QUESTION 1
Comment on THREE of the following quotes. Write a separate commentary about each of three quotes that you choose to discuss. You should aim to write approximately 250 words for each one of your commentaries.
In each case, please discuss the quote’s content, the context in which it was written, and its relevance for our understanding of revolutions and rebellions.
‘The coming of American independence was not inevitable… Americans were pushed towards resistance by their developing interpretation of British policy. Beginning with the Stamp Act, and coming to a climax with the Intolerable Acts, the colonists came to believe that there was a system and purpose behind the policies of successive administrations which continually skirted their protests against successive legislation. They concluded that Britain intended to suppress American liberties and to establish an authoritarian regime which would subordinate America to her interests.’
Colin Bonwick, ‘The American Revolution 1763-91’, in David Parker, ed., Revolutions and the Revolutionary Tradition in the West, London: Routledge, 2000, 74.
‘The lesson of the Russian revolution is that there can be no escape for the working people from the iron grip of war, famine, and enslavement by the landowners and capitalists unless they completely break with the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties and clearly understand the latter’s treacherous role, unless they renounce all compromises with the bourgeoisie and resolutely side with the revolutionary workers. Only the revolutionary workers, if supported by the peasant poor, are capable of smashing the resistance of the capitalists and leading the people in gaining land without compensation, complete liberty, victory over famine and the war, and a just and lasting peace.’
V.I. Lenin, ‘Lessons of the Revolution,’ Sept. 1917, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/sep/06.htm
‘The election of 1968 brought to a close a very bad year that had in actuality lasted over sixteen months. It began with the flowering of the counterculture, erupted into racial violence, saw the Vietnam War destroy Lyndon Johnson and his party, and ended with the collapse of the cold war consensus. That long year also marked a deterioration of the prosperity that had been an essential ingredient in the optimism that inspired both the vision of Americans as the leader of the free world in its struggle with Communism and the belief that Americans possessed both the will and the means to eliminate social injustice at home.’
Mark Hamilton Little, America’s Uncivil Wars: The Sixties Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, 264-265.
‘[Rostow’s] crude “social tension chart” was first put forward in 1948. According to this, we need only bring together an index of unemployment and one of high food prices to be able to chart the course of social disturbance. This contains a self-evident truth (people protest when they are hungry): and in much the same way a “sexual tension chart” would show that the onset of sexual maturity can be correlated with a greater frequency of sexual activity. The objection is that such a chart, if used unwisely, may conclude investigation at the exact point at which it becomes of serious sociological or cultural interest: being hungry (or being sexy), what do people do? How is their behavior modified by custom, culture, and reason? And (having granted that the primary stimulus of “distress” is present) does their behavior contribute towards any more complex, culturally-mediated function, which cannot be reduced- however long it is stewed over the fires of statistical analysis- back to stimulus once again’.
E.P. Thompson ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd’, Past and Present no.50 (1971) pp.76-136
‘The newspaper attack on Khomeini and the Qom incident may be seen as a key point – January 1978 – in which much of the initiative in the protest movement swung from the secular forces, with their letters, petitions, organizations and political poetry readings, to the religiously led opposition. Even if the authorities had had the sense not to calumniate Khomeini, the religiously led movement would probably have developed as the leading oppositional force. The religious opposition…appealed to far larger numbers than did the secular liberals, and in any mass protest it is virtually certain that these people would ultimately have been decisive and would have turned to the leaders they trusted most. The government had been largely successful over many years in suppressing secular protests and had left a clearer field for the less manageable religious opposition.’
Nikki R. Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006, 225-6
‘In 1989 one of the most startling and almost completely unanticipated revolutions – actually, a series of linked revolutions and “refolutions” – destroyed the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe and all that went with them: the political monopoly of the ruling Communist Parties; state organizations (including armies and secret police) thoroughly penetrated by these parties; state control over the means of production; and extensive state economic planning. How could this have happened?’
Jeff Goodwin, No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements 1945-1991, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 257.
‘The Arab revolution is an Arab renaissance. It is literally striving to revive a social body paralyzed by the various autocrats, their predatory cliques and their unbridled security services. The vanguard role played by the youth is just the ultimate reaction of defence by the most exposed generation against the sterilization of its aspirations, the privatization of its nation-state and the obliteration of its future. But this dynamic of defiance and empowerment will not stop with the toppling of an aged ruler, and “days of rage” are already announced inside different parties, trade unions and associations to depose the existing leaderships. It is a regional tide that will leave no sector untouched, one way or another. This grass-roots pressure will tend to counter the top-down approach of the Arab regimes, that alternated between the stick of police repression and the carrot of paternalistic redistribution. This leaderless resistance will sometimes be pushed back, at other times there will be a prolonged standoff, or even a dramatic breakthrough that will reverse the balance of forces. ’
Jean-Pierre Filiu, The Arab Revolution: Ten Lessons from the Democratic Uprising, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 135
‘Nationalism as a motivating factor that unifies diverse social classes behind the goal of revolution is most likely to emerge in reaction to direct colonial rule or indirect colonial domination through a local regime perceived to be operating on behalf of foreign rather than national interests.’
James DeFronzo, Revolutions and Revolutionary Movements, Boulder: Westview Press, 4th ed., 2011, 17.
QUESTION 2
Answer ONE of the following essay questions. You should aim to write approximately 1000 words.
Why were American and French revolutionaries preoccupied with the concept of ‘liberty’?
How important are dissident elites in revolutionary movements? In your answer, discuss at least two revolutions of your choice.
Why was 1968 a year of such widespread protest and rebellion?
Compare and contrast the Algerian uprising against French colonialism (1954-62) and the Iranian revolution that toppled the Shah in 1979.
How important was anti-colonial sentiment in shaping revolutionary movements in the second half of the twentieth century? Make reference in your answer to at least two anti-colonial revolutions you have studied.
Were the Arab Spring and Occupy protests of 2011 strengthened or weakened by the absence of an identifiable leadership?
