Revolutionary wave#20th century

{{Short description|Series of revolutions occurring in various locations within a similar time span}}

{{Prose|date=July 2018}}

{{Revolution sidebar}}

A revolutionary wave (sometimes revolutionary decade) is a series of revolutions occurring in various locations within a particular timespan. In many cases, past revolutions and revolutionary waves have inspired current ones, or an initial revolution has inspired other concurrent "affiliate revolutions" with similar aims.Mark N. Katz, [https://books.google.com/books?id=pLrnRMI2tmgC Revolution and Revolutionary Waves], Palgrave Macmillan (October 1, 1999)Nader Sohrabi, Revolution and Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Iran, Cambridge University Press, 2011 [https://books.google.com/books?id=4c0EFd7BfhAC&q=revolutionary+wave pp. 74, 83, 87, 90, 94, 96], {{ISBN|0-521-19829-1}}, {{ISBN| 978-0-521-19829-5}}

The causes of revolutionary waves have become the subjects of study by historians and political philosophers, including Robert Roswell Palmer, Crane Brinton, Hannah Arendt, Eric Hoffer, and Jacques Godechot.*Colin J. Beck, Dissertation submitted to Stanford University Department of Sociology graduate Ph.D program, March 2009, "Ideological roots of waves of revolution," ProQuest, 2009, [https://books.google.com/books?id=qxRNGu8Pf1wC&q=Ideological+roots+of+waves+of+revolution pp. 1-5]{{Dead link|date=August 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, {{ISBN| 1-109-07655-X}}, 9781109076554.

  • Note: Colin J. Beck also wrote The Ideological Roots of Waves of Revolution, BiblioBazaar, 2011, {{ISBN| 1-243-60856-0}}, 9781243608567

Writers and activists, including Justin Raimondo and Michael Lind, have used the phrase "revolutionary wave" to describe discrete revolutions happening within a short time-span.Justin Raimondo, [http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/01/27/the-revolutionary-wave/ "The Revolutionary Wave: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen – is the West next?"], Antiwar.com, January 28, 2011 - "The revolutionary wave now sweeping the world will not exempt America, in spite of the myth of 'American exceptionalism.'".

Frank B. Tipton, A history of modern Germany since 1815, University of California Press, 2003, [https://books.google.com/books?id=8MCXQlcZNL8C&dq=revolutionary+wave&pg=PA82 p. 82], {{ISBN| 0-520-24049-9}}, {{ISBN| 978-0-520-24049-0}} Chapter 3: A Revolutionary Generation: The 1840s and the Revolutions of 1848 – "A rising revolutionary wave?"

Michael Lind, Vietnam, the Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America's Most Disastrous Military Conflict, Simon and Schuster, 2002

[https://books.google.com/books?id=zvg1lr79qcEC&dq=revolutionary+wave&pg=PA37 p 37] {{ISBN| 0-684-87027-4}}, {{ISBN| 978-0-684-87027-4}} – "The revolutionary wave effect produced by the fall of Saigon in 1975 was far more significant than the regional domino effect in Southeast Asia proper. [...] Mark N. Katz has identified a 'Marxist-Leninist revolutionary wave' that peaked in the 1960s and 1970s, along with an 'Arab nationalist revolutionary wave' that began with the [1978-1979] Iranian Revolution. Samuel P. Huntington has identified a 'democratic wave' that began with the defeat of the Soviet bloc in the Cold War. [...] The Marxist-Leninist revolutionary wave associated with the Vietnam War saw 'affiliate Marxist-Leninist revolutions' come to power outside of Indochina in the Congo (1964, 1968), Benin (1972), Ethiopia and Guinea-Bissau (1974), Madagascar, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Angola (1975), Afghanistan (1978), and Grenada and Nicaragua (1979)."

Typology

Mark N. KatzMark N Katz, Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves, St Martin's Press, 1997, p4 identified six forms of revolution;

  • rural revolution
  • urban revolution
  • Coup d'état, e.g. Egypt, 1952
  • revolution from above, e.g. Mao's Great Leap Forward of 1958
  • revolution from without, e.g. the allied invasions of Italy, 1944 and Germany, 1945.
  • revolution by osmosis, e.g. the gradual Islamization of several countries.

These categories are not mutually exclusive; the Russian revolution of 1917 began with urban revolution to depose the Czar, followed by rural revolution, followed by the Bolshevik coup in November. Katz also cross-classified revolutions as follows;

  • Central; countries, usually Great powers, which play a leading role in a Revolutionary wave; e.g. the USSR, Nazi Germany, Iran since 1979.Mark N Katz, Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves, St Martin's Press, 1997, p13
  • Aspiring revolutions, which follow the Central revolution
  • subordinate or puppet revolutions
  • rival revolutions, e.g. communist Yugoslavia, and China after 1969

Central and subordinate revolutions may support each other militarily, as for example the USSR, Cuba, Angola, Ethiopia, Nicaragua and other Marxist regimes did in the 1970s and 1980s.Mark Katz, Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves, St Martin's Press, 1997, p 86

A further dimension to Katz's typologyMark N Katz, Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves, St Martin's Press, 1997, p12 is that revolutions are either against (anti-monarchy, anti-dictatorial, anti-capitalist, anti-communist, anti-democratic) or for (pro-fascism, pro-liberalism, pro-communism, pro-nationalism etc.). In the latter cases, a transition period is often necessary to decide on the direction taken.

Periodisation

There is no consensus on a complete list of revolutionary waves. In particular, scholars disagree on how similar the ideologies of different events should be in order for them to be grouped as part of a single wave, and over what period a wave can be considered to be taking place – for example, Mark N. Katz discussed a "Marxist-Leninist wave" lasting from 1917 to 1991, and a "fascist wave" from 1922 to 1945, but limits an "anti-communist wave" to just the 1989 to 1991 period.Mark N. Katz, "Cycles, waves and diffusion", in: Jack A. Goldstone, The Encyclopedia of Political Revolutions, pp. 126-127

Pre-19th century

File:Alexanderplatz Berlin 1848.jpg]]

  • Republican waves in Rome (509 BCE),{{cite book| last1 = Gates| first1 = Charles| year = 2003| chapter = 19: Rome from its origins to the end of the Republic| title = Ancient Cities: The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, Greece and Rome| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=--x-3W2R_QwC| location = London| publisher = Routledge| publication-date = 2013| page = 318| isbn = 9781134676620| access-date = 17 January 2018}} Athens (508 BCE),{{cite book |title=The Athenian Revolution|last=Ober|first=Josiah|authorlink=Josiah Ober|year=1996|pages=32–52|location=Princeton|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=9780691217970|oclc=1241099836}} and Carthage (480 BCE).{{cite book|author= Michael D. Chan|title= Aristotle and Hamilton on Commerce and Statesmanship|url= https://archive.org/details/aristotlehamilto00chan_0|url-access= registration|access-date= 1 March 2013|date= 1 December 2006|publisher= University of Missouri Press|isbn= 978-0-8262-6516-6|page= [https://archive.org/details/aristotlehamilto00chan_0/page/47 47]}}
  • The Second Reformation (1566–1609), including the Revolt of the Netherlands and the Second and Third Wars of Religion in France.Colin A. Beck, "The World-Cultural Origins of Revolutionary Waves: Five Centuries of European Contention", Social Science History, vol.35, no.2, pp.167-207
  • Jihadist wars in Western Africa in the 16th century.
  • The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), including Calvinist uprisings and the Huguenot Wars in France.
  • The Atlantic Revolutions occurring at the end of the 18th century, including the American Revolution (1776), the French Revolution (1789), the Haitian Revolution (1791), the Batavian Revolution (1795) and the Irish Rebellion of 1798.Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilson, "[https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/revolution/ What Makes a Revolution?]", Ceasefire, 30 September 2014

19th century

20th century

File:Vietnam War protests in Vienna, Austria (Greyscale).jpg in Vienna, Austria, 1968]]

21st century

== In Marxism ==

Marxists see revolutionary waves as evidence that a world revolution is possible. For Rosa Luxemburg, "The most precious thing… in the sharp ebb and flow of the revolutionary waves is the proletariat's spiritual growth. The advance, by leaps and bounds, of the intellectual stature of the proletariat affords an inviolable guarantee of its further progress in the inevitable economic and political struggles ahead."Rosa Luxemburg, Gesammelte Werke (Collected Works), quoted in Tony Cliff, [http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1985/patterns/part1.htm#s2 "Rosa Luxemburg, 1905 and the classic account of the mass strike"] in [http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1985/patterns/index.htm "Patterns of mass strike"], International Socialism, vol. 2, no. 29 (Summer 1985), pp. 3-61. The need for a world-wide socialist revolutionary wave for the survival of a socialist state has and continues to be a topic of controversy between Marxists, most notably between Trotskyists and mainline Marxist–Leninist.{{Cite book |last=Carr |first=Edward Hallett |url=http://archive.org/details/socialisminoneco0003carr |title=Socialism in one country, 1924-1926 |date=1900 |publisher=Harmondsworth, Penguin |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-14-021040-8}}

Potential revolutionary waves

Mark Katz theorises that Buddhism (in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indochina, Burma, Tibet) and Confucianism (to replace Marxism in China and promote unity with Chinese in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia) might be the revolutionary waves of the future. In the past, these religions have been passively acquiescent to secular authority; but so was Islam, until recently.Mark Katz, Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves, St Martin's Press, 1997, p 138

Katz also suggests that nationalisms such as Pan-Turanianism (in Turkey, Central Asia, Xinjiang, parts of Russia), 'Pan-native Americanism' (in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay) and Pan-Slavism (in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus) could also form revolutionary waves.Mark Katz, Revolutions and Revolutionary Waves, St Martin's Press, 1997, p 139

See also

References

{{Reflist}}