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History Notes Revolutions Notes

Revolutions Notes

Updated Revolutions Notes

Revolutions Notes

Revolutions

Approximately 62 pages

Complete bullet-point notes on the historical approach to revolutions - what they are, how they form, why they fail or succeed. The theoretical approach is balanced with an examination of five separate revolutions - France in 1789, Europe in 1848, Japan in 1868, Paris in 1871, and Russia in 1905....

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Revolution

Contents

  • Past questions

  • Quotes

    • Historiography

    • Revolutions

    • 1905

  • Chronology

    • Events

  • Historiography

    • Etymology

    • Definition

    • Revolutionary success

    • Economics

    • Social preconditions

    • The military

    • Revolutionary models

    • The people

    • Ideology

    • Violence

  • The French Revolution, 1789

    • Origins

    • Events

    • Outcome

  • The Year of Revolutions, 1848

    • Origins

    • Events

    • Outcome

  • The Meiji Revolution, 1868

    • Origins

    • Events

    • Outcome

  • The Paris Commune, 1871

    • Origins

    • Events

    • Outcome

  • The 1905 Revolution, 1905

    • Origins

    • Events

    • Outcome

Past questions

  • Does a political revolution require a legitimising ideology?

    • Specimen paper

  • Does a revolution require a legitimising ideology?

    • Tutorial essay

  • How far do revolutions need popular support in order to succeed??

    • Tutorial essay

  • Are revolutions inherently violent?

    • Trinity 2013

  • Is popular support crucial to the success of revolutions?

    • Trinity 2012

  • In what circumstances do political revolutions not result in the establishment of dictatorial governments?

    • Trinity 2011

  • Has fear been the motor of revolutions?

    • Trinity 2010

  • How much has the success or failure of revolutions been determined by the presence of ideology?

    • Trinity 2010

  • Are revolutions a product of rising expectations?

    • Trinity 2009

  • Why have counter-revolutions succeeded or failed?

    • Trinity 2009

  • Under what circumstances have peasants become a revolutionary force?

    • Trinity 2008

  • Has religious belief supported revolutionary sentiment?

    • Trinity 2008

  • Does comparative study of revolutions help us to understand why they happen?

    • Trinity 2007

  • Do political revolutions change national cultures?

    • Trinity 2007

  • Are structural crises a pre-requisite for a successful political revolution?

    • Trinity 2006

  • Do social and/or political revolutions require an ideology in order to legitimate themselves?

    • Trinity 2006

  • Have revolutionary ideologies been invariably short-lived?

    • Trinity 2005

Quotes

Historiography

  • A ‘violent and total change in a political system’.

    • David Robertson.

  • The ‘seizure of state power through violent means by the leaders of a mass movement, when that power is subsequently used to initiate major processes of social reform”.

    • Anthony Giddens.

  • ‘Unsuccessful attempts to overthrow government, to gain control of the political system, to bring about far-reaching change; none of these is a revolution.’

    • Peter Calvert.

  • Revolutions are ‘rapid, basic transformations in a society’s state and class structure’.

    • Theda Skocpol.

  • Only revolutionaries with ‘a reasonable chance of success’ are revolutionaries.

    • Michael S Kimmel.

  • The goal of a revolution is the ‘foundation of freedom’.

    • Hannah Ardent.

  • ‘But administrative-military breakdowns alone were not enough to cause social revolutions.’

    • Theda Skocpol.

  • “Nous sommes à la veille d’une révolution dans les beaux-arts”.

    • Stendhal, 1824.

  • That ‘revolutions have never taken place, and never will take place, save with the aid of an important faction of the army’.

    • Gustave le Bon.

  • ‘The balance between government and opposition will determine the outcome of armed conflict, not the numbers engaged on one side or another’.

    • William A Gamson.

Revolutions

  • That ‘we could not contain the people’s fury; if we had gone too far, they would have exterminated us’.

    • French soldier in Paris, diary entry, May 1789.

  • “They are laying the country waste”.

    • Lieutenant Villiers, 1795.

  • A ‘declaration of total war’.

    • TCW Blanning on the Levée en Masse.

  • “From this day and this place commenced a new epoch in the world’s history”.

    • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Valmy, 20th September 1792.

  • The Revolution “set in motion new means and new forces”.

    • Carl von Clausewitz.

  • The ‘rape of Europe’.

    • Charles Esdaile.

  • “You must ensure, as a matter of principle, that war feeds war”.

    • Napoléon to Marshal Soult in 1810.

  • “The French soldier is not an automaton”.

    • Report to the Military Committee of the Constituent Assembly.

  • “Les aristocrates à la lanterne!”

    • Cries of the mutineers at Brest.

  • “It is revolution, not insurrection”.

    • The Captain of Le Northumberland, when asked if his crew was in mutiny.

  • “The People of Paris to All Europe: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”.

    • Carving on the French throne in 1848.

  • “Our first priority is to save our world: if we are forced to permit trade for now… at a later time we will be able to redeem our honour”.

    • Sugita Gempaku.

  • I am someone who can “bring fifty men-of-war to these shores”.

    • Townsend Harris, American consul-general at Shimoda.

  • It would “disturb the ideas of our people and make it impossible to preserve lasting tranquillity”.

    • Emperor Kōmei on the Harris Treaty.

  • To “honour the emperor, expel the barbarian”

    • Isolationist slogan.

  • “The price of things is daily increasing,” because of foreign products.

    • The shogun’s council.

  • Japan must “follow the example of the foreigners in using the profits from trade to construct many ships and guns”.

    • Shogun Tokugawa Iemochi, 1865.

  • A promise ‘to unite the hearts of all people regardless of rank’.

    • Emperor Meiji’s Charter Oath, April 1868.

1905

  • They are “senseless dreams”.

    • Nikolas II on the calls for a national gentry assembly.

  • “Stores are empty. Factories have curtailed production.”

    • A newspaper in Warsaw, 1904

  • That “there exist two Russias… and what pleases one is quite sure to displease the other”.

    • Liberal leader PN Milukov, 1905.

  • “The voice of the zemstvo is the voice of life”.

    • The Chernigov zemstvo.

  • “There was a feeling of burning shame and undeserved injury.”

    • Liberal activist NI Astrov.

  • That “the Port Arthur debacle promises to shatter the foundations of the régime of Nikolas II”.

    • Georgi Plekhanov.

  • “We are living at a time of extreme animation of national and nationalist feelings among all peoples inhabiting the Russia Empire”.

    • An intellectual, 1910.

  • The gentry were “even incapable of simply residing in the countryside”.

    • A 1905 report to the St Petersburg noble...

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