Rebellions And Revolutions

What can the great crises of the past teach us about contemporary revolutions? Arguing from an exciting and original perspective, Goldstone suggests that great revolutions were the product of 'ecological crises' that occurred when inflexible political, economic, and social institutions were overwhelmed by the cumulative pressure of population growth on limited available resources. Moreover, he contends that the causes of the great revolutions of Europe—the English and French revolutions—were similar to those of the great rebellions of Asia, which shattered dynasties in Ottoman Turkey, China, and Japan. The author observes that revolutions and rebellions have more often produced a crushing state orthodoxy than liberal institutions, leading to the conclusion that perhaps it is vain to expect revolution to bring democracy and economic progress. Instead, contends Goldstone, the path to these goals must begin with respect for individual liberty rather than authoritarian movements of 'national liberation.' Arguing that the threat of revolution is still with us, Goldstone urges us to heed the lessons of the past. He sees in the United States a repetition of the behavior patterns that have led to internal decay and international decline in the past, a situation calling for new leadership and careful attention to the balance between our consumption and our resources. Meticulously researched, forcefully argued, and strikingly original, Revolutions and Rebellions in the Early Modern World is a tour de force by a brilliant young scholar. It is a book that will surely engender much discussion and debate.

This is a study of China from the 1800s to the present day. It focuses on China's problems of development - the decay and collapse of the Chinese Empire, its failure to recover in the first half of the twentieth century, and its rapid emergence in world affairs since the Communist Party Revolution of 1949. This new edition examines economic growth, updates Chinese foreign policy, provides a revised account of the Tiananmen Incident, and brings the chronology completely up to date.

"In the 20th and 21st century revolutions have become more urban, often less violent, but also more frequent and more transformative of the international order. Whether it is the revolutions against Communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR; the "color revolutions" across Asia, Europe and North Africa; or the religious revolutions in Iran, Afghanistan, and Syria; today's revolutions are quite different from those of the past. Modern theories of revolution have therefore replaced the older class-based theories with more varied, dynamic, and contingent models of social and political change. This new edition updates the history of revolutions, from Classical Greece and Rome to the Revolution of Dignity in the Ukraine, with attention to the changing types and outcomes of revolutionary struggles. It also presents the latest advances in the theory of revolutions, including the issues of revolutionary waves, revolutionary leadership, international influences, and the likelihood of revolutions to come. This volume provides a brief but comprehensive introduction to the nature of revolutions and their role in global history"--

Anatomy of Rebellion provides an understanding of four rebellions that will make clear the factors that are crucial in the development of other rebellions. Seeking a political pattern in the process of rebellion, Claude Welch, Jr., has investigated four large-scale rural uprisings that came close to becoming revolutions: the Taiping rebellion in China 1850-64, the Telengana uprising in India of 1946-51, the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya of 1952-56, the Kwilu uprising in Zaire of 1963-65. Weaving the facts of these rebellions with theories about political violence, Welch follows the rebellions through the initial stages of discontent to the explosion of violence to the suppression of the uprisings. He then challenges explanations of political violence, both Marxist and non-Marxist, that other scholars have proposed. Rebellions have not been studied as thoroughly as the major successful revolutions, although the frequency of rebellions in the modern world is not likely to diminish. Rural dwellers' discontents are still clashing with central governments' ambitions; Anatomy of Rebellion clarifies how this volatile type of political violence occurs.

Why do revolutions happen? Decades of social science research have brought us little closer to understanding where, when and amongst whom they occur. In this groundbreaking book, Eric Selbin argues that we need to look beyond the economic, political and social structural conditions to the thoughts and feelings of the people who make revolutions. In particular, he argues, we need to understand the stories people relay and rework of past injustices and struggles as they struggle in the present towards a better future. Ranging from the French Revolution to the Battle for Seattle, via Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam and Nicaragua, Selbin makes the case that it is myth, memory and mimesis which create, maintain and extend such stories. Revolution, Rebellion, Resistance identifies four kinds of enduring revolutionary story - Civilizing and Democratizing, The Social Revolution, Freedom and Liberation and The Lost and Forgotten - which do more than report on events, they catalyse changing the world.

Revolutions upset the existing international order. But not all revolutions upset it equally. In Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves, Mark N. Katz focuses on what is arguably the most disruptive kind of revolutionary wave: the kind that spreads by sparking "affiliate revolutions" in other countries. Katz compares three revolutionary waves--Marxist-Leninist, Arab nationalist, and Islamic fundamentalist--to unearth the complex relationships of revolutionary actors within them. He also makes predictions on the fate of the Islamic fundamentalist wave, arguing that it suffers from the same internal problems and contradictions that led to the collapse of the Marxist-Leninist and Arab nationalist revolutions. Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves is an outstanding contribution to the study of revolution, Middle East politics, and international relations.

Rebels and Rulers, 1500-1660 is a comparative historical study of revolution in the greatest royal states of Western Europe during the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries. Revolution as a general problem and the causes and character of revolution in early modern Europe have been among the most widely discussed and debated topics in history and the social sciences since the 1940s. Although the subject of social and political unrest and revolution in the early modern period has received much attention, and despite the existence of a very large literature devoted to particular revolutions of the time, no one has attempted the broad comparative synthesis that is given by Professor Zarogin in this study. Volume I of Rebels and Rulers presents a critical discussion of different concepts and interpretations of revolution, including Marxism. It reviews previous attempts to deal with early modern revolutions and suggests a typology appropriate to the latter. It then provides an extensive survey of the historical context in which these revolutions occurred: the social structures of orders and estates, the political system of monarchy and the process of absolutist state building, economic trends and fluctuations, and ideology. The volume concludes with a detailed treatment of peasant rebellions, especially in Germany and France, and with an equally close look at urban rebellions in France and the possessions of the Spanish monarchy, including the revolution of the Comuneros in Castile.

The survey resumes the comparative history with an analysis of provincial rebellions in Early Modern Europe. It concludes with an extended treatment of the epoch's four major revolutionary civil wars. (Vol. 1 covered Society, States, and Early Modern Revolutions: Agrarian and Urban Rebellions)

From 1795 through 1800, a series of revolts rocked Curaçao, a small but strategically located Dutch colony just off the South American continent. A combination of internal and external factors produced these uprisings, in which free and enslaved islanders particiapted with various objectives. A major slave revolt in August 1795 was the opening salvo for these tumultuous five years. While this revolt is a well-known episode in Curaçao an history, its wider Caribbean and Atlantic context is much less known. Also lacking are studies sketching a clear picture of the turbulent five years that followed. It is in these dark corners that this volume aims to shed light. The events discussed in this book fall squarely within the Age of Revolutions, the period that began with the onset of the American Revolution in 1775, was punctuated by the demise of the ancien régime in France, saw the establishment of a black state in Haiti, and witnessed the collapse of Spanish rule in mainland America. All of these revolutions seemed to converge by the late eighteenth century in Curaçao. The seven contributions in this volume provide new insights in the nature of slave resistance in the Age of Revolutions, the remarkable flows of people and ideas in the late eighteenth-century Caribbean, and the unique local history of Curaçao.