With apologies for my English English…
A very interesting recent post exploring how we might think about the “contagious” nature of “revolutionary fervor” in what have sometimes been called “domino” processes of revolutionary outbreak. Continue reading Revolutionary Fervo(u)r
Tariq Ali has some pertinent comments on the problem of reaching too eagerly for the label of ‘revolution’ in the context of events in the arc from Libya to Syria. But he is clearly operating with a schema of revolution – “a transfer of power from one social class (or even a layer) to another that leads to fundamental change” – that raises as many questions as it answers. Is state power actually held by a ‘social class’ in the sundry life-presidencies and dictatorships of the world – the Portuguese Estado novo in the 1970s, the Marcos regime in the Philippines in the 1980s, Mubarak in Egypt? Were the Soviet-bloc regimes overthrown so dramatically in 1989 a ‘layer’? Did the indisputably fundamental change that came over Iran in 1979 emerge from social conflict, or change the social basis of state power? It is not obvious that any of these questions can be answered positively, yet for most of these situations, the term ‘revolution’ is absolutely established to describe their transformations.
Another network member introduces themself:
Maxime Hermant: I am a French PhD student at Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense (Paris 10) under the direction of Pr. Monique Cottret. I am working on the religious issue in Provins – a town of 5000 inhabitants to the East of Paris – from the Revolution until the end of the Napoleonic Empire. My research is based on microstoria and the impact of religious legislation in a small locality that was not marked by acts of violence.
David Andress’s review of Marisa Linton’s new book Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship and Authenticity in the French Revolution (Oxford UP, 2013) is just out.
Choosing Terror takes a new approach to the French Revolution by investigating how its leadership – men such as Robespierre, Brissot and Desmoulins, and women such as Madame Roland – experienced the events of 1789-94, and how their private and political worlds interacted with each other. Continue reading Leading revolutions
I recently returned from a workshop at the University of Pretoria, organised as part of the project The Comparative History of Political Engagement in Western and African Societies led by a team at the University of Sheffield. As well as enjoying a very hospitable welcome, I also had a very stimulating series of discussions, which have given me much food for thought about further extension of the debate on ‘revolution’ in the modern world.
While recent events have made us focus attention on ‘bottom-up’ revolutionary upheavals, the role of spontaneous interactions and technology in popular mobilizations, and the general question of ‘crowds’ and their agency, a closer look at African examples reminds us that ‘top-down’ modes of revolutionary activism also continue to have a strong role to play. Continue reading Revolutions, Liberation Movements and Peoples in Europe and Africa
