Some books present fresh evidence; others make arguments that urge the reader to see old problems In a new light. This work Is decidedly of the latter sort. It offers a frame of reference for analyzing social-revolutionary transformations in modern world history. And It uses comparative history to work out an explanation of the causes and outcomes of the French Revolution of 1787-1800 the Russian Revolution of 1917-1921, and the Chinese Revolution of 1911-1949. Developed through critical reflection on assumptions and types of explanation common to most received theories of revolution, the principles of analysis sketched in the first chapter of the book are meant to reorient our sense of what is characteristic of–and problematic about–revolutions as they actually have occurred historically. Then the remainder of die book attempts to make the program of Chapter 1, calling for new kinds of explanatory arguments, come alive in application. In Part 1, the roots of revolutionary crises and conflicts in France, Russia, and China are traced through analyses of the State and class structures and die international situations of the Bourbon Tsarist, and Imperial Old Regimes. Particular emphasis is placed upon the ways in which the old-regimes states came into crisis, and upon the emergence of peasant insurrections during the revolutionary Interregnums.