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Prolegomena to the Comparative History of Revolution in Early Modern Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Perez Zagorin
Perez Zagorin
Affiliation:
The University of Rochester
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Extract

There are at least two reasons which might be cited for undertaking the historical and comparative investigation of revolution. The first is the desire to make a revolution, the second is the desire to prevent it. Perhaps nearly everybody is susceptible to the one reason or the other, but there is yet a third reason that gives the study of revolution an outstanding interest and significance, even though its appeal is doubtless much more limited than the first two. This is that the understanding of revolution is an indispensable condition for the fuller knowledge and understanding of society. Depending on how we define it, revolution may be common or uncommon, frequent or rare. But in the case of societies, nations, and communities that have experienced revolution, we cannot claim to understand them adequately without understanding their revolutions. In a deep and therefore a non-tautological sense, it is true that every people gets the revolution it deserves and equally true that it gets only the revolutions of which it is capable.

Type
The Analysis of Revolution
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , April 1976 , pp. 151 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1976

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References

This paper is part of a larger study. I am grateful to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and the National Endowment for the Humanities (under Grant H5426) for support in carrying on the research to which it is related.

1 Cited in Gérard, A., La Révolution Française, mythes et interprétations (1789–1970) (Paris: 1970), p. 111.Google Scholar

2 For an historical account of the idea and terminology of revolution with references to the literature, cf. Zagorin, Perez, The Court and the Country (London: 1969),Google Scholar ch. 1, Lasky, M., 'The Birth of a Metaphor: on the Origins of Utopia and Revolution', Encounter, XXXIV, 2–3 (1970),Google Scholar and Gilbert, F., ‘Revolution‘, Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Wiener, P., ed. (New York: 1973).Google Scholar

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6 Lewis, W., The Art of Being Ruled, 1926, in Tomlin, op. cit., 101–3.Google Scholar Cf. the whole section ‘The oppressive respectability of “revolution.”’ In Lewis's long war with intellectual orthodoxies, this was a regular theme (though it sometimes led him into dangerous and perverse opinions like his flirtation with fascist doctrines). In 1952 he wrote that ‘a XXth century esprit libre would be a man who had liberated himself from the dead hand of the new’. The Writer and the Absolute (London: 1952, p. 153.Google Scholar

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12 A contrary view is advanced by John Dunn, who declares that ‘There are necessarily ascriptive as well as descriptive components even in the very identification of a set of events constituting...a revolution’ and that ‘revolution is an actor's concept, not a purely external, naturalistic identification‘. Hence he holds that ‘the value-free study of revolutions is a logical impossibility for those who live in the real world’ (Dunn, J., Modern Revolutions [Cambridge: 1972], pp. ix, 226, 2).Google Scholar To this argument the best answer that can be given is that in the requisite sense the value-free study of revolution, although very difficult, is perhaps not impossible and that every effort should be made to conduct the investigation on that basis. At any rate, there is no need for the student to consent to the self-conceptions and rep resentations of the historical agents; for him the ideas of the agents are vital data but they cannot be the last word.

13 Cf. supra, p. 152.

14 Review of Beasley, W. G., The Meiji Restoration (Stanford: 1973), in TimesLiterary Supplement, 21 12 1973, 1556.Google Scholar

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17 Marx, K., The class struggles in France 1848–50, in Selected Works, Adoratsky, V., ed. (New York, n.d.), II, p. 283.Google Scholar In The German Ideology, written 1845–1846, Marx and Engels declared that ‘revolution is the driving force of history …‘ (Eng.trans., New York: 1939), p. 29.Google ScholarPubMed

18 I take the description of Marx's world perspective as an ‘eschatology’ from the sympathetic and well-informed study by Avineri, S., The Social and Politico Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge: 1969), pp. 250 ff.Google Scholar

19 Cf. Marx's well-known statement of the materialist conception of history in the preface to A contribution to the critique of political economy, trans, from 2nd German ed. (Chicago: 1904). (The first edition appeared in 1859, the second, published by Kautsky, in 1897.)Google Scholar

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21 Débray, R., The Chilean revolution. Conversations with Allende (New York: 1971), pp. 116, 81.Google Scholar The principal theme of these conversations is whether Chile can achieve a peaceful transition to socialism. Débray's attitude is noticeably sceptical and appears to be justified by the subsequent overthrow of Allende's government in a military coup and the tragic death of the president himself. A curious aspect of the discussion is Débray's intellectual condescension towards Allende.

22 Woddis, J., New Theories of Revolution (New York: 1972). This work is a defense of the revolutionary record of the communist parties and a critique of the ideas of Frantz Fanon, Regis Débray, and Herbert Marcuse. One of its main arguments is that these theorists either underestimate or have lost faith altogether in the leading role of the working class within the revolutionary process. The debate deals with the strategy and main forces in contemporary and future revolutions, not with the nature of revolution itself.Google Scholar

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24 Tse-tung, Mao, ‘Long live Leninism’, Peking Review, April 1960,Google Scholar reprinted in Mendel, A., ed., Essential Works of Marxism (New York: 1965), p. 545.Google Scholar

25 Laslett, P., The World We Have Lost, 2nd ed. (New York: 1971), pp. 159–60, 167, 171.Google Scholar

26 Cf. Marx's letters to Wedemeyer and Engels referring to the importance of the French bourgeois historians in discovering the significance of class. He describes Thierry as the ‘father of the “class struggle” in French historical writing‘. Marx, K. and Engels, F., Selected Correspondence (New York: 1942), pp. 56, 71.Google Scholar On the influence of these historians, as well as of Hegel and the Saint-Simonians, in the conception of the contrast between feudal and bourgeois society and the transition from the one to the other, cf. Brunner, O., ‘Feudalismus. Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte,‘ in Neue Wege der Verfassungs-und Sozialgeschichte, 2nd rev. ed. (Göttingen: 1968.)Google Scholar

27 Marx, K., The Civil War in France in Selected Works, II.Google Scholar For Lenin's invocation of the lessons of the Commune, cf. especially State and Revolution, 1917.

28 Cf. Engels, Introduction, written in 1895, to Marx's The Class Struggles in France 1848–50 in Selected Works, II, pp. 173–74.Google Scholar

29 Cf. Engel's Preface to the 3rd German ed., 1883, of Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte in Selected Works, II, p. 314.Google Scholar

30 Gérard, A., op. cit., pp. 80–1.Google Scholar

31 Furet, F., ‘Le catechisme de la R‘evolution Françhise’, Annales É. S. C., XXVI, 2 (1971), 259.Google Scholar

32 Cf. Gérard, A., op. cit., p. 84.Google Scholar Isaac Deutscher, Trotsky's biographer and a Marxist historian of Trotskyite persuasion, has contended that every step in the history of the Russian revolution must be seen ‘through the French prism’, (cited in ibid.).

33 A well-known example is Brinton, Crane, The Anatomy of Revolution (New York: 1938),CrossRefGoogle Scholar a comparative study of the English, American, French, and Russian revolutions. The uniformities Brinton finds among these four revolutions strike me as largely extrapolations from the French case, without which it is unlikely that he would have arrived at them. He refers to the French revolution as ‘a kind of pattern revolution,‘ ed. 1957, p. 3.

34 Cf. The German ideology, pp. 28, 29.Google Scholar

35 Walsh, W. H., An Introduction to Philosophy of History, 3rd ed. (London: 1967), p. 28.Google Scholar

36 Various definitions of revolutions are available, but there is no need to review them here. Many seem to me to be too exclusive, although I am aware that the one given above may be accused by critics of being too broad. I have based it on the conception adopted by Johnson, Chalmers, Revolution and the Social System (Stanford: 1964)Google Scholar and Revolutionary Change (Boston: 1966) and on suggestions in a private communication from Ted R. Gurr.Google Scholar

37 Calvert, P., A Study of Revolution (Oxford: 1970), pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

38 Violence may sometimes also be an element in reform. This is stressed by A. O. Hirschman, who observes that violence ‘has in part the function of signalling protest to the central authorities’, and that ‘an improvement in the signalling mechanism serves to increase pressure as much as an intensification of the problem’ (Journeys toward Progress, Anchor ed. [New York: 1965], pp. 334, 335). As a means of reform, however, violence is likely to be quite limited and its purpose is to secure the cooperation and compliance of elites and to accelerate the adaptive processes of the political system.Google Scholar

39 Johnson, C., Revolutionary Change, p. 7.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., p. 8.

41 Cited in Avineri, S., op. cit., p. 138n.Google Scholar

42 Cf. the contemporary texts in Dobson, R. B., ed., The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 (London: 1970), pp. 164–65, 172.Google Scholar

43 Villari, R., La rivolta antispagnola a Napoli, 2nd ed. (Bari: 1973), pp. 33–58.Google Scholar

44 In his famous novel, I promessi sposi, A. Manzoni gives a masterly description of a bread riot in Milan in 1629 which is a representation in fictional form of one of the classic types of disturbance at this period.

45 Cf. Porchnev, B., Les soulèvements populaires en France de 1623 à 1648, trans, from the Russian (Paris: 1963), ch. II and the chronological table ad finem listing insurrections in the towns.Google Scholar

46 Foisil, M., La réevoke des nu-pieds et les réevoltes normandes de 1639 (Paris: 1970), p. 138.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., pp. 141, 142.

48 Cf. the broad survey by Charles Tilly, ‘Collective violence in European perspective’, in Graham, H. D. and Gurr, T. R., The History of Violence in America (New York: 1969).Google Scholar Among the principal historical studies are those by Rudé, G.; cf. ‘The pre-industrial crowd,’ in Paris and London in the Eighteenth Century (New York: 1973),Google Scholar for a general statement of some of his findings. He points out here that the food riot was the main type of disturbance in pre-industrial society, though it occurred more often in villages and market towns than in cities. L. Tilly provides a useful analysis distinguishing several kinds of food riots in ‘The Food Riot as a Form of Political Conflict in France’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, II, 1 (1971).Google ScholarThompson, E., ‘The moral economy of the English crowd’, Past and Present, 50 (1971),CrossRefGoogle Scholar gives a vivid account stressing, as do other writers, the legitimating moral beliefs such as ‘just price’ or ‘just wage’ that actuated the crowd. Among numerous kinds of riots in early modern Europe besides food and tax riots were xenophobic and iconoclastic riots. The latter, important in relation to such sixteenth-century revolutions as the French civil wars and the Netherlands rebellion, deserves much more study; for a recent account, cf. Davis, N., ‘The Rites of Violence: Religious Riots in Sixteenth-Century France’, Past and Present, 59 (1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

49 It must also be noted that at some times and in some situations, as during recent years in the United States, riots may be connected with reform, to which they give an impulsion.

50 Johnson, Chalmers, Revolutionary Change, pp. 135–36.Google Scholar

51 Cf. Mollat, M. and Wolff, P., Ongles bleus, Jacques et Ciompi: les révolutions populaires en Europe aux XIVe et XVIe siècles (Paris: 1970),Google Scholar and the review by Rutenberg, V., ‘Révoltes ou révolution en Europe aux XIVeetXVIe siècles’, Annales É. S. C. XXVII, 3 (1972).Google Scholar

52 Elliott, J. H., ‘Revolution and Continuity in Early Modern History’, Past and Present, 42 (1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Mousnieur, R., Fureurs paysannes: les paysannes dans la révoltes dii XVHe siècle (Paris: 1968).Google Scholar

54 Moote, A. L., ‘The preconditions of revolution in early modern Europe: did they really exist?’ Canadian Journal of History, VII, 3 (1972), 212, 215.Google Scholar Cf. also Forster, R. and Greene, J., eds., Preconditions of Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Baltimore: 1970)Google Scholar, who speak in the introduction to this collection of essays of certain revolts as having the potentiality to become revolutions. It is worth noting that under the influence of Marx and modern historians, African anthropologists have used the contrast, revolution-rebellion, in reference to African tribal conflicts. M. Gluckman, who has studied these conflicts, distinguishes revolution from rebellion on the following basis, namely, that rebellion is concerned with alterations in the personnel of social positions, not with the pattern of these positions themselves, while revolution derives from deep contradictions in social structure which must lead to a radical change in the pattern; Gluckman, M., Order and Rebellion in Tribal Africa (New York: 1963),Google Scholar Introduction and ch. III; cf. also Lloyd, P. C., ‘Conflict Theory and Yoruba kingdoms,’ in Lewis, I. M., ed., History and Social Anthropology (London: 1968).Google Scholar

55 Koenigsberger, H. G., Estates and Revolutions (Ithaca: 1971)Google Scholar, ch. 9. The author does, however, distinguish rebels from revolutionaries in that the former aim only at capturing the existing state machinery, not at radical social change, as do the latter, ibid., p. 250.

56 Stevenson, D., The Scottish Revolution 1637–1644 (Newton Abbot: 1973), pp. 315–16.Google Scholar

57 For the history of this terminology, cf. the references cited supra, n. 2.

58 For the French terminology, cf. Foisil, M., op. cit., pp. 136–38Google Scholar and Mousnier, R., Recherches sur les soulèvements populaires en France de 1485 à 1787: Questionnaire (Centre de Recherches sur la Civilisation de l'Europe Moderne, Paris, n.d.), p. 6;Google Scholar for Spain, Diccionario histórico de la lingua española, Academia Española, s.v. ‘alteratión’ and the contemporary writings on the revolt (‘sucesos’) of Aragon in 1591 referred to in Merriman, R. B., The Rise of the Spanish Empire, 4v. (New York: 1918–1934), IV, pp. 571n., 605;Google Scholar for England, cf., e.g., Bacon, F., Essays (1625), ‘Of seditions and troubles’.Google Scholar

59 Ellul, J., op. cit., p. 38.Google Scholar In insisting on the difference between revolution and rebellion, Ellul also reveals an affinity with the anti-historicist humanism of Camus's, AlbertThe Rebel (New York: 1956).Google Scholar Rebellion, for Camus, beyond the specific historical content it may contain, expresses man's capacity to pronounce a categorical ‘no’ to oppression and to defy history and its supposed inevitabilities. Ellul in turn can thus contrast the professional modern revolutionary of the Leninist type, who has apotheosized the historical process as the guarantor of his acts, with the rebel, who lacks a futuristic consciousness of the new and represents the principle of rejection and spontaneous resistance. The contrast here in question, though valuable, is more philosophic than historical. The early modern era had its revolutionaries as well as rebels, even if the making of revolution had not yet become a vocation or the mythology of revolution in its historicist form a dominant belief.

60 For the debate concerning the revolt of the Comuneros, cf. Maravall, J. A., Las comunidades de Castilla, 2nd ed. (Madrid: 1970),Google Scholar and Perez, J., La révolution des “Comunidades” de Castille (Bordeaux: 1970). Several other early modern revolutions have been the subject of a similar debate over their conservative or modern character.Google Scholar

61 Hirschman, A. O., A Bias for Hope. Essays on Development and Latin America (New Haven: 1971), pp. 34–36.Google Scholar

62 Cf. Merton, R. K., Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe: 1949),Google Scholar ch. I, for an influential discussion of manifest and latent functions, and the more recent general account by Levy, M. J., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, VI, s.v. ‘Functional analysis’.Google Scholar

63 For the notion of category-mistake, cf. Ryle, G., The Concept of Mind (London: 1963), pp. 16 ff. I use it to mean the misallocation of something to an inappropriate category.Google Scholar

64 The anthropologist, M. Gluckman, has noticed the teleology of rebellionrevolution which is inherent in Marx's theory of revolution. He declares that to Marx, ‘rebellion was…a step on the road towards total revolutionary classconsciousness and action, and was seen as part of a cumulative process’ (Gluckman, M., op. cit., p. 10). The connection with the mythology of revolution is obvious.Google Scholar

65 Cf. for some of these differences, Zagorin, P., ‘Theories of Revolution in Contemporary Historiography,’ Political Science Quarterly, LXXXVIII, 1 (1973), 31.Google Scholar

66 Brinton, C., op. cit., 1965, pp. 21–24.Google Scholar

67 On the ‘Jacobin-Communist great revolution’, Johnson, C., Revolution and the Social System, p. 45.Google Scholar

68 Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd enlarged ed. (Chicago: 1970).Google Scholar I do not know when or where the historiographic concept of ‘the scientific revolution’ first appeared, but it is a safe guess that it had some connection with the prestige of the revolutionary metaphor. Kuhn in his remarkable study, however, is the first historian of science who has in effect taken the idea of revolution seriously enough to try to work it out in relation to the sociology of the knowledgeproducing community of scientists. Thus there is a parallel between the central importance he assigns to the paradigm and paradigm-conflict in the scientific community and the role of ideology in revolutionary movements. The parallel between his account of science and the field of revolution proper is further seen in his discussion of the ‘incommensurability‘ of paradigms and in the occurrence of such terms as crisis, commitment, and conversion-experience to describe the episodes of basic advance (‘paradigm-change‘) in the growth of science. Such possible resemblances help to explain both the vehemence of some of Kuhn's critics among philosophers of science and their objections to the relativistic implications of his conception of scientific knowledge; cf. Lakatos, J. and Musgrove, A., eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: 1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

69 Horton, R., ‘African thought and Western science’, in Wilson, B., ed., Rationality (New York: 1970), p. 132.Google Scholar