The Anatomy of Revolution Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of England, France, and Russia

Description

This study aims to update a classic of comparative revolutionary analysis, Crane Brinton's 1938 study The Anatomy of Revolution. It invokes the latest research and theoretical writing in history, political science, and political sociology to compare and contrast, in their successive phases, the English Revolution of 1640-60, the French Revolution of 1789-99, and the Russian Revolution of 1917-29. This book intends to do what no other comparative analysis of revolutionary change has yet adequately done. It not only progresses beyond Marxian socioeconomic "class" analysis and early "revisionist" stresses on short-term, accidental factors involved in revolutionary causation and process; it also finds ways to reconcile "state-centered" structuralist accounts of the three major European revolutions with postmodernist explanations of those upheavals that play up the centrality of human agency, revolutionary discourse, mentalities, ideology, and political culture. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Preface Introduction 1 Ancien Régimes Geopolitical Dilemmas Unresolved The Domestic Inadequacies of Divine-Right Monarchy Three “Prodromal Crises”: 1628-29, 1905, and 1771-74 2 Transitions Late Winters of Discontent Foreign/Domestic Interactions and Absolutist State Collapses The Popular Revolutionary Awakening: Classes and Masses 3 Revolutionary “Honeymoons”? The Precarious Gains of Reform Reform, Polarization, and Radicalization Three “Points of No Return” 4 The “Revolutionizing” of the Revolutions Chronologies of Radicalization War and the Radicalization of Politics Élitists and Non-Élitists: Uneasy Partners (?) in Deepening Revolutions 5 Revolutionary Climacterics The Foreign and Domestic Dialectics of “Terror” The Reconsolidation of State Power Disillusionment on the Extreme Left 6 Thermidor? The Complexities and Contradictions of Thermidor Thermidorian Geopolitics: Expansionism and Expediency Thermidorian “Crises of Legitimacy” Conclusion Suggestions for Further Reading General Revolutionary Theory and Revolutionary Historiography Ancien Régimes Transitions: Breakthroughs to Revolution Revolutionary “Honeymoons?” The “Revolutionizing” of the Revolutions Revolutionary Climacterics Thermidor? “Revolutions from Below” and “Revolutions from Above” Index