Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-zzh7m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T09:23:57.477Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Theories of Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Lawrence Stone
Lawrence Stone
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Get access

Extract

In attacking the problem of revolution, as most others of major significance in history, we historians should think twice before we spurn the help offered by our colleagues in the social sciences, who have, as it happens, been particularly active in the last few years in theorizing about the typology, causes, and evolutionary patterns of this particular phenomenon. The purpose of this article is not to advance any new hypothesis, but to provide a summary view and critical examination of the work that has been going on.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , January 1966 , pp. 159 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1966

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Johnson, Chalmers, Revolution and the Social System, Hoover Institution Studies 3 (Stanford 1964).Google Scholar

2 Wolin, Sheldon S., “Violence and the Western Political Tradition,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, XXXIII (January 1963), 15–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Brinton, , The Anatomy of Revolution (New York 1938)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gottschalk, , “Causes of Revolution,” American Journal of Sociology, L (July 1944), 1–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pettee, , The Process of Revolution (New York 1938).Google Scholar

4 “Toward a Theory of Power and Political Instability in Latin America,” Western Political Quarterly, IX (1956).Google Scholar

5 Eckstein, Harry, ed., Internal War (New York 1964)Google Scholar, and “On the Etiology of Internal War,” History and Theory, IV, No. 2 (1965), 133–63.Google Scholar I am grateful to Mr. Eckstein for allowing me to read this article before publication.

6 The formula has been used by a historian, Paret, Peter, in Internal War and Pacification: The Vendée, 1793–96 (Princeton 1961).Google Scholar

7 Moore, Barrington, “The Strategy of the Social Sciences,” in his Political Power and Social Theory (Cambridge, Mass., 1958)Google Scholar; Dahrendorf, Ralph, “Out of Utopia: Toward a Reorientation of Sociological Analysis,” American Journal of Sociology, LXIV (September 1958), 115–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mills, C. Wright, The Sociological Imagination (New York 1959)Google Scholar; Moore, Wilbert E., Social Change (Englewood Cliffs 1963).Google Scholar It should be noted that both the equilibrium and the conflict views of society have very respectable ancestries. The equilibrium model goes back to Rousseau—or perhaps Aquinas; the conflict model to Hobbes, Hegel, and Marx.

8 Quoted in Earle, Edward Mead, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton 1943), 104–5.Google Scholar

9 Revolution and the Social System.

10 Cohn, N. R. C., Pursuit of the Millennium (New York 1961)Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, Eric J., Primitive Rebels (Manchester 1959)Google Scholar; Thrupp, S. L., Millennial Dreams in Action, Supplement II, Comparative Studies in Society and History (The Hague 1962)Google Scholar; Köbben, A. J. F., “Prophetic Movements as an Expression of Social Protest,” Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, XLIX, NO. 1 (1960), 117–64.Google Scholar

11 Sigmund Neumann, quoted in Chalmers, 2.

12 Anatomy of Revolution.

13 “On the Etiology of Internal War.”

14 Amman, , “Revolution: A Redefinition,” Political Science Quarterly, LXXVII (1962).Google Scholar

15 Durkheim, Émile, Suicide (Glencoe 1951), 246–54Google Scholar; Hollingshead, A. B.Ellis, R., and Kirby, E., “Social Mobility and Mental Illness,” American Sociological Review, XIX (1954).Google Scholar

18 Walzer, Michael L., “Puritanism as a Revolutionary Ideology,” History and Theory, III, No. 1 (1963), 59–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Parsons, , The Social System (Glencoe 1951)Google Scholar; Merton, , Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe 1957)Google Scholar, chap. 4.

18 Lewis, W. Arthur, “Commonwealth Address,” in Conference Across a Continent (Toronto 1963), 46–60Google Scholar; Olson, , “Rapid Growth as a Destabilizing Force,” Journal of Economic History, XXIII (December 1963), 529–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I am grateful to Mr. Olson for drawing my attention to Sir Arthur Lewis's article, and for some helpful suggestions.

19 The Vendée (Cambridge, Mass., 1964).Google Scholar

20 “Toward a Theory of Revolution,” American Sociological Review, XXVII (February 1962), 1–19Google Scholar, esp. the graph on p. 6.

21 Rostow, , The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass., 1960)Google Scholar; Supple, , The Experience of Economic Growth (New York 1963), 11–12.Google Scholar

22 Hobsbawm, , “The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century,” in Aston, T. H., ed., Crisis in Europe, 1560–1660 (London 1965), 5–58.Google Scholar

23 La Crise de l'économie française à la fin de l'Ancien Régime et au début de la Révolution (Paris 1944).Google Scholar

24 Kolko, Gabriel, Wealth and Power in America (New York 1962)Google Scholar; Titmuss, Richard M., Income Distribution and Social Change (London 1962).Google Scholar

25 Davis, 5, quoting Marx, Selected Works in Two Volumes (Moscow 1955), 1, 947.Google Scholar

26 Bell, Daniel, ed., The Radical Right (Garden City 1963).Google Scholar

27 Merton, chap. 9.

28 “Revolution: A Redefinition.”

29 “The Revolutionary Process,” Social Forces, XXVIII (March 1950), 270–79.Google Scholar

30 See Cahnman, Werner J. and Boskoff, Alvin, eds., Sociology and History: Theory and Research (New York 1964)Google Scholar; Hughes, H. Stuart, “The Historian and the Social Scientist,” American Historical Review, LXVI, NO. 1 (1960), 20–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cobban, A., “History and Sociology,” Historical Studies, III (1961), 1–8Google Scholar; Smith, M. G., “History and Social Anthropology,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, XCII (1962)Google Scholar; Thomas, K. V., “History and Anthropology,” Past and Present, No. 24 (April 1963), 8.Google Scholar