DOCSLIB.ORG

A Theory of Revolution

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
A Theory of Revolution A theory of revolution RAYMOND TANTER Department of Political Science, University of Michigan and MANUS MIDLARSKY Department of Political Science, University of Colorado Overview Finally, hypotheses are offered to account for some of the findings of this study. The focus of this study is an empirical examination of some causes of revolution.l A While prior studies have delineated dimen- Categorization of Revolutions sions of conflict behavior within nations Prior to a discussion of theoretical signifi- (Rummel, 1963, 1966, 1967; Tanter, 1965, cance, it may be useful to inquire into the 1966) in order to discover the variables meaning of revolution itself. This exercise most representative of internal conflict, a in definition appears necessary primarily be- purpose of the present inquiry is to discover cause prior usage of the term has been their theoretical significance. A typology of somewhat ambiguous. To the Hegelian, the revolution is presented and two possible revolutionary idea is equated with irresist- causes of revolution-changes in economic ible change-a manifestation of the world development and level of education-are spirit in an unceasing quest for its own ful- examined regarding the extent of their asso- fillment. Similarly, the Marxist, although ciation with certain characteristics of revo- opposed to Hegelian idealism, sees revolu- lution. Regional differences are found which tion as a product of irresistible historical imply a fundamental distinction between at forces, which culminate in a struggle be- least two of the categories in the typology. tween the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Hannah Arendt (1965, pp. 34-40), on the 1 This study is a part of a series on revolu- other hand, interprets the revolutionary ex- tions and their implications for international re- perience as a kind of restoration, whereby lations and some especially consequences for the insurgents attempt to restore liberties international business communities. Acknowl- and privileges which were lost as the result edgments are due to Harold Guetzkow of the International Relations Program at Northwestern of the government’s temporary lapse into University for his suggestions during formative despotism. Indeed, aspects of the American stages of this inquiry. Thanks are due to the Revolution as well as some recent anti- Ford Foundation for a to the fellowship given colonial revolutions may be amenable to author and to the National Science Foun- junior Arendt’s The dation for its assistance to the senior author. interpretation. insurgents view the colonial elite as Helpful comments were made by Richard A. might strangers Brody, James C. Davies, and Robert C. North. who have usurped the freedoms which, CONFLICT RESOLUTION VOLUME XI NUMBER 3 265 TABLE 1 CHARACTERISTICS OF FOUR TYPES OF REVOLUTION mythically or otherwise, once belonged to pp. 22-24) constructs a similar classifica- the people now in revolt. tion, but instead of the palace revolution he Tocqueville (1955, p. 8), on the other discusses &dquo;caudillismo&dquo; (predatory milita- hand, has employed a more empirical ap- rism), which is a common form of the coup proach to the problem of revolution, and has d6tat in Latin America. These three forms defined it as an overthrow of the legally con- of revolution appear to reflect an increasing stituted elite, which initiated a period of in- degree of change initiated by the successful tense social, political, and economic change. insurgents, and may be placed on a rank- Crane Brinton (1952, pp. 3-4) has continued order of increasing political or social change. this empirical thrust by differentiating be- James Rosenau, in fact, constructs such a tween the coup d6tat, as a simple replace- classification of revolution. ment of one elite by another, and major Personnel wars are defined by Rosenau as revolutions such as the French or Russian, those which are fought over the occupancy which were accompanied by social, political, of existing roles in the structure of political and economic changes. Similarly, with re- authority (Rosenau, 1964, pp. 63-64). An spect to Latin America, George Blanksten example of this type is the palace revolution (1962, p. 72) suggests that we should dis- or Latin American caudillismo. A second tinguish between the coup d6tat and revo- category is what Rosenau calls the authority lutions such as the Mexican experience, wars, or those in which the insurgents com- which eventually had profound conse- pete not only for the occupancy of roles in quences for the structure of that society. the political structure, but for their arrange- The distinction between two forms of ment as well. Struggles to replace dictator- revolution may provide a basis for the de- ships with democracies would be classified velopment of further classifications. For as authority wars. The final classification is example, Harold Lasswell and Abraham that of the structural wars, in which the goal Kaplan (1950, p. 252) present a further re- of the insurgents is the introduction of social finement in the classification of revolution and economic changes in the society. Wars by the introduction of a three-category ty- involving Communist factions would fall pology in which they differentiate between under this heading. In addition, Rosenau palace revolutions, political revolutions, and notes that structural wars contain elements social revolutions. Edwin Lieuwen (1960, of both personnel and authority wars. 266 Changes in the occupancy of government major difference between the two forms is roles, as well as the arrangement of these in the degree of change initiated in the roles, would automatically take place if the structure of the political authority. The insurgents were successful in a structural &dquo;Young Turks&dquo; implemented a complete re- war. Similarly, the authority war is person- vision of the political authority which led to nel-oriented, because the arrangement of a truncation of the Ottoman Empire and the political roles would seldom, if ever, be establishment of a republic. The revolt altered without a change in the occupancy against Peron, on the other hand, was an at- of these roles. In Rosenau’s ranking of the tempt at reform, in that Peron’s mismanage- three types of internal war, personnel wars ment of the economy and the dissatisfaction would occupy the lowest rank with regard of major political forces, such as the Roman to the degree of societal change; the au- Catholic Church, led to a revolt against what thority wars would occupy an intermediate had become an oppressive political execu- rank, and the structural wars would receive tive. the highest rank. The existence of several types of revolu- Samuel Huntington (1962, pp. 23-24) tion suggests that we might be able to isolate has suggested a classification of revolution different characteristics of revolution. Karl in which four categories are enumerated: Deutsch (1964, pp. 102-104) proposes that the internal war, the revolutionary coup, the the degree of mass participation in a revo- reform coup, and the palace revolution. lution, as well as its duration, may be essen- Huntington’s use of the concept &dquo;internal tial to an adequate description of the revolu- war&dquo; differs from the meaning attributed to tionary experience. A third characteristic that concept in earlier systematic studies. may be the number killed as a result of the For that reason the term mass revolution2 revolution. Given a high degree of commit- will be substituted for internal war as used ment by the insurgents and the incumbents, by Huntington. The terms mass revolution the number of persons killed both during and palace revolution correspond respec- and after the revolution may be a measure tively to Rosenau’s structural and personnel of intensity. This measure will be discussed wars, while the revolutionary and reform more fully at a later point. Finally, the in- coups both may be placed under the head- tentions of the insurgents may be critical to ing of the authority wars. Kemal Ataturk’s the form of the revolution as well as to its revolution in Turkey, for example, illustrates eventual outcome. If the successful insur- what Huntington might call a revolutionary gents are ideologically committed to certain coup, whereas the 1955 coup in Argentina goals, then they may initiate changes in the might be classified as a reform coup. The societal structure to effect the realization of these goals. If, on the other hand, the in- 2 One may also distinguish between various surgents have no particular ideological orien- types of mass revolution. Lawrence Stone tation, then they might intend to replace the (1966, pp. 162-63), for example, presents a incumbents in the structure of political au- typology which differentiates among the Jac- to in the querie, the Anarchistic Rebellion, the Jacobin thority without recourse changes Communist Revolution and the Militaristic Mass societal structure. Insurrection. However, a purpose of this study Table 1 contains a rank-order of the cate- is to compare the categories of revolution larger gories of revolution based on their position (e.g., mass revolution vs. palace revolution) with to mass duration, rather than to engage in a detailed examination respect participation, of subcategories. domestic violence, and the intentions of the CONFLICT RESOLUTION VOLUME XI NUMBER 3 267 TABLE 2 FOUR TYPES OF REVOLUTIONa a Unsuccessful revolutions are indicated below the the dotted line. b The date in parentheses refers to the year in which the insurgents were either defeated or seized the roles in the structure of political authority. c The Algerian revolution of 1962 refers to the anti-colonial revolt of the Algerian independence movement, whereas the French revolution of 1958 applies to the fall of the French Fourth Republic. insurgents. We may now suggest a defini- within the political structure. This defini- tion of revolution which would be designed tion, then, sets a lower bound or minimum to include the categories in Table 1, as well criterion for the existence of revolution.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • I. History and Ideology in the English Revolution1
    THE HISTORICAL JOURNAL VOL. VIII 1965 No. 2 I. HISTORY AND IDEOLOGY IN THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION1 By QUENTIN SKINNER Christ's College, Cambridge IDEOLOGICAL arguments are commonly sustained by an appeal to the past, an appeal either to see precedents in history for new claims being advanced, or to see history itself as a development towards the point of view being advocated or denounced.2 Perhaps the most influential example from English history of this prescriptive use of historical information is provided by the ideological arguments associated with the constitutional revolution of the seventeenth century. It was from a propagandist version of early English history that the 'whig' ideology associated with the Parliamentarians—the ideology of customary law, regulated monarchy and immemorial Parliamen- tary right—drew its main evidence and strength. The process by which this 'whig' interpretation of history became bequeathed to the eighteenth century as accepted ideology has of course already been definitively labelled by Professor Butterfield, and described in his book on The Englishman and his History.3 It still remains, however, to analyse fully the various other ways in which awareness of the past became a politically relevant factor in English society during its constitutional upheavals. The acceptance of the ' whig' view of early English history in fact represented only the triumph of one among several conflictinb ideologies which had relied on identical historical backing to their claims. And despite the resolution of this conflict by universal acceptance of the ' whig' view, the ' whigs' themselves were nevertheless to be covertly influenced by the rival ideologies which their triumph might seem to have suppressed.
    [Show full text]
  • Social-Property Relations, Class-Conflict and The
    Historical Materialism 19.4 (2011) 129–168 brill.nl/hima Social-Property Relations, Class-Conflict and the Origins of the US Civil War: Towards a New Social Interpretation* Charles Post City University of New York [email protected] Abstract The origins of the US Civil War have long been a central topic of debate among historians, both Marxist and non-Marxist. John Ashworth’s Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic is a major Marxian contribution to a social interpretation of the US Civil War. However, Ashworth’s claim that the War was the result of sharpening political and ideological – but not social and economic – contradictions and conflicts between slavery and capitalism rests on problematic claims about the rôle of slave-resistance in the dynamics of plantation-slavery, the attitude of Northern manufacturers, artisans, professionals and farmers toward wage-labour, and economic restructuring in the 1840s and 1850s. An alternative social explanation of the US Civil War, rooted in an analysis of the specific path to capitalist social-property relations in the US, locates the War in the growing contradiction between the social requirements of the expanded reproduction of slavery and capitalism in the two decades before the War. Keywords origins of capitalism, US Civil War, bourgeois revolutions, plantation-slavery, agrarian petty- commodity production, independent-household production, merchant-capital, industrial capital The Civil War in the United States has been a major topic of historical debate for almost over 150 years. Three factors have fuelled scholarly fascination with the causes and consequences of the War. First, the Civil War ‘cuts a bloody gash across the whole record’ of ‘the American .
    [Show full text]
  • French Revolution and English Revolution Comparison Chart Print Out
    Socials 9 Name: Camilla Mancia Comparison of the English Revolution and French Revolution TOPIC ENGLISH REVOLUTION FRENCH REVOLUTION SIMILARITIES DIFFERENCES 1625-1689 Kings - Absolute monarchs - Absolute monarchs - Kings ruled as Absolute - English Kings believed in Divine - James I: intelligent; slovenly - Louis XIV: known as the “Sun King”; Monarchs Right of Kings and French did habits; “wisest fool in saw himself as center of France and - Raised foreign armies not Christendom”; didn’t make a forced nobles to live with him; - Charles I and Louis XVI both - Charles I did not care to be good impression on his new extravagant lifestyle; built Palace of did not like working with loved whereas Louis XVI initially subjects; introduced the Divine Versailles ($$) Parliament/Estates General wanted to be loved by his people Right Kings - Louis XV: great grandson of Louis XIV; - Citizens did not like the wives of - Charles I did not kill people who - Charles I: Believed in Divine only five years old when he became Charles I (Catholic) and Louis were against him (he Right of Kings; unwilling to King; continued extravagances of the XVI (from Austria) imprisoned or fined them) compromise with Parliament; court and failure of government to - Both Charles I and Louis XVI whereas Louis XVI did narrow minded and aloof; lived reform led France towards disaster punished critics of government - Charles I called Lord Strafford, an extravagant life; Wife - Louis XVI; originally wanted to be Archbishop Laud and Henrietta Maria and people loved; not interested
    [Show full text]
  • 1 JAMES M. VAUGHN Department of History University Of
    JAMES M. VAUGHN Department of History University of Texas at Austin 128 Inner Campus Dr. B7000 Austin, TX 78712-1739 EDUCATION Ph.D., Department of History, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 2009 M.A., Division of the Social Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 2004 B.A., Department of History, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 2000 PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Texas at Austin 2008 - present Assistant Director, Program in British Studies 2009 - present Jack Miller Research Fellow in Representative Institutions, the MacMillan 2011 - 2012 Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT PUBLICATIONS (including Accepted and In Press) Book Vaughn, J. M. (In production [copyediting], expected September 2018). The Politics of Empire at the Accession of George III: The East India Company and the Crisis and Transformation of Britain’s Imperial State. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 130,000 words. Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles and Book Chapters Vaughn, J. M. (August 2017, published online as “ahead-of-print” featured article [DOI: 10.3366/brw.2017.0283]; in press, September 2018). John Company Armed: The English East India Company, the Anglo-Mughal War and Absolutist Imperialism, c. 1675-1690. Britain and the World, 11 (2). Austen, R. A., & Vaughn, J. M. (2011). The Territorialization of Empire: Social Imperialism and Britain’s Moves into India and Tropical Africa. In T. Falola and E. Brownell (Eds.), Africa, Empire and Globalization: Essays in Honor of A. G. Hopkins (193-212). Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. 1 Non-Peer Reviewed Articles Vaughn, J. M. (2013). 1776 in World History: The American Revolution as Bourgeois Revolution.
    [Show full text]
  • The Glorious Revolution Reconsidered: Whig Historiography
    Author: Omar El Sharkawy Title: “The Glorious Revolution Reconsidered: Whig Historiography and Revisionism in Historical and Intellectual Context” Source: Prandium: The Journal of Historical Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Fall, 2020). Published by: The Department of Historical Studies, University of Toronto Mississauga Stable URL: https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/prandium/index The Glorious Revolution is the subject of extensive discussion in relation to the meaning and conduct of revolutionary behavior.1 There are several schools of thought on the Glorious Revolution, but this paper focuses on the most firmly entrenched “traditional” perspective. In its most pure form, the traditional or “Whig” interpretation was first articulated by Thomas B. Macaulay in the nineteenth century. He viewed the Glorious Revolution as a mostly staid and boring affair: a moderate political revolution guided by the propertied political classes that established constitutionalism, parliamentary sovereignty, and religious toleration as the bedrock of English government. This revolution displaced a tyrannical Catholic monarch, James II, who was bent on absolute power and religious persecution. The “Whig interpretation of history” has been a source of both praise and criticism in the revolution’s long and well-established historiographical tradition.2 Modern scholarly debates concerning the revolution have almost completely revised the Whig perspective as a moderate and quintessentially English revolution. However, the interpretation of the degree of social
    [Show full text]
  • A Brief Historiography of the Civil War: How Historians Interpret the Causes
    a www. casahistoria.net student guide sheet A brief historiography of the Civil This brief outline draws on the war: how historians interpret the article by Anderson. Read this for fuller examples and causes of the conflict. explanations. Interpretation The core of the interpretation History is seen as a continuous process, achieving Key factors Whig progress, ie progress from primitive societies with Political Interpretation limited individual/political liberty to societies where Religious 18th and 19th C. there is political & individual liberty/freedom. • English Civil war is seen as a crucial element Key Historians: in this process. Conflict between Charles & Gardiner Parliament is seen within the context of a Trevelyan struggle for greater liberty. • Charles wants to conserve & protect the past. Puritans in Parl want greater freedom in a religious & political sense. (Freedom from royal control. RC church is seen as being against individual choice, ie freedom). Friction between the two over religion and politics produces the conflict. Marxist Karl Marx writing in 19th century saw History as a Key factors Interpretation process of class struggle for economic (and thus Economic th 20 century social) dominance in which two classes would Social eventually emerge: capitalists and proletariat. Marx Key Historians: does not write about the English civil war, but his (Weber) basic belief that historical events are best explained Tawney by looking at economic and social factors is used by Hill others to explain why civil war broke out in 1642. th In early 20 century Weber wrote about a connection between the rise of protestantism and the growth of capitalism.
    [Show full text]
  • Writing of the English Revolution
    THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO WRITING OF THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION EDITED BY N. H. KEEBLE published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 10011-4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, vic 3166, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Cambridge University Press 2001 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2001 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeface Adobe Sabon 10/13pt System QuarkXpress® [se] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data The Cambridge companion to writing of the English Revolution / edited by N. H. Keeble. p. cm. – (Cambridge companions to literature) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0 521 64252 3 (hardback) – isbn 0 521 64522 0 (paperback) 1. Great Britain – History – Puritan Revolution, 1642–1660 – Literature and the revolution. 2. English literature – Early modern, 1500–1700 – History and criticism. 3. Christianity and literature – Great Britain – History – 17th century. 4. Politics and literature – Great Britain – History – 17th century. 5. Literature and history – Great Britain – History – 17th century. 6. English literature – Puritan authors – History and criticism. 7. Revolutionary literature, English – History and criticism. 8. Royalists in literature.
    [Show full text]
  • The Clubmen During the English Civil Wars
    Riotous or Revolutionary: The Clubmen during the English Civil Wars John Staab John Staab is a teacher at Champaign Central High School and received his B.A. from Eastern Illinois University. Currently an M.A. in History candidate at Eastern, he wrote this essay for Dr. Newton Key’s Early Modern Revolutions graduate seminar in fall 2002. The English Civil Wars and Regicide, 1642-49, has been viewed as one of the “great” revolutions. Like the French and Russian Revolutions, the earlier English Revolution saw protests against the government coalesce into armed rebellion, civil war, and then the overthrow of the old order, including the execution of the monarch and establishment of the new rule. In these great Revolutions, historians have pointed to revolutionary moments, such as the peasant uprisings in France in the summer and fall of 1789. To Marxist historians like Christopher Hill, these peasant uprisings act as a prelude, or stepping stone, to a larger social revolution. In the English Civil Wars, which pitted the supporters of the King (Royalists, or Cavaliers) against the Roundhead Parliamentarians, some might point to the rise of the 1644 Clubmen in the countryside as just such a lower class, agrarian revolutionary moment. This paper uses the demands and actions of the Clubmen as a test case to see if definitions of revolution apply to such a group. It also compares them to the French peasant revolts of the mid- seventeenth century, such as the Nu Pieds, in order to question the general revolutionary content of agrarian movements in the early modern period.
    [Show full text]
  • BOOK REVIEWS Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., Central America: A
    BOOK REVIEWS Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., Central America: A Nation Divided. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Pp. 390.-~ $22.50; Paper $8.95. Second Edition. Lee Woodward, Professor of History at Tulane University, provides a timely, scholarly, and wel 1-written account of Central American history in this second edition of a work originally published in 1976. With the United States spendi ng millions.of dollars trying to change the course of events in the region and Central Americans kill i ng each other in a similar effort, this book is a welcome antidote to the massive propaganda campaigns being conducted by the various participants ·in the contemporary Central American tragedy .and to the uninformed accounts rendered by journalists. Woodward, one of the world's foremost experts on Central America, draws from his massive research and readi:ng in the histories of the five Central American republics (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica) to write a coherent account of the region, an account that explains why the area is so troubled. Woodward argues that the five nations quite naturally belong in a single nation, something they tried in the first decades after independence, because their similarities are greater than their differences and because uni~ would allow them to solve problems now beyond their reach because of their small size. All began their independent political lives under Conservative dictatorships and then came under the rule of the modernizing Liberal dictatorships. In the twentieth century, all, to varying degrees, have wrestled with the challenge of incorporating a larger portion of the masses into the political system.
    [Show full text]
  • The Age of Revolution 1789-1848.Pdf
    The Age of Revolution i789-1848 ERIC HOBSBAWM VINTAGE BOOKS A Division of Random House, Inc. New York FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, AUGUST 1996 Copyright © 1962 by E. J. Hobsbawm All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain in hardcover by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, in 1962. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hobsbawm, E.J. (EricJ.), 1917- The Age of Revolution, 1789-1898 / Eric Hobsbawm.—1st Vintage Books ed. p. cm. Originally published: London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1962. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-679-77253-7 1. Europe—History—1789-1900. 2. Industrial revolution. I. Title. D299.H6 1996 940.2'7—dc20 96-7765 CIP Random House Web address: http://www.randomhouse.com/ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 CONTENTS PREFACE IX INTRODUCTION I PART I. DEVELOPMENTS I THE WORLD IN THE I780S 7 2 THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 27 3 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 53 4 WAR 77 5 PEACE 99 6 REVOLUTIONS log 7 NATIONALISM I32 PART //. RESULTS 8 LAND 149 9 TOWARDS AN INDUSTRIAL WORLD L68 IO THE CAREER OPEN TO TALENT 182 II THE LABOURING POOR 200 12 IDEOLOGY: RELIGION 217 13 IDEOLOGY: SECULAR 234 14 THE ARTS 253 15 SCIENCE 277 16 CONCLUSION: TOWARDS 1848 297 MAPS 309 NOTES 321 BIBLIOGRAPHY 332 INDEX 339 MAPS page i Europe in 1789 309 2 Europe in 1810 310 3 Europe in 1840 311 4 World Population in Large Cities: 1800-1850 31a 5 Western Culture 1815-1848: Opera 314 6 The States of Europe in 1836 316 7 Workshop of the World 317 8 Industrialization of Europe: 1850 318 9 Spread of French Law 320 PREFACE THIS book traces the transformation of the world between 1789 and 1848 insofar as it was due to what is here called the 'dual revolu­ tion'—the French Revolution of 1789 and the contemporaneous (Brit­ ish) Industrial Revolution.
    [Show full text]
  • THE WAR of INDEPENDENCE OR the AMERICAN REVOLUTION THAT WAS NO REVOLUTION: ANOTHER LOOK at the REASONS a Thesis Presented to Th
    THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE OR THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION THAT WAS NO REVOLUTION: ANOTHER LOOK AT THE REASONS A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences Florida Gulf Coast University In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts By Hans G. Jansen 2013 APPROVAL SHEET This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of The requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History _________________________________ Hans G. Jansen Approved _________________________________ Michael Epple, Ph.D. __________________________________ Eric A. Strahorn, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Frances Davey, Ph.D. III TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS IV INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1. REVOLUTION OR WAR OF INDEPENDENCE? 6 The Definition of Revolution 7 Are These Revolutionaries? 11 Samuel Adams – Revolutionary? 14 Possible Revolutionary Elements 16 Conclusion 19 CHAPTER 2. TOWARD INDEPENDENCE 21 The Puritans 21 The French and Indian War / The Seven Years’ War 24 The Colonial Assemblies during the French and Indian War 27 Conclusion 30 CHAPTER 3. REASONS FOR THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 32 The Acts of Parliament after 1763 33 Conclusion 51 CHAPTER 4. WHY THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE SUCCEEDED 54 The Only Effective Government 56 Geography and Communication 67 The Importance of Europe in the American War of Independence 76 France and Spain 77 The Netherlands and the League of Armed Neutrality 81 Conclusion 83 Addendum 85 OVERALL CONCLUSION 107 BIBLIOGRAPHY 110 IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When, at the age of 62, I decided to study history at Florida Gulf Coast University, it was not a spontaneous decision. In my younger years, I had pursued business and languages in order to make enough money to marry and raise a family.
    [Show full text]
  • Every Great Revolution Is a Civil War
    Every Great Revolution Is a Civil War The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Armitage, David. 2015. Every Great Revolution Is a Civil War. In Scripting Revolution: A Historical Approach to the Comparative Study of Revolutions, eds. Keith Michael Baker and Dan Edelstein. Stanford University Press: 57–68, 269–71. Published Version http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=24689 Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:29425101 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Open Access Policy Articles, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#OAP Every Great Revolution is a Civil War DAVID ARMITAGE Originality and novelty define the modern script of revolution. That script was original in the sense that it had identifiable beginnings that have been precisely located in France in 1789 when “revolution was revolutionised”. And it was novel because in that year “the French imagined a radical break with the past achieved by the conscious will of human actors, an inaugural moment for a drama of change and transformation projected indefinitely into the future.” After 1789, revolution in the singular replaced revolutions in the plural. What had been understood before 1789 as unavoidable features of nature, as predetermined astronomical cycles, or as eternal recurrences in human affairs became instead voluntary, transformative, and repeatable: revolution as fact gave way to revolution as act.
    [Show full text]