1 MALS 78500/ HIST 71000/ PSC 71902 Comparative Revolutions: From 1688 to the Arab 3 credits, Monday, 4:15 PM - 6:15 PM Professor Helena Rosenblatt [email protected] Office Hours: Skype/Zoom by appointment DRAFT: MINOR CHANGES MAY BE MADE Course Description What makes a revolution a revolution? Scholarship has recently moved away from social- scientific, Marxist-inspired explanations to approaches that explore how revolutionaries themselves understood what they were doing, how they interpreted their contexts, and how their ideas shaped their actions. With such questions in mind, we will look at and compare a number of revolutions, including the so-called “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, the American, French and Haitian Revolutions, the Revolutions of 1848, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the recent Arab Spring. What characterics did these revolutions share? What mught they have learned and borrowed from each other? Is there something we can call a revolutionary “script”? Learning Objectives: Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to • Display a grasp of the key theoretical questions involved in comparing “revolutions” • Read texts critically and effectively • Identify and summarize ideas in texts in an articulate and persuasive manner, verbally and in writing • Display a grasp of the history of the revolutions studied over the course of the term. Requirements: • Regular class participation demonstrating careful reading of all assigned texts: 30% • One to two paragraph summaries of the weekly readings, paying particular attention to the argument of the author as to the nature and/or course of the revolution in question. Paragraphs must be submitted to the class and instructor via email before 8 pm on the Sunday before class (TEN times over the course of the term)—your grade will be outstanding, very good, good, deficient. You may get two “deficients” without penalty if you re-write them after class: 20% • A 10 minute class presentation on a week’s reading—a virtual appointment with the instructor to discuss your presentation ahead of time is highly recommended: 20% • Final paper: A 10 page paper (12 pt double-spaced Times Roman) comparing three revolutions, on the theme “Is there something we can call a revolutionary “script”?—a 2 virtual appointment with the instructor to discuss your paper before you begin writing it is highly recommended: 30% PLEASE ASK INSTRUCTOR IF YOU HAVE DIFFICULTY FINDING THE READINGS 1. Introduction to the Course: Comparative History and Theories of Revolution (8/31) The scholarship analyzing “revolution” from a theoretical perspective is vast. I will introduce you to some of what I regard as the most important perspectives at our first meeting. For those interested in pursuing the topic further there is a selection of recommended readings at the end of this syllabus. 2. The Glorious Revolution, 1688 (9/14) Steve Pincus, 1688 The First Modern Revolution, Yale University Press, 2011. 3. The Age of Democratic Revolutions (9/21) R.R. Palmer, The Age of Democratic Revolution, Princeton Classics, 2014. pages to be assigned NO CLASS ON 9/28. GC CLOSED. 4. The American Revolution (10/3) Jack Rakove, Revolutionaries, Mariner Books, 2010 or Bernard Bailyn The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Belknap Press, 1992 (students will choose one.) 5. Impact of the American Revolution NOTE DIFFERENT DATE (10/14) Bernard Bailyn, To Begin the World Anew, Vintage, 2004, last chapter. David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History, Harvard University Press, 2008, pp. 1-139. 6. The French Revolution (10/19) Jeremy D. Popkin, A Short History of the French Revolution – Sixth Edition, Routledge, 2016, pages to be assigned. Georges Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution Princeton University Press, 2019, pages to be assigned. 3 Andrew Jainchill, 1685 and the French Revolution,” in The French Revolution in Global Perspective, Suzanne Desan, Lynn Hunt and William Max Nelson, eds., Cornell University Press, pp. 57-70. 7. The Terror (10/26) Mona Ozouf, “War and Terror in French Revolutionary Discourse (1792-1794),” The Journal of Modern History 56, 4 (December 1984): 579-597. François Furet, Revolutionary France, Wiley Blackwell, 1995, chapter 3, “The Jacobin Republic.” Colin Lucas, “Revolutionary Violence, the People and the Terror” in K. Baker, ed., The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, vol 4, Oxford University Press, 1994. Timothy Tackett, The Coming of the Terror, Harvard University Press, 2015. 8. The Haitian Revolution (11/2) C.L.R James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. Miranda Spieler, “Abolition and Reenslavement in the Caribbean. The Revolution in French Guiana,” in Joseph Klaits and Michael H. Haltzel, The Global Ramifications of the French Revolution (Cambridge UniversityPress, 1994), p. 132-137. 9. The Impact of the Haitian Revolution (11/9) I will narrow this list down and we will divide them up and discuss in class. Each student will read three. Articles in Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, David Geggus ed., University of South Carolina Press, 2002: David Brion Davis, “Impact of the French and Haitian Revolutions”; Seymour Drescher, “The Limits of Example”; Robin Blackburn “The Force of Example”; Simon Newman, “American Political Culture and the French and Haitian Revolutions: Nathaniel Cutting and the Jeffersonian Republicans”; Laurent Dubois, “The Promise of Revolution: Saint-Domingue and the Struggle for Autonomy in Guadeloupe, 1797-1802”; Matt Childs, “A Black French General Arrived to Conquer the Island”: Images of the Haitian Revolution in Cuba’s 1812 Aponte Rebellion.” And David Patrick Geggus, “The French and Haitian Revolutions and Resistance to Slavery in the Americas: An Overview,” Revue Française d’Histoire d’Outre-Mer 76 (1989), pp. 107-24; Idem, “Slavery, War, and Revolution in the Greater Caribbean, 1789–1815,” in A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean, eds. David Barry Gaspar and David Patrick Geggus (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 1–50. 4 10. The Revolutions of 1848 (11/16) John Breuilly, “The Revolutions of 1848” in Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West 1560-1991, ed. David Parker, Routledge, 2000, p. 109-131. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifest, ed. John E. Toews, Bedford/St Martin’s Press, 1999, introduction, text, and “Marx and the Lessons of Revolution I” and “Marx and the Lessons of Revolution II.” 11. The Russian Revolution (11/23) The Russian Revolution, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Oxford University Press, 2017. Steve Smith, “Writing the History of the Russian Revolution after the Fall of Communism,” Martin A. Miller, ed., The Russian Revolution: The Essential Readings (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 275-277. 12. The French Revolution in Russia (11/30) Albert Mathiez “Bolshevism and Jacobinism” (1920), available at https://www.marxists.org/history/france/revolution/mathiez/1920/bolshevism-jacobinism.htm#n1 Arno Mayer, The Furies. Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions, Princeton University Press 2002, pages to be assigned. One of these articles: Dmitry Shlapentok,“The French Revolution in Russian Intellectual Life, 1789-1922,” in Joseph Klaits and Michael H. Haltzel, The Global Ramifications of the French Revolution (Cambridge UniversityPress, 1994), pp. 72-88; Shlapentokh, “The French Revolution in Russian Political Life: The Case of the Interaction Between History and Politics,” in Revue des Etudes Slaves 61 (1989), p. 131-42; John Keep, “1917: The Tyranny of Paris over Petrograd,” in Soviet Studies 20:1 (july 1968), pp. 22-34; Shlapentokh, “The Images of the French Revolution in the February and Bolshevik Revolutions,” in Russian History 16:1 (1989): pp. 31-54. 13. The Arab Spring (12/7) Marc Lynch, The Arab Uprising, Public Affairs, 2012. Recommended: Documentary: “The Square” 14. 1789 and 1848 in the Arab Spring (12/14) Koert Debeuf “The Arab Spring is far from over. Like the French Revolution, it could play out over decades and reshape the region.” 5 https://www.politico.eu/article/arab-spring-not-over-repercussions-for-middle-east- region-unrest/ Koert Debeuf, “The Arab Spring seven years on” https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/opinion/koert-debeuf/the-arab-spring-seven-years- on-125371 yes. compares Kurt Weyland “The Arab Spring: Why the Surprising Similarities with the Revolutionary Wave of 1848?” in Perspectives on Politics, Vol 10, issue 4 (Dec 2012), pp. 917-934. Goldstone, Jack. 2011. “Understanding the Revolutions of 2011.” Foreign Affairs 90(3), pp. 8– 16. David Bell, “Why We Can’t Rule out an Egyptian Reign of Terror: A Historian’s Look at Revolution and Its Discontents,” Foreign Policy, 7 February 2011. Further Thoughts: Rebecca Spang “How Revolutions Happen” (on Black Lives matter--and the possibility of revolution today in America): https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/revolution-doesnt-look-like- revolution/613801/ Daniel Chirot, You Say You Want a Revolution? Radical Idealism and its Tragic Consequences, Princeton University Press, 2020. Reading on Theories of Revolution: Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (Viking, 1965) Rod Aya, “Theories of Revolution Reconsidered: Contrasting Methods of Collective Violence,” in Theory and Society 8:1 (July 1979), pp. 40-45. Crane Brinton, Anatomy of Revolution Dan Edelstein, “Do We Want a Revolution without Revolution? Reflections on Political Authority,” French Historical