in a show of supreme power. Castro did not back down and gathered a new group of rebels in Mexico. On December 2nd, 1956, he was again defeated by Batista’s army and fled to the Sierra Maestro. He began using guerrilla tactics to fight Batista’s armed forces, and, with the aid of other rebellions throughout Cuba, he forced Batista to resign and flee the country on January 1st, 1959. Castro became the Prime Minister of Cuba in February and had about 550 of Batista’s associ- ates executed.

2. He soon suspended all elections and named himself “President for Life”, jailing or executing all who opposed him. He established a communist government with himself as a dictator and began relations with the Soviet Union.

3. The Cuban revolution was a turning point in recent history. With Castro’s regime in place, Cuba became an important source of support for the global power of the Soviet Union, and thus affected the severity of the Cold War. Castro was involved in unsuccessful rebellions in Venezuela, Guatemala and Bolivia, which caused Cuba to isolate itself from the surrounding world. The communist regime in Cuba gave the U.S.S.R. an ally neighboring the United States during the Cold War, thus bringing the threat of nuclear war to an all-time high.

4. Che Guevara - The cult of Ernesto Che Guevara is an episode in the moral callousness of our time. Che was a total- itarian. He achieved nothing but disaster. Many of the early leaders of the Cuban Revolution favored a democratic

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Talking Points or democratic-socialist direction for the new Cuba. But Che was a mainstay of the hardline pro-Soviet faction, and his faction won. Che presided over the Cuban Revolution's first firing squads. He founded Cuba's "labor camp" system—the system that was eventually employed to incarcerate gays, dissidents, and AIDS victims. To get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che's imagination. In the famous essay in which he issued his ringing call for "two, three, many Vietnams," he also spoke about martyrdom and managed to compose a number of chilling phrases: "Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become …"— and so on. He was killed in Bolivia in 1967, leading a guerrilla movement that had failed to enlist a single Bolivian peasant. And yet he succeeded in inspiring tens of thousands of middle class Latin-Americans to exit the universities and organize guerrilla insurgencies of their own. And these insurgencies likewise accomplished nothing, except to bring about the death of hundreds of thousands, and to set back the cause of Latin-American democracy—a tragedy on the hugest scale.

IX Haitian Revolution

1. On 22 August, 1791, the slaves of Saint Dominque rose in revolt and plunged the colony into civil war. The signal to begin the revolt was given by a high priest and leader of the Maroon slaves, during a religious ceremony, on the night of August 14th. Within the next ten days, slaves had taken control of the entire Northern Province in an un- precedented slave revolt. Whites kept control of only a few isolated, fortified camps. The slaves sought revenge

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Talking Points on their masters through “pillage, rape, torture, mutilation, and death”. Because the plantation owners had long feared a revolt like this, they were well armed and prepared to defend themselves. Nonetheless, within weeks, the number of slaves who joined the revolt reached approximately 100,000. Within the next two months, as the violence escalated, the slaves killed 4,000 whites and burned or destroyed 180 sugar plantations and hundreds of coffee and indigo plantations.

2. By 1792, the slaves controlled a third of the island. The success of the slave rebellion caused the newly elected Legislative Assembly in France to realize it was facing an ominous situation. To protect France’s economic inter- ests, the Legislative Assembly needed to grant civil and political rights to free men of color in the colonies.

3. In March of 1792, the Legislative Assembly did just that. Countries throughout Europe as well as the United States were shocked by the decision of the Legislative Assembly, whose members were determined to stop the revolt. Apart from granting rights to the free people of color, they dispatched 6,000 French soldiers to the island.

4. Meanwhile, in 1793, France declared war on Great Britain. The white planters in Saint Dominque made agree- ments with Great Britain to declare British sovereignty over the islands. Spain, who controlled the rest of the island of Hispaniola, would also join the conflict and fight with Great Britain against France. The Spanish forces in- vaded Saint Dominque and were joined by the slave forces. By August of 1793, there were only 3,500 French soldiers on the island. To prevent military disaster, the French commissioner, freed the slaves in his jurisdiction. The

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Talking Points decision was confirmed and extended by the National Convention in 1794, when they formally abolished slavery and granted civil and political rights to all black men in the colonies. It is estimated that the slave rebellion resulted in the deaths of 100,000 blacks and 24,000 whites.

X Iranian Revolution

1. The Islamic Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran’s monarchy (Pahlavi dynasty) under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution. The first major demonstrations against the Shah began in January, 1978. Between August and De- cember of 1978, strikes and demonstrations paralyzed the country. The Shah left Iran for exile in mid-January of 1979, and the resulting power vacuum was filled two weeks later when Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran to a greeting by several million Iranians. The royal regime collapsed shortly after that, on February 11, when guerril- las and rebel troops took to armed street fighting and overwhelmed any troops still loyal to the Shah.

2. Iran voted, by national referendum, to become an Islamic Republic on April 1st, 1979, and later approved a new theocratic constitution whereby Khomeini became Supreme Leader of the country in December, 1979.

3. The revolution was unusual and it created a lot of surprise throughout the world: it lacked many of the customary causes of revolution (defeat at war, a financial crisis, peasant rebellion, or disgruntled military); produced pro- found change at great speed; was massively popular; overthrew a regime heavily protected by a lavishly financed

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Talking Points army and security service; and replaced a modernizing monarchy with a theocracy based on the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists. Its outcome—an Islamic Republic “under the guidance of an 80-year-old exiled religious scholar from Qom”—was, as one scholar put it, “clearly an occurrence that had to be explained.”

XII Why was the American Revolution Different?

1. The American Revolution was a political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century, in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America. They first rejected the authority of the Parliament of Great Britain to govern them from over- seas without representation, and then expelled all royal officials.

2. By 1774, each colony had established a Provincial Congress, or an equivalent governmental institution, to form individual self-governing states. The British responded by sending combat troops to re-impose direct rule. Through representatives sent in 1775 to the Second Continental Congress, the new states joined together, initial- ly, to defend their respective self-governance and manage the armed conflict against the British, known as the American Revolutionary War. Ultimately, the states collectively determined that the British monarchy, due to its acts of tyranny, could no longer legitimately claim their allegiance. They then severed ties with the British Empire in July, 1776, when the Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, rejecting the monarchy on behalf of the new nation. The war ended with effective American victory in October, 1781, followed by formal British abandon- ment of any claims to the United States with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

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Talking Points 3. The American Revolution initiated a series of social, political and intellectual transformations in early American society and government. Americans rejected the oligarchies common in aristocratic Europe at the time, champi- oning, instead, the development of republicanism based on the Enlightenment understanding of liberalism. Among the significant results of the revolution was the creation of a representative government responsible to the will of the people. However, sharp political debates erupted over the appropriate level of democracy desirable in the new government, with a number of Founders fearing mob rule. Many fundamental issues of national governance were settled with the ratification of the Constitution of the United States in 1788.

4. Several aspects of the American Revolution make it noteworthy. For example, guerilla warfare played a major role in the war for independence, establishing the method of surprise battle in the modern era and replacing the pitched battle of earlier periods. Another unique aspect of this revolution is that it took place outside the borders of the parent nation. The replacement of one government with another doesn't have to take place within the same contiguous geographic region to be considered a proper revolution. Yet, the American Revolution is often compared to the French Revolution that followed -- and historians often mark this essential difference between the two.

5. What made the American Revolution so revolutionary, however, was that it didn't involve regime change, but the creation of an entirely new nation and the adoption of ademocracy by that nation.

6. That said, the seeds of democracy had already been planted in the colonies before the Treaty of Paris ended the

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Talking Points Revolution in 1783. Many historians cite the Massachusetts Bay colony, officially chartered in 1630. This was a radical move within the West, which was still largely ruled by monarchies. For the most part, however, colonies were governed absolutely at the behest and pleasure of the English king.

7. This changed during the Revolutionary War. After the colonies broke away from England in 1776 and the war began, the newly self-governed states began to try democratic processes of government. In short order, however, the early elite came to consider that the potential for mob rule and self-oppression in large states could prove too great for direct democracy, where constituents participate directly in the legislative process.

8. Theories of direct democracy -- the ideal form of true self-rule according to Enlightenment thinkers like Jean- Jacques Rousseau -- faltered in practice. Founding fathers like James Madison decided that a republic democracy was more attainable in a large a geographic region as a state or for the fledgling nation as a whole. In a republic, officials elected by the people serve in assembly on their constituents' behalf. The people governed don't directly participate, except to vote to elect these officials and occasionally on some issues, as they would for referendums.

9. Historians have vigorously debated how the American Revolution gave rise to democracy. Some see the revolution as a struggle for self-government; others see it as a class struggle that erupted in violence [source: McManus]. Whatever its origins -- and a number of competing and cooperative factors created it -- the American Revolution in fact did create a new, democratic nation.

10. Certainly, the concepts that Thomas Jefferson included in the Declaration of Independence -- that "all men are

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Talking Points created equal," and that government derives its power from the "consent of the governed" -- were revolutionarily democratic ideals. Yet, the ratification of the Constitution officially birthed the democratic republic of the United States more than a decade later, in 1789. Without the Constitution, the document that guaranteed the protection of the civil rights and the restraints put on the state, the democracy birthed by the Declaration would have existed only in rhetoric. The Constitution put the theory of democracy into practice.

11. Examining the American Revolution reveals an important point: In the United States, the machinations of democracy established by the revolution have been opened in successive waves. A number of groups have taken on the struggles to secure the rights guaranteed by the Constitution in the centuries since the United States was established. Simply put, democracy is a process that began in the 18th century and continues today.

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Talking Points